Communication plays extremely important role in leadership and team management. It is an important tool of every leader and helps leaders to build good relations with team members, engage people and achieve organizational goals.

One of the important instruments of effective communication is feedback that plays special role in employee motivation and performance improvement.

• Communication is the activity of conveying information through the exchange of thoughts, messages, or information, as by speech, visuals, signals, writing, or behavior. It is the meaningful exchange of information between two or more individuals.

• The process of communication

• Thought: First, information exists in the mind of the sender. This can be a concept, idea, information, or feelings.

• Encoding: Next, a message is sent to a receiver in words or other symbols.

• Decoding: Lastly, the receiver translates the words or symbols into a concept or information that a person can understand.

• Communication plays extremely important role in leadership and team management.

• There are various forms of communications. Most often there are mentioned two categories of communication: verbal (when we use words) and non-verbal (that is often identified with body language). However, we can also separate the written communication, that is important in formal relations within small organizations.

• An effective team leader or firm owner, need to be fluent in all three forms of communication to efficiently convey the necessary information.

• Verbal communication consists of delivering information by the use of spoken words.

• Non-verbal communication includes the use of body language and facial expressions.

• Written communication is simply the conveyance of information or instruction by utilizing the written word.

• Nonverbal communication is the process of communication through sending and receiving wordless cues between people. Nonverbal communication encompasses much more that only body language, such as use of voice (paralanguage), touch, distance, and physical environments/appearance. Remember that Communication starts before we open our mouth. Body language is a powerful tool to success!

• Feedback is about giving information in a way that encourages the recipient to accept it, reflect on it, learn from it, and hopefully make changes for the better. Being able to give feedback is a skill that is useful in our personal and professional live. Giving positive or negative feedback is key in the team management process..

• Characteristic of effective feedback

• Clear - try to be clear about what the feedback is that you want to give.

• Owned - The feedback you give is your own perception and not an ultimate truth , e.g.“I found that …” rather than “It’s obvious that…”

• Regular - If the feedback is given regularly it is more likely to be useful. Try to give the feedback as close to the event as possible and early enough for the person to do something about it

• Balanced - It is good to balance negative and positive feedback . Negative feedback must always be accompanied by something positive but rather a balance should be created over time.

• Specific - Generalised feedback is hard to learn from. Phrases like, “You talk too much” can only lead to hurt and anger. “You talk too much to the client while you are administering an assessment” gives the receiver some information which he or she can choose to use or ignore.

• Feedback should meet some rules to be a vehicle to higher personal and professional effectiveness.

• Effective feedback is focused on behaviour, not on perceived attitudes; is focused on behaviour which can be changed; is based on observation, is objective, is given in good time, is about what the individual did well and what they could do better and finally is given in private.