Top 10 Ways To Build A More Collaborative Team
“No matter how brilliant your mind or strategy, if you’re playing a solo game, you’ll always lose out to a team.”
On average, employees who work in team collaboration are reported to be 17% more satisfied with their jobs in the U.S. Research demonstrates that collaborative problem-solving produces superior results. With team collaboration, professionals are more likely to take calculated risks that result in innovation. Working as a team also promotes the development of the individual, boosts job satisfaction, and lessens stress.
Team Collaboration in Today’s Digital World
One of the strongest pillars of coping against COVID-19 was team collaboration. Professionals from all across industries started using team collaborative tools to maintain efficiency and effective communication. Working on your own has benefits. Without considering how much time we’ll lose if we get sidetracked or how to gather a team in time to meet a tight deadline, we can fully concentrate on a single project. By all means, go for independence if the task at hand requires it.
Collaboration, however, is simply more effective for many different kinds of projects. We must acknowledge that assistance will be necessary when the project is challenging and complex. It will need to be a team effort. And this is where cooperation is useful. It enables us to spread a demanding workload, develop original solutions for challenging issues, and visualize the big picture.
There’s no doubt when talking about team collaboration. One knows it helps individuals learn from one another. Making the most of your collaboration with team members or even members of different teams should be viewed as a learning opportunity.
This entails soliciting input and advice, exchanging information, learning how your collaborators approach their portion of the project and understanding how they operate better. Team collaboration has the added benefit of encouraging learning from one another, which is the first step in creating a learning- and development-focused workplace environment.
Top 10 Ways to Build A More Collaborative Team
1. Share a Clear Vision
Every good team has a larger goal when doing their work. Give your team a reason to be great that is bigger than themselves. Invite your team to contribute their concepts to your larger framework. This allows each team member to buy into the goal and can motivate them to succeed.
2. State Your Expectations from the Beginning
Employees must be informed that team collaboration is the minimum requirement. Team members must be given clear instructions regarding their individual and group roles and responsibilities to encourage this. Each team member will work more efficiently and without accidentally stepping on another person’s toes and causing unforeseen conflicts if they clearly understand their position.
Each team member learns what it means to contribute to the shared responsibility of results in a collaborative setting. With this kind of focus, what begins as a goal quickly becomes a crusade. The experience of success shifts from an individual triumph to a shared group experience that fosters camaraderie and morale.
3. Have a Common Goal for the Team
Your team should not only be informed about company goals once a month. You should ideally be talking about your team’s objectives every day. To break down structural silos and maintain productivity, a team must be aware of its individual and collective goals. Morning meetings that start at the same time every day can help to promote the idea that the entire team is working collaboratively on a specific goal. You can step back and let your team establish their own daily objectives.
4. Leverage Individual Strengths
Working with one’s strengths rather than one’s weaknesses is a great way to empower each team member. Each team member should take a personality assessment, and the results should be discussed at a team meeting.
This is a fantastic team-building activity because the outcomes help each person learn more about themselves and their teammates. Additionally, it informs team members about who to contact and for what, according to each person’s unique strengths. Each team member is given tasks that play to their individual strengths when teams are connected in this way, which sets everyone up for success.
5. Promote a Community Working Environment
A strong sense of community is essential in collaborative work environments. People are more likely to apply themselves when they believe their opinion is valued. Professionals may feel redundant when they know their opinion isn’t appreciated, and teamwork suffers as a result. However, getting the right conditions can be difficult. You don’t want to force your team with meetings and insist on collaboration for the sake of collaboration. After all, not all tasks require collaboration.
6. Encourage Honest and Open Communication
Working with fresh faces from various divisions of your company also opens doors that would otherwise be closed. Every business needs to find new ways to communicate and share information, so team collaboration should be used whenever possible to establish connections between departments. Communication that is honest and open is essential for successful teamwork. The team will be more effective if more members feel they can contribute and more ideas can be shared.
However, this process step might not be natural for the more introverted team members. Team members are more likely to speak freely and offer their ideas freely if you foster a psychologically safe workplace where they don’t fear being judged. Team collaboration will increase in an environment where communication is safer.
7. Promote Innovation
Teams must be encouraged to brainstorm and challenge the status quo in a free-flowing, judgment-free environment if they are to develop. Team members need to be coached and made to feel as though they can and will overcome the difficulties they encounter. Team members are inspired to meet those expectations when a “can-do” attitude is promoted.
Additionally, it’s critical to solicit the opinions and ideas of team members regularly. They will be more motivated to perform well, make an impression, be imaginative, and go above and beyond expectations if they feel connected to and understand by their manager or leader.
8. Honor Requests and Keep your Promises
By sharing their ideas and risking their reputations for their abilities in team collaboration and communication, you as the team leader, are asking your team members to take a significant risk. They need to believe in your ability to follow through on your commitments for them to be willing to take that risk. They must have faith in you not to lose your temper or humiliate them if their suggestions are useless. Therefore, make sure your team members have your support and keep any commitments you make.
Most requests and promises are sacred within a team but are optional between other company units or customers. Taking a customer’s request seriously and demonstrating that the team is working hard to do what they say they will do goes a long way toward establishing trust and blurring boundaries. When team members and customers believe they can rely on you and your team to deliver on their expectations, business grows, relationships grow, and revenue increases.
9. Encourage People to Socialize After Work
We all have demanding personal schedules, so the idea of another work event we must go to can be stressful. However, interacting with coworkers outside of the workplace is a great way to improve understanding, open lines of communication, and tear down any prejudicial or distrustful barriers between team members.
Individual bias, stereotyping, and false objectification are reduced due to team members’ increased perception of their teammates as real people who struggle with the same issues outside work. It becomes harder to blame our team members when we recognize them as people.
10. Celebrate your Team’s Success
Your team’s performance metrics will send a strong message about your business type. You promote the values guiding your business when you recognize and reward successful team collaboration. Consider both teamwork and individual accomplishments when developing your employee appraisal metrics. Make it clear to your staff that their collective efforts will be recognized and successful teamwork will be rewarded.
Conclusion
In conclusion, building teamwork collaboration requires a combination of effective communication, clear roles and responsibilities, and a positive and inclusive team culture. You can foster a more collaborative and productive team culture by promoting open communication, encouraging teamwork, and providing opportunities for team members to work together. Additionally, setting clear goals, offering regular team-building activities, and promoting transparency and open decision-making are also key ways to build a more collaborative team.
Also Read: Enabling Your Teams To Thrive And Succeed