Forms of Communication

Equality in project communications structures and systems

5 September 2010

So, here is a ques­tion for you to pon­der, does your pro­ject and cor­por­ate hier­archy, struc­ture and access to com­mu­nic­a­tions tools and tech­no­logy match your project’s com­mu­nic­a­tion aims and pro­cesses… Many pro­jects make bold claims of being open to input and con­tri­bu­tions from all mem­bers of the pro­ject team no mat­ter how high or low […]

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Comparing communication mediums in cross cultural team communication

15 August 2010

There are a num­ber of dif­fer­ent com­mu­nic­a­tion tech­no­lo­gies avail­able to the mod­ern pro­ject man­ager to inter­face with and coördin­ate their inter­na­tional pro­ject teams, ran­ging from stand­ard email com­mu­nic­a­tions, whether they be one to one or used to broad­cast mes­sages to the entire team, use of the tele­phone, again either for a one on one conversation, […]

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Consistency of message in communicating to your team

14 August 2010

When you are try­ing to main­tain enthu­si­asm and coördin­a­tion in your team, whether they may be a small co-located group or a large vir­tual com­munity, it is crit­ic­ally import­ant to keep your mes­sage con­sist­ent at all levels of deliv­ery and in all meth­ods of deliv­ery. Whether the mes­sage is being form­al­ised in news­let­ters and announcements, […]

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The power of thank you as positive reinforcement in project teams

21 April 2010

Pos­it­ive rein­force­ment and recog­ni­tion through simple actions such as send­ing thank-you responses to emails is an incred­ibly effect­ive way to main­tain a team spirit and keep your staff feel­ing respected.

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So, do you need a communications coach?

17 April 2010

These days it seems you can get coaches for pretty much any aspect of you per­sonal or pro­fes­sional life, there are the obvi­ous ones such as sports coaches, then there are coaches who will come inand help you adapt to a new job, a pro­mo­tion, a life­style change etc. Have you ever stopped and considered […]

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International project video meetings

10 April 2010

The advent of the video con­fer­ence should have marked a quantum change in the way inter­na­tional pro­ject coördin­a­tion meet­ings are con­duc­ted, how­ever, a com­bin­a­tion of the tech­no­logy ini­tially being both extremely expens­ive and com­plex, along with the imma­ture tech­no­logy at its launch, made it dif­fi­cult to access for the major­ity of organ­isa­tions. This led to […]

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Communication toolkits

7 April 2010

For any­one work­ing in a team based pro­ject envir­on­ment, be it co-located or vir­tual, single or multi cul­tural, devel­op­ing a com­pre­hens­ive com­mu­nic­a­tions “toolkit” com­pris­ing dif­fer­ent com­mu­nic­a­tion styles and skills, is an abso­lute neces­sity. Many of us have a single style of com­mu­nic­a­tion that we have had since our early years, for some this single style […]

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Teleconference meeting communication problems

14 February 2010

In many con­ver­sa­tions, dis­cus­sions and meet­ings, the words spoken gen­er­ally do not con­vey the whole story, some would say that only 10 to 20% of the mes­sage in any con­ver­sa­tion is actu­ally spoken words. There are facial expres­sions, tones of speech, hand ges­tures and, of course, body lan­guage, but even tak­ing away everything but the […]

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