In both large and small enterprises, communication is crucial for the successful completion of projects. Project managers need to convey their vision and inspire their team members to contribute to the goal. But since projects involve multiple moving parts and teams include on-site and remote members, project coordination has become a challenge now.
As projects become more complex, project managers need to have multiple skill sets that go beyond technical expertise. They also need to focus on effective communication for streamlining projects and cross-team coordination. In this guide, we explain the importance of communication in project management and share practical tips and best practices.
Communication methods in project management
Before discussing the best practices in communication, let’s analyze the three types of communication in project management.
1. Interactive communication
Interactive communication in project management is most suited for conveying important and sensitive information. The most common kinds of interactive communication are face-to-face meetings, phone calls, and video conferencing through platforms such as Heycollab.
The objective of interactive communication is to communicate information clearly. It allows you to use your facial expressions, tone, pitch, and visual aids. In such kinds of communication, you expect to receive an immediate response. This also helps the project manager interpret whether the team member or client has understood their message.
2. Push communication
Through push communication, you’re conveying information without expecting an immediate response. It’s used when you have to communicate information that’s neither urgent nor time-sensitive. The various kinds of push communication are emails, documentation, newsletters, briefs, analyses, etc.
Push communication is useful when you have to send reports or relay project updates. For team collaboration, it’s important to use these kinds of communication judiciously. Recipients might ignore it if you send important information in the form of push communication. Also, it should only be shared with those who need to know and not with everyone on the team.
3. Pull communication
Pull communication allows you to share information that the recipient can access at their leisure. There’s no need for a response unless they have a specific query or input. The main objective of pull communication is to provide transparency in a project and give stakeholders access to key documents or deliverables.
Common examples of pull communication are websites, landing pages, documents, case studies, white papers, etc. The recipient has the freedom to search for any information that might interest them. But if you want them to receive a specific kind of information, the other methods of communication are preferable.
The challenges of choosing the right communication method in project management
Managers often find it difficult to use the right kind of method for project communication. That’s because projects now have multiple stakeholders from different domains. The problem gets more challenging when there are distributed teams.
Information that should have been shared via interactive communication might be sent through push communication. Crucial information might get lost in insignificant details in pull communication. The result is that team members spend an inordinate amount of time trying to find the necessary project details and figuring out how to access resources.
Inefficient communication results in project delays. When the whole group misses a deadline, it’s easier for a manager to spot. But when a team member is late because they couldn’t get the right answers, it will be difficult to know it in real-time.
Subpar communication in project management can also affect team morale and in turn, productivity. If team members feel that their supervisors are inaccessible and distant, they will be demotivated. If they have to approach their managers for every query, they will find it difficult to concentrate on their tasks.
But the most important problem with choosing the wrong communication method is that it affects the quality of the output. With insufficient information, delayed feedback, and complicated access to resources, teams will find it difficult to create innovative solutions.
An innovative solution for project management communication
The solution is an advanced project management tool such as Heycollab that provides dedicated channels for different kinds of communication. Dashboards make it easy to assign tasks while My Tasks show all assigned tasks across workspaces.
Managers and team members can track their progress with Time Tracking and use Docs to create and collaborate on tasks. More importantly, with Chats, you can engage in real-time, one-on-one, group, public, or private communication. You can also use Video Calling which comes with screen sharing, recording, and much more.
Heycollab gives you all the tools and resources you need to efficiently communicate and collaborate. The platform’s smart messaging aligns communication with the medium it’s most suited for. In short, Heycollab’s tools make project communication focused, coherent and result-oriented.
5 best practices for efficient project management communication
These proven suggestions will help you enhance communication in project management, enabling you to improve collaboration and productivity.
1. Create a communication system and plan
To begin with, develop a project communication system with a plan customized to the needs of the project. This can’t be a series of ad hoc decisions but a well-thought-out process. The communication system will decide the software or tool you use and the modalities for that.
The communication plan will bring together all project information including objectives, responsibilities of team members, timeline for deliverables and subtasks, communication strategy, etc. This plan will inform people of what to communicate, who it needs to be communicated to, and alternative plans for emergencies.
2. Be regular with your meetings
The next step is to regularly meet with your team. This is necessary for team members to understand the status of various tasks and share their concerns and queries. In case there is any change in tactic, these meetings will allow everyone to know about it. Meetings will also help avoid miscommunication among team members.
This doesn’t mean that meetings have to be tedious and long. Keep them short and to the point. Create an agenda before every meeting and share it with the participants. Ensure that meetings stick to their schedule and record them so that people can view them later in case they need clarifications.
3. Have a central hub of communication
A centralized hub of communication is necessary for streamlining projects and improving cross-team collaboration. It helps get everyone on the same page, gives information in real time, and provides access to key resources. At the beginning of the project, managers should notify their team members of the hub and how they can access it.
A central hub makes sure that no one is left out of conversations. Ideally, what you need is a hub that comes with multiple modes of communication. Depending on the nature of the communication, managers and team members can use specific channels to reach out to each other.
4. Prepare and be precise
Why does communication become perfunctory, vague, or pointless? Because of a lack of preparation. An effective way to enhance project management communication is by getting everyone to prepare before they contact others. Whether it’s a phone call, email, videoconferencing session, or chat, make sure that you know what you want to convey, the information you’re seeking, and the questions that might come up.
This helps communication become more precise and impactful. You won’t need long meetings or meandering email threads if participants are prepared. They will get the information they seek and importantly, the process will be faster and more transparent.
5. Be inclusive
Be inclusive in your approach and involve all key participants in decision-making. Remember that some may not be comfortable voicing their opinions in public. Managers need to understand individual traits and encourage people to use channels that suit them.
If things go wrong, resist the urge to criticize before understanding what happened. When you criticize people, don’t label them. Make it about the situation and not the individual. Be authentic and vulnerable. Think less like a supervisor and more like a coach.
Heycollab: A tool built for project communication
As a communication and collaboration platform, Heycollab empowers teams to overcome challenges and streamline their project coordination efforts. You get all the tools you need to enhance communication and improve productivity on one platform. It’s also extremely easy to use and affordable.
You can use Chats to bring your team together. With multiple modes of communication, it streamlines progress. You can attach video calls to messages and create tasks from messages.
You can easily assign tasks and subtasks to members and view tasks in board, list, timeline, or calendar view. With Files and Folders, you can enable clutter-free collaboration.
With free one-on-one training and boarding, Heycollab is a customer-centric project management tool that will unleash productivity. Try it out and see how it enhances communication and collaboration and helps teams achieve success.