“We need to communicate better.”

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I've heard some version of this in many teams, and it's a perfectly reasonable place to start. The trouble is that communication can mean almost anything.

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People aren't speaking up. Meetings happen without any conclusion. Feedback isn't direct enough - or is too direct. Information arrives too late or in a format no one can really act on. “Done” means just another round of changes. Two people leave the same conversation with completely different ideas about what was decided.

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While these problems can look very similar, and many teams can relate to them, the solutions can be quite different.

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Communication has often been the starting point of my work with a team. But once we start exploring the everyday moments of friction, a more interesting story tends to emerge.

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Instead of analysing “How well do we communicate?”, we start looking at what actually happens when communication breaks down.

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Where do we lose energy? At which point does work start going back and forth? Do people feel comfortable challenging an idea? What happens after a disagreement? Who knows when a decision has actually been made?

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Sometimes communication skills really are part of the answer. I've worked with teams on active listening, feedback, difficult conversations and ways of expressing disagreement constructively.

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But sometimes people may be communicating perfectly clearly about a decision that nobody owns. What looks like a performance problem may actually be two different definitions of what “finished” looks like. Repeated tension between people may keep appearing at exactly the same point in the workflow.

In those situations, another communication workshop probably isn't the first thing the team needs. It might actually feel like a waste of time.

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That's why I like to help teams turn general statements like “communication isn't working” into something we can actually look at.

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Map a real situation. Follow how a decision gets made. Let people describe the same moment from different perspectives. Look at where their experiences diverge. Create enough space to hear those differences — and then turn them into something the team can actually do differently.

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Sometimes people need better communication skills. And sometimes the skills are already there, but clarity around decisions, a stronger sense of ownership or a little more courage is what's missing. Knowing the difference matters.

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Things clients have found useful here:
Team journey mapping · Decision mapping · Focus groups · Team diagnostics · Active listening exercises · Difficult conversation practice