Creating open lines of communication

Open communication is like the fluid in your joints: when it's there, you don't even notice it. But when it breaks down, every day becomes painful. Too often, we encounter information silos at work. Not necessarily because people are hoarding knowledge on purpose – usually because we simply forget to talk to colleagues we don’t interact with every day. We even forget to keep our own teammates informed sometimes!

Of course, there’s more to open communication than providing project updates. We also need to feel safe sharing our opinions. That includes being open about our mistakes and sharing the lessons we learned. It’s up to each of us to create an environment of psychological safety and respectful dissent where we can be candid, even if we’re in the odd one out. None of this is easy, nor does it happen overnight.

The good news is that adopting a few simple practices can have a big impact on how your team communicates and works together.

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This work is a derivative of Fostering open communication by Atlassian and used under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC BY-SA 4.0).