Recently, an online seminar on the development of internal team communication was held at U-LEAD regional office in Lviv oblast. Representatives of municipalities from Lviv, Volyn, Rivne, Ternopil, Ivano-Frankivsk and Zakarpattia oblasts took part in the event. Experts of Internews-Ukraine NGO, creative director Diana Ishchenko and online marketing specialist Diana Ihnatenko, worked with them.
“For the summer period, U-LEAD launched a series of workshops generally called “Interaction for Changes” for municipalities. Each workshop is related to a specific topic, but in general they are logically connected and provide an understanding of communication for municipality representatives. Participants will gain knowledge on how to properly communicate and interact with municipality residents during the implementation of changes,” Halyna Khrushchak, Head of the Regional Office in Lviv oblast, said.
According to her, U-LEAD experts teach municipality representatives to properly build communication activities and achieve set goals. To do this, municipality specialists consider the algorithm for building communication, study methods of interaction with the target audience, and analyse various communication channels and platforms.
“If there is no quality communication within the team, it is very difficult to build any external communication messages. It is important to understand that when we talk about a team, it is not only about a communication team that works in the municipality. This concept is much broader and includes all employees of local self-government bodies, communal or budget institutions. Our task is to make sure that municipality representatives learn to communicate with a “single voice” and send common messages,” she stressed.
Diana Ishchenko told the participants in the event about the components of internal communications and explained their role in the management system.
“There were special studies showing that effective internal communications can increase team performance by 20–25%. Organisations that have this process in place increase their chances of success by 3.5 times. High-quality communication directly affects the results we will achieve with our teamwork,” the expert said.
The expert said that the internal communication system consists of many components, including meetings with management leaders, e-mails from colleagues, data exchange between departments, informal communication during lunch or personal communication with colleagues. Diana Ishchenko pointed out that the line between internal and external communications is blurring every year, therefore municipalities need to have experts who can collect all information from different departments and institutions to form a “single voice”.
Experts introduced the practices of effective teamwork and modern business ethics of online communication to the participants in the event. Municipality specialists were provided practical advice on email correspondence, which is one of the most common forms of modern business communication.
Municipality representatives also considered the concept of non-violent communication in interaction with colleagues and effective methods of providing feedback.