Effective Radio Communication

Everyone has ideas on how to communicate, the important thing to consider is how your message is received and if that fits your goals.

=Communication= =Motivation= Leadership communication is not socialization, we communicate with specific goals in mind.

Why communicate
We communicate to achieve a shared goal. We need help, or want to alert our group to a changing objective. Each communication needs to support a shared goal, not a individual goal.

What to communicate
Things that impact the entire team, and not just yourself. i.e. Enemy garrison locations are good, but "I ran out of ammunition/They are shooting at me" are bad.

If you just destroyed an enemy garrison or outputs 3+ grids behind the front line - Great! But this information is not timely for the 15+ people in command radio who are actively fighting battles. If you are fighting a recon squad on the friendly artillery, but command is not calling for artillery - simply mark the infantry on the map and keep fighting. The 15+ people engaged on the front line do not need to know about enemy recon in the backlines.

When to communicate
When your message is timely, relevant, and of the highest urgency is the right time to communicate. If the team is organizing a last-ditch defensive effort - it's not a good time to talk about the next developer tank design. Before you interrupt a conversation ensure your message is critical enough to break that conversation, don't just interrupt because you want to say something.

How to communicate
First priority is to update your map, Second priority is to call out on the Radio for things that are timely, Third priority is the coordinate with your squad.

Full Context
Every message should be self contained with all necessary information required to determine if the message is relevant or useful to the recipient requiring the least amount of mental energy to understand.
 * Who is the message for?
 * Who is the message from? (People don't necessarily know your voice or see the radio on the screen)
 * What is the message about?
 * Where is this happening?

If people are asking you follow-up questions, it means you left critical information out that you can include next time.

Brevity
If you take 2 minutes to communicate to 15 people, you just ate a half hour of team-time. Figure out what you need the say, the fewest words you need to say it, say it clearly and quickly - once.

=Radio= When using Radio communication you are directly interrupting, and speaking to 15+ people, many of whom are busy in other contexts and have no idea who you are or what you are doing. Your message needs to be relevant to most of these people, easily understood with no context, and brief to minimize the interruption.

When working with good communicators you will quickly learn to listen for keywords like your Unit designator and ignore everything else. This is why its important to make your message clear and targeted.

Busy Command Radio
It can be difficult to manage local communication, squad communication, and command communication - It's ok to mute everyone in Command Radio except the commander, let you focus more easily. A good commander is calling out the important information!

Not a direct link
Remember you are not talking to a single person, but a entire team of people - Succinct, clear, brief are your guides

=Orders= A critical part of the game is organizing and assigning responsibility. This is why we love HLL, it is a massive collaboration game.

Giving Orders

 * Clarity on WHO is getting the order
 * Clarity on WHAT they should do

It's important to set expectations early about responsibility and battle plans before an emergency to not need to negotiate it in the moment.

Receiving Orders

 * Acknowledge the order - YES or NO. No is ok, its better to say No you can't do something then just be silent.
 * Put a marker on your map reflecting the order. i.e. Place Garrison mark where you will build a garrison, Defend mark where you will be responsible for defending, Move mark, etc.

Changing Circumstances

 * If the situation has changed, inform command of your new objective and update the map accordingly. Much better to say "Command, Charlie is moving to offensive" then to just wander off the point.

Commander's Responsibility
The Commander is the defacto moderator, setting the tone for the content, quality, and pace of command communications. Remember there at 15+ people listening to everything on the radio, you want to encourage good communication, cut-off irrelevant communication, and provide effective correction to improve communication going forward.

=Map= The first place all information should be updated, and communicated is via the map. You can use your mouse selection wheel to mark the map, but also right clicking on the map works too.

Map markers stay on the map for 2m30s.

=References=