Teamwork is a source of power in any organizational or business setting. It is a major recipe for quick and effective task completion, which is why most companies today put premium on team-oriented employees and approaches. However, a slight communication glitch can hamper team productivity and success overall.

There can be any number of factors that hamper the effective sharing of information with other team members. Based on the findings from a global survey, EF Education identified heavy business reliance on email as one factor that undermines effectiveness of virtual teams. While phrasing messages in an explicit manner tends to prevent miscommunication, team members who are predisposed to reading between the lines may still decipher a distorted meaning from the communication – since miscommunication stems from any misalignment of explicit and implicit meaning between communicating parties.

The cause notwithstanding, any time a team member misconstrues or misunderstands the actions or words of another, it has the potential to create confusion or conflict or both. This is why it is critical to train all team leaders to use the same set of metrics in issuing out or assigning elements of various projects as well as when setting timelines and following up on assignments as a way to resolve difficulties in team communication.