This article is part of our Team Communication Insights Centre.
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You can bring together talented, experienced and motivated individuals and still create a team that struggles with communication, avoids difficult conversations or spends too much time working around one another.

The difference between a group of people and an effective team is often found in how people work together.

Strong teams develop ways of communicating, making decisions, handling differences and supporting one another that make it easier to get work done.

This article explores seven characteristics that help make that possible.

There is no single personality type, behavioural profile or combination of people that creates the perfect team.

Effective teams can contain very different personalities.

Some people naturally challenge ideas. Others look for consensus. Some want to move quickly. Others want time to consider the detail.

Those differences can become a source of frustration.

But they can also become one of the team’s greatest strengths.

The important question is not:

“Do we have the right types of people?”

It is:

“Have we learned how to work effectively with the people we have?”

That shifts team development away from trying to categorise people and towards improving the conversations and behaviours that happen between them.

People work together more effectively when they understand what they are collectively trying to achieve.

That sounds obvious, but teams can easily become collections of individual roles, responsibilities and priorities.

Everyone may be busy without necessarily pulling in the same direction.

A shared purpose helps people make sense of questions such as:

• What are we trying to achieve together?
• What matters most right now?
• Where do our individual responsibilities overlap?
• What do we need from one another to succeed?

Clarity of purpose gives the team something against which priorities, decisions and disagreements can be tested.

Instead of “What works best for me?”, the conversation becomes “What will help us achieve what we’re here to do?”

Good team communication isn’t about everybody communicating in the same way.

People naturally differ in how they express themselves.

One person may think aloud. Another may prefer to reflect before responding. Someone may communicate very directly while somebody else pays much more attention to how a message will be received.

Problems arise when those differences become judgements.

“They never get to the point.”

“They don’t listen.”

“They’re too abrupt.”

“They won’t make a decision.”

Strong teams become curious about these differences rather than simply frustrated by them.

They learn to adapt.

That might mean providing more detail to someone who needs evidence, allowing thinking time before expecting a response, becoming more concise when urgency matters or taking greater care over how a difficult message is delivered.

Better communication doesn’t require people to abandon their natural preferences.

It requires enough awareness and flexibility to communicate beyond them.

Trust is often discussed as though it is something a team either has or doesn’t have.

In reality, trust is continually being created through everyday interactions.

Do people do what they say they will do?

Can somebody admit that they don’t know something?

Can colleagues disagree without damaging the relationship?

Will people ask for help before a problem becomes a crisis?

Can somebody raise a concern without wondering how it will be used against them later?

These small interactions gradually tell people whether it is safe to speak openly and rely upon one another.

This is why trust cannot simply be created through a team-building event.

A workshop might start an important conversation.

What happens afterwards determines whether trust grows.

A team without disagreement isn’t necessarily a healthy team.

It may simply be a team in which people have learned not to disagree publicly.

Different perspectives are valuable.

Someone focused on results may challenge the pace of a project. Someone concerned with people may notice how a decision will affect colleagues. Someone focused on possibilities may identify an opportunity while someone more analytical spots a risk everyone else has missed.

The challenge is separating difference from conflict.

Strong teams can challenge an idea without attacking the person proposing it.

They can ask:

“What are you seeing that I’m not seeing?”

That is a very different conversation from:

“Why are you always so negative?”

Behavioural differences don’t have to disappear for teams to become stronger.

Teams become stronger when those differences can be expressed and explored productively.

Feedback is one of the ways teams learn.

Yet in many teams it happens too infrequently, too formally or only when something has already gone wrong.

Useful feedback doesn’t always need to be a carefully scheduled conversation.

Sometimes it is simply:

“When you did that, it really helped.”

Or:

“Can I explain what happened for me when you said that?”

The ability to exchange feedback regularly helps teams make small adjustments before problems become established patterns.

Behavioural awareness can help here too.

Understanding that people may prefer to receive feedback differently can make the conversation easier.

But awareness alone isn’t enough.

The team still has to have the conversation.

Accountability is sometimes mistaken for management.

If something goes wrong, the manager identifies the problem and tells somebody to fix it.

Shared accountability works differently.

People understand that the quality of the team’s performance is something they collectively influence.

That means being prepared to challenge, support and occasionally question one another.

It also means recognising your own contribution to a problem.

Instead of:

“They need to communicate better.”

A more useful question might be:

“What could I do differently that would make communication between us easier?”

That doesn’t remove individual responsibility.

It expands it.

Strong teams don’t simply hold other people accountable.

People hold themselves accountable for the effect they have on the team.

Teams change.

New people arrive. Responsibilities move. Pressure increases. Priorities change. People develop.

That means team development cannot realistically be treated as a one-off exercise.

A behavioural profile, team workshop or development day can create valuable insight.

But the real opportunity comes from what the team does with that insight afterwards.

Strong teams continue asking questions.

What are we doing well?

Where are we making work unnecessarily difficult for one another?

Whose perspective are we missing?

What happens to our behaviour when we’re under pressure?

What could we try differently?

These conversations turn team development from an occasional event into part of how the team works.

Perhaps one of the most useful things to recognise about strong teams is that they are not necessarily harmonious teams.

They still disagree.

People still misunderstand one another.

Different personalities still irritate each other occasionally.

Pressure still changes behaviour.

The difference is that effective teams become better at noticing what is happening and talking about it.

Behavioural models such as Insights Discovery, DISC, C-me and Lumina Spark can provide useful language for exploring some of these differences.

But the profile isn’t what creates the stronger team.

It provides a starting point.

The value comes when people use that awareness to change the conversations and interactions taking place between them.

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There is an alternative way to change what happens after a profile workshop.  Organisations, large and small across the world are already reaping the savings and the improvements.  Find out more by clicking the button below.

This is where practical activities become valuable.

Not because people need another profile. But because they need opportunities to talk.

When teams discuss communication regularly:

• Awareness becomes understanding.
• Understanding becomes feedback.
• Feedback becomes action.
• Action becomes improvement.

That is where meaningful change begins.

The most successful team development activities are rarely those that provide the most information.

They are the activities that generate the most meaningful discussion.

• When people exchange observations.
• Share perspectives.
• Challenge assumptions.
• Recognise strengths.
• Acknowledge blind spots.

The conversation becomes more valuable than the model.

The framework simply provides a structure. The workshop facilitator provides the space.

Take a look at our free guide: 7 Questions That Improve Team Communication and learn how to improve team communication without another profile.

If your team has recently completed a profile workshop, the next step is not another profile.

The next step is conversation.

Because communication does not improve when people complete a profile.

Communication improves when people start talking differently to one another.