A successful product development team must have effective communication skills. 

Collaboration, meeting project deadlines, and satisfying stakeholders rely heavily on the ability to actively listen and communicate clearly. Collaboration and Communication training can provide the necessary verbal behaviours and interactive skills an to ensure teams can work together more efficiently. 

We will discuss the advantages of communication skills training for product development teams and how it can help you achieve superior results.

3 main benefits of Communication and Collaboration Training

Focusing on the practical ways your team can build their core interactive capabilities will improve their performance in these three major areas of verbal communication:  

• Influence and persuasion. Every challenge presents your team with an opportunity. Communicate with your audience in a motivational and persuasive manner, whether you’re discussing project outcomes with a client, or discussing end deliverables with departments. 
   
• Leading projects and people. Every project needs good leaders and being a pleasure to work with is a much underrated skill! Understanding and appreciating the strengths and weaknesses of your team members is crucial. Soft skills are required to listen, craft, and communicate positive feedback. This benefits team morale and supports inclusion levels. 
  
  
• Collaboration and meetings. Nobody enjoys wasting hours in fruitless meetings. Communication and Collaboration training can eliminate hours of unnecessary downtime and guarantee that every meeting concludes with well-defined, actionable steps.
  
  

Productive meetings, useful and persuasive feedback, and collaborative work are all outcomes of quality communication. The question is how can communication be improved?

Ready to start training with a tried and tested methodology?

Start your learning journey today by building your training plan with Huthwaite International. 

By working with the right partner for your business, Communication and Collaboration training can help you and your team to:

1. Deal with difficult situations 

Emotional conversations are never easy, especially in the workplace. Interact found that 69% of managers feel uncomfortable communicating with employees face-to-face. 

This awkwardness can make having difficult conversations, such as giving negative feedback, even more challenging. Without the proper skills to communicate effectively, they can cause friction between colleagues and perhaps most significantly between leaders and their team members.

One of the core benefits of effective communication skills training is the ability to build confident teams and support their abilities to de-escalate difficult or emotional conversations. This will ensure that your team is being treated respectfully and with care.

2. Navigate different opinions

It’s not just leadership teams that are having difficult conversations. Bravely found that 70% of employees avoid having difficult conversations with their boss or colleagues. As a result, this is creating unnecessary fears and uncertainty within the workplace.

To help you overcome this, Communication and Collaboration training can equip your team to navigate their differences and make having difficult conversations easier, by understanding how to ensure people feel their opinion has been listened to and valued at the end of your discussion - whatever the outcome.

Ready to start your training journey today?

Huthwaite International’s Communication and Collaboration training ensures teams of all shapes and sizes can have more effective discussions. Start your unique journey to behaviour change today

3. Create an inclusive company culture

Everyone wants to feel heard and valued. However, without appropriate communication behaviours, friction can be introduced at every phase of the product development process.

Examples of this could include:

• Initial conversations with the client. A disjointed experience can arise if there is a lack of understanding about what the sales/marketing/technical team has promised and what the client anticipates.
  
  
• Discussions within the team. The way teams interact and communicate goes to the heart of how people get things done, innovate and work towards a common goal. Breakdowns in communication can lead to tense, unproductive working environments and at worse, product delays. 
  
  
• Feedback from the client. Receiving snags is a necessary stage of the product roadmap that ensures the buyer is happy with the final product. Clear and concise communication will ensure your team understands who is actioning what snag, and when and how deadlines are to be met.
  
  

Instilling confident communication throughout the product development process will ensure everyone feels heard and will minimise any frustration later down the line.

4. Have clear and creative meetings 

Did you know that 61% of people would rather visit the dentist than sit through a meeting?

There’s nothing worse than having to sit through a meeting when an email would suffice.

Effective communication skills give you and your team the tools and cues to have clear, creative discussions. This means less waffling, and more wants and needs being expressed and actions taken. 

If the communication is effective enough, everything discussed should be fully understood and easily acted upon by the team.

Ready to reap the rewards of effective communication training?

Start your journey today with Huthwaite International.

The Importance Of Effective Communication On Team Performance And Product Development 

Effective communication skills are essential for success in product management, as it requires navigating and coordinating multiple teams with different priorities and communication styles. 

Product managers act as a translator, bridging the gap between design, marketing, and sales teams. They must be adept at understanding the personality, communication preferences, and motivations of each team member to communicate effectively and keep everyone aligned towards the same high-level goals. 

Without strong communication skills or communication training for employees, product development teams may struggle to collaborate effectively, leading to delays in product roadmaps, misunderstandings, and ultimately impacting team performance and the success of the product.

Implementing Communication Skills Training for Your Product Development Team

By providing communication skills training for your team, you can unlock a range of benefits that will improve team collaboration, productivity, and overall success. 

Communication training can assist team members in building trust, actively listening, effectively giving and receiving feedback, as well as negotiating and resolving conflicts constructively.

These skills not only improve team performance but also enable product managers to bridge the gap between teams and stakeholders, ensuring everyone is aligned and working towards the same goals. 

Ultimately, investing in communication skills training for your product development team can lead to better products, more satisfied customers, and a stronger bottom line for your business. 

So why not take the first step and consider implementing communication skills training for your team today?

Before you dive head first into communication training for employees, research different training providers. This will ensure you’re maximising potential ROI, and are training with a provider that aligns with your goals. 

At Huthwaite International, we’ve been delivering research-based behavioural skills training for decades.

Our international reach enables our experts to effectively train your teams with the same behavioural change skills no matter where they are in the world.

To discover what flexible training opportunities we can offer your business, start planning your training journey today.