What Language Does Your Team Speak?

Imagine you are working on a project team where everyone speaks a different language:

One person speaks Mandarin Chinese.

Another person speaks Japanese.

Another only speaks Swedish.

You are the only native English speaker.

How difficult would it be to coordinate work across four people who speak completely different languages?

Before beginning the actual work, this team would need to align on the ‘language’ it will use to communicate.

Maybe the team would need to use hand gestures, numbers, or an app like Google Translate in order to communicate.

Once aligned on how communication will occur, work on the project could commence.

Currently, all of my Efficiency Consulting clients speak English (thankfully!)

But, on some teams I work with, in addition to English, each person also speaks their ‘own’ language for how they best work:

• “It’s faster for me to email,” when everyone else on the team uses Slack to communicate.
• “It’s faster for me to update my own tracking spreadsheet,” when everyone else on the team uses Asana for task/project updates.
• “It’s faster for me to update my OneNote,” when everyone else on the team tracks their deals in Hubspot.
• “It’s faster for me to execute that process from memory,” when everyone else relies on a written checklist to execute a key recurring business process.

Notice the patten?

The language of:

‘It’s faster/more familiar/more comfortable for ME,’

vs.

‘What is best for we?’ (We = your team)

A team needs all members to speak the same language:

• Where do we go to see who’s doing what by when? How is this list updated and maintained?
• Where do we go to see when we are meeting and what we are discussing?
• Where do we go to see how we will communicate?
• Where do we go to see our team’s documentation, FAQ’s, and processes?

The answers to these questions creates the language of the team.

Without a common language and alignment/agreement, each member of the team will revert back to what’s most comfortable to them.

This division is what causes the project to fail, be delivered late, over budget, or to waste countless hours of time hunting for information and updates.

I think this Bible verse from Matthew 12:25 explains perfectly:

“Jesus knew their thoughts and said to them, “Every kingdom divided against itself will be ruined, and every city or household divided against itself will not stand.”

Is your team speaking the same language?