Trying to Build Great Startup Teams? Focus on Communication

We all want our startup teams to be successful. We want them to be creative, committed, productive, profitable, loyal and energetic.

We all want our startup teams to be successful. We want them to be creative, committed, productive, profitable, loyal and energetic.

So, what makes some teams more successful than others?

The answer it turns out, lies in how teams communicate.

A 2012 MIT study by Alex “Sandy” Pentland concluded that communication patterns are the most important predictor of a teams success — more significantly so than “individual intelligence, personality, skill and the substance of discussions”… combined.

The research, conducted with multiple teams — ranging from post-op wards in hospitals, call centres, customer-facing teams in banks to back office operations — saw all individuals fitted with electronic badges that collect information on individual communication behaviour such as tone of voice, body language and to whom they were talking and for how long.

The analysed data from these badges revealed that in successful teams the individual members:

  1. talk and listen in roughly equal amounts,
  2. keep contributions short and sweet,
  3. tend to face each other during conversations,
  4. gesture with energy,
  5. connect with each other and not just with the team leader,
  6. carry on with back-channel conversations, and
  7. explore and mingle with outside teams, and bring bach the information that they gather.

What does this mean for your startup?

Because individual skill contributes very little to how well a team does, you should not build your startup teams around individual accomplishments, talent or smartness. Rather you should pack your team with high-energy, engaging and contributing members, and then shape and guide them to communicate well. You should also encourage your various teams to interact with each other.

Ideal team members can be characterised as “natural leaders” or “charismatic connectors”. These are the people that engage with everyone, listen as much or more than they talk, and tend to participate in “energised but focused listening”. They seek outside ideas, connect team mates to one another and help spread ideas around.

Guiding and encouraging team members to communicate well can involve things like:

  • reorganising office seating,
  • setting a personal example,
  • empowering a manager who actively encourages discussions,
  • discouraging emails when face-to-face communication will do,
  • implementing the right policies, and
  • by ensuring that questions are discussed within the team before action is taken.

In extreme cases removing a poor performing team member and replacing them with someone new may be the best and only way to improve team energy and engagement. It is however noted in the study that most people can improve how well they communicate if are given the regular feedback.