Customer Service Improvement

1 – What should a leader do to get the team’s communications back on track?

According to the text, discussions are becoming dominated by some team members; they also tend to drift off the topic and on top of that sometimes discussions are not focus on the issues but in critical personal remarks. Effective communication within a team is based on trust and supportive climate. In order to rebuild the trust and create a supportive climate, team leader should work on promoting cooperation in the group and encourage the team members to discuss on the issue.

Rebuilding the trust is a difficult process [Group Dynamics for teams, Daniel Levy] as requires commitment and consistency to overcome past trust violations. In the book “promises, lies and apologies: Is it possible to restore the trust?” by Maurice E. Schweitzer, John C. Hershey and Eric T. Bradlow, the authors demonstrate that trust can strength when outsiders makes behavioral changes.

“Trust harmed by untrustworthy behavior can be effectively restored when individuals observe a consistent series of trustworthy actions,”

Therefore, the team leader should work on eradicate disruptive behaviors from those members who practice it. He must be firm on this decision and do not tolerate critical personal remarks between team members. He must reward those supportive and acceptable behaviors verbally and accomplish the member in front of the rest of the team. By doing this, the team leader will promote a behavioral change within the team.

On the other hand and in parallel, team leader has to work on establish a supportive climate within the team. Supportive climate are open, inclusive and rewarding (Gibb, 1961). In order to promote it, the team leader must encourage all team members to participate and share their opinions within the team. To do so, he can ask open questions to those team members who eventually do not participate. In addition he can promote effective discussions based on facts and problem solving.

To...