9 Steps To Establish a Communication Team

Become the leader who you’d like to work for!

As a Communication Manager, you probably know communication isn’t only about mutual correspondence. It’s about the development of functional systems and processes until the communication is effectively done.

However, if you focus on strategy, you will have very little time for execution. That’s why you should consider forming a team of people ready to help you with your daily tasks. Here are some tips and tricks on how to successfully establish a team:

1. Analyse your needs

Maybe you have always wanted to have a team by your side, but you should focus on your needs rather than on your wishes. Do you really need more than one person to complete your tasks? For an answer, ask yourself these questions:

• What kind of tasks would your team have?
• Do you have enough resources at your disposal to support their work?
• Will you have time to provide them with proper support?
• Are you in a position to motivate others?

Tip #1: There are a lot of project management softwares you can use. However, if you are only familiar with basic Office tools, you can make a spreadsheet with projects you would like to develop. Define specific tasks required to complete each project and set a deadline by when each task needs to be done. A sheet done in Google Drive can be easily shared with your future co-workers and edited in real-time.

2. Form teams

Now that you have identified your project-based tasks, you are able to group your members into three or four teams based on their work:

• Will you need to produce texts? Form a content team.
• What about graphic design? You will need a graphics team.
• Maybe you will also need people with IT skills? Establish an IT team.
• Multimedia team? Maybe you will have to produce a video or edit photos.

Tip #2: In the same spreadsheet, create columns for the teams next to the column of deadlines. This will give you a nice overview of your future projects and help you identify the need for teams. In order to have multidisciplinary teams, every project should be composed of people from different teams who have different skills. When organising your human resources, you should take this into account and coordinate your teams by projects and not only by the tasks or skills that they have.

3. Identify your Human Resources needs

After identifying the work that needs to be done, it is important to identify the number of people needed as well. Look at the previously defined tasks and think:

• How many people from each team will you need to complete the tasks
• What kind of skills these people must have to succeed in their tasks?

Tip #3: You can create filters in the team’s column to count how many people you will need for each team. If you have a big number of members per team, consider appointing a team coordinator to help you manage the work done by each team member. Later on, you can use this spreadsheet to add the name of your members according to their assigned tasks. You can share this spreadsheet with your team so everyone will have a clear overview of the ongoing projects and the person responsible for them.

4. Choose your tools and make the rules

Choosing a group of people to work with won’t be your greatest challenge — managing them will, especially if you need to do it remotely. For this reason, it’s very important to introduce tools everyone will need to use to work within this team.

• Do you want to track work done by your teams? Use a task management software (f.e. Trello, Asana) and/or a calendar.
• Will you have online calls? Consider having a video conference app that allows you to have team video or audio calls while you chat by text, show presentations, upload docs, etc.
• Where will you save the shared documents? Choose an online workspace where your team can storage, sync and share files.

Humans fail and “common sense” is a beautiful concept until someone shows you that your perceptions aren’t reasonable common expectations. Everyone is different and, in order to avoid conflicts, you must establish ground rules for your team:

• Will new members have a trial period before becoming full members? If so, how will you test their skills and commitment?
• Will you send them deadline reminders?
• How do you expect them to report back to you?
• What happens if one fails to comply with the deadline?
• How will you monitor the performance of each member and of the teams in general?

Tip #4: Avoid using social networks to communicate and manage your team. Even if people are used to communicating on Facebook or WhatsApp, these platforms can easily be mixed with personal life and distract your team.

5. Recruit and select your dream team

Whenever you think is suitable, begin the recruitment process with a strategic communication campaign. Creative copy and great design will help you attract new members to your teams. Don’t forget to describe the skills that people need to be selected for one of the teams, the tasks that will be expected from them and benefits the work in your team will bring them:

• Why should people join your team? Will they have the opportunity to develop skills? To travel? To meet new people or to develop their own projects?
• What can you offer to your team? Will you be able to provide them with training? What about inviting them to team buildings or other events?

Tip #5: People nowadays value satisfaction, fulfillment and being challenged in a workplace. Make your potential candidates realize why your team is different from others and why they should join it. Show them that it’s a win-win situation of mutual benefits.

Starting a team is one thing, but keeping it together is the key element for success!

6. Integrate your members

You have finally selected your dream team, but the work doesn’t stop there! Now that they are a part of your band, you need to integrate them:

• How will you introduce them to the team? Write a welcome email with some ground rules and general info.
• How will you divide them into projects/tasks? You can open a call for each project or you can simply investigate in which projects and tasks your members would like to work.
• How will they understand that they are a part of a team and that their actions influence an entire team? Set deadlines for everything from the very beginning.

Tip #6: Don’t make a mistake of sending a mass email to all of your new members. Personalize each email with the name of the person and include the team in which they will be integrated.

7. Fill the gap between the different levels

When you have several teams, it’s hard to keep an eye on everything. Whether you choose to appoint a coordinator or to issue an Open Call, it’s very important to have someone on whom you can count to ease the communication between you and your members.

• Do you have to appoint someone for the coordinator role?
• Will you open a Call within your teams in order to select a coordinator?
• How long will this process take? Set deadlines, always!

Tip #7: In order to make everyone feel included, you can open a Call for the coordinator and ask the team members to be included in the choosing process. However, it’s very important that you identify beforehand the skills that this person should have and the tasks that need to be done. It’s also important to establish a transparent way to monitor the performance of this person, which is where the other team members play an important role. This will allow everyone to feel included in the process while also making them responsible for choosing someone who will represent them and support them in their work.

8. Keep the motivation up

It might happen, that you will be working with people who come from different countries, different backgrounds. And trust me, it can be challenging. It’s even harder when it comes to remote work, where your team members maybe don’t even know each other in person. It’s your job, as the person responsible for the Team, to keep the motivation of your members up. You must make them feel like their work is being appreciated.

• How to do that? Always share the success with everyone and give credits. Acknowledge the individual work and explain the importance of the little achievements on the success of the entire team. Use the email or your internal newsletter. Open an internal nomination for the “member of the month”.
• What can you do if someone is demotivated? Talk to this person directly. Ask them if everything is ok or if they prefer to take some days off. Don’t forget that you’re working with people who have their own life, maybe personal problems, and sometimes they don’t feel confident enough to ask you to cut them some slack.
• Is it possible for a member to influence the work of others in a negative way? Unfortunately, when it comes to teamwork, this happens frequently. Maybe someone is not delivering as they should and other members depend on their work to finalize their own tasks. This creates an environment of demotivation and leads to bad results. For this reason, it’s very important to have clear criteria about what’s a good team player. It can be someone who attends all the online calls, someone who always delivers their work on time, who helps other team members and who’s ready to take an “extra mile”! These criteria should be defined and shared with all team members, so everyone has the same idea of what’s expected of them. If you see someone who isn’t working according to the criteria, you should immediately talk with this colleague in order to understand why they aren’t fulfilling their duties. Define for yourself how many times this can happen and what will you do each time this person fails to comply with the rules.

Tip #8: Be transparent and notify your team members of every change. Criteria for measuring the quality of members’ performance is very important, but if you make a consultation round within your team members about these criteria they will not only feel appreciated, but also part of the team. You should organize team buildings where people can meet and where you can explore these topics and listen to your members' opinion.

9. Prepare the legacy

Maybe you won’t stay in the position of a Communication Manager forever and it’s crucial to prepare someone to continue your work. The work of a manager is to prepare their team to work independently, to be proactive, to make good decisions to achieve successful results:

• Who’s the person you could see in your shoes? Work closely with this person but don’t forget about the others. Everyone has the potential to achieve greater things!
• You don’t see anyone ready to step up for the leadership challenge? Maybe nobody is fully prepared, but you should start talking to some people you think can make a great Communication leader.

Tip #9: Sometimes, allow the coordinators to lead their teams independently. Distance yourself a bit and let them take control over what’s happening. Help your members develop leadership skills from the very beginning. Suggest to your coordinators to informally assign a leader of each project.

Good work and never forget that “the function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers.”!

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What do you think? Do you have more tips or tricks? Let us know by commenting this article!

Alexandra Bigotte de Almeida is a Brand Therapist who helps organizations and individuals to start up their new brands or to start over their old ones.

This article is was originally published on the Erasmus Student Network's Medium Page in two parts (Part I & Part II).