A team is two or more people working together to accomplish a common purpose. If two or more people are seeking to work together, successful communication is critical.

The Team Communication Cycle is an effective way to facilitate communication within the team. Teams are a resource of tremendous potential, and tapping the genius, insight and potential in any team is the challenge of team communication. Individuals who make up the team can bring a vast knowledge, understanding, ability, expertise, insight, intuition, access and energy to the team, yet these assets are not immediately obvious or easily accessible. We have an unmined deposit.

While the team contains the untapped resources of great knowledge and energy, it also harbors misperceptions, partial understanding, blind spots, invalid assumptions, irrational responses, prejudice and bias. The key to successful teamwork is to separate the two,utilizing the former and discarding the latter. Just as the prospector panned for gold and carefully sorted the gold from the mud, a team must select the genius of insight from the mud of misinformation.

The Team Communication Cycle, which is a specifically designed communication method, facilitates the team’s gathering of information and the sorting of the valuable from the worthless. It is a very specific method used to facilitate teamwork by managing communication. It utilizes the same probing questions that drive the team process to stimulate each team member to draw on the pool of resources he/she brings to the task in order to utilize the collective resources to work as a team.

The challenge of an effective team facilitator, like a prospector of old, is to separate what is valuable from what is not. While teams generate a great deal of information, not everything is useful to the team. To collect and sort information, effective teams follow a five-step process, the Team Communication Cycle.

The five sequential steps are:

1. Ask a probing question.

2. Provide time to find potential answers.

3. Report all potential answers.

4. Discuss and analyze all potential answers.

5. Agree as a team on the answer.

The single, most powerful method in facilitating effective teamwork is the Probing Question. The most effective way to involve people in problem solving, strategic planning, or informational dialogue is to ask Probing Questions.

What are the six elements  of a Probing Question?

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In the previous post (The Three Phases of Problem Solving) I discussed the three common and universal phases of effective problem solving. Though the phases are common, the steps used to process these phases are as varied as the number of problem solving processes available. I have seen methods with as many as 24 steps. It is my opinion that the process should be “user friendly.” Using a method should not be problematic in itself. Therefore, I have identified six simple steps to effective problem solving. These steps guide an individual and team effectively through the three phases.

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Problem solving is by its very definition a reactive activity, meaning it is focused on events that have already happened. Unlike planning, which is a proactive activity that is forward looking, problem solving is investigating something that happened in the past. The existence of a problem implies that an expected outcome has been foiled. Problem solving is focused and directed on correcting an unacceptable situation that already exists and threatens the desired outcome. Problem solvers are “reacting” to actual factors that block the expected results.

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1.  Effective Facilitators are experienced in team participation and team facilitation.

2.  Effective Facilitators believe that the team can and will generate a synergistic result.

3.  Effective Facilitators lead teams with an optimistic expectancy and attitude that gives the team a
performance edge.

4.  Effective Facilitators find the balance in the team dynamics.

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The Problem

I felt my heart pound to the percussion of the main rotor as the helicopter settled onto the landing pad. It was 6:30 a.m. I was at a private helicopter hangar near a client’s corporate office, scheduled to fly to a central location and participate in an 8:00 a.m. meeting. As the chopper blades slowed to a halt, the pilot hopped out and told me we would depart as soon as he refueled the aircraft.

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Teamwork is a popular theme and concept in American business, yet the principles of teamwork abound in nature. Naturalists tell us that migrating birds fly in a team-V formation for very practical performance reasons. A flock of birds flying together in formation can cover a greater distance in a given period of time than any one individual bird flying alone.

Agriculture has long understood the principle of teamwork. Ancient farmers understood that two or more oxen, mules or horses teamed together

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