Written by Farhaan Sultan

Have you ever wondered what makes a team successful? Skills, education, or maybe even incentive? Establishing a combination of solid leadership, collaboration, and effective communication to have efficient team productivity is extremely important. Even if you’re a massive company with tons of capital resources, if your team does not have these three things, your team’s success may be more of a matter of luck than design.

We’ve previously discussed leadership and effective communication skills at length. Today, we’ll dive deeper into collaboration. Without effective team collaboration, work is overly complicated, and team effectiveness suffers.

Why Should Collaboration be Encouraged?

Before we look at how to encourage collaboration, it’s helpful to look at the benefits of collaboration.

Collaboration is an excellent way to improve problem-solving. When people work together, you have a variety of expertise on one project, creating a talent pool. This pool is vast – it has more people with unique knowledge in multiple areas of expertise. Together, the team can use this pool of knowledge to work toward a common goal.

Collaboration promotes learning. You will always learn more when collaborating with someone else, whether it be something relating to the project or more about the employee’s personality. Collaboration establishes safety nets for failure and increases employees’ capacity to go above and beyond their comfort zones when they get more comfortable around their team members.

Collaboration increases productivity. When employees come together and work as one, the workflow becomes smoother, the tasks can be achieved quickly and effectively, healthy coworker relationships can be formed, and productivity can be improved. Effective teamwork and leadership can lead to higher sales. Team members will work better when they are happy with their environment and comfortable with their co-workers. For example, countless times when I would volunteer and help my school set up for events, it would make it easier and faster for me to complete work alongside someone else. Even simple tasks like hanging banners or setting up lights are more efficient when collaborating.

Collaboration itself leverages diverse skills and ideas. Collaboration allows you to get multiple areas of expertise and a broad range of core knowledge to apply to the work. For example, when it comes to school, it is better to complete tasks with someone else who has different skills that I do not have. Everyone has strengths, and collaboration allows us to compensate for our weaknesses.

Collaboration helps teams achieve goals that individuals cannot achieve alone. Teams can then focus on achieving common goals and see the bigger picture. When you align the team’s goals to the organization’s strategy, collaboration becomes an even more powerful tool!

A team is filled with numerous unique minds and collaborating on work can improve how a team functions. No person has the same exact ideas as another; that’s why sharing ideas is important. After all, a team is stronger than a single person. A productive team creates a space where diverse cultures, ideas, and skill sets can come together. Team members have opportunities to learn from each other and increase their professional development.

How Can We Create a Collaborative Workplace?

Promoting collaboration can only benefit a team, and there are several key tasks leaders can do.

• Promote open, transparent communication. Set the example for your team by providing this type of communication. They will quickly pick up on the examples. Ultimately, you’ll have a more trusting and engaged team with fewer boundaries and frequent discussions.
• Ensure team members are on the same page. Provide everyone on the team with a high-level view of the goals and strategy. Give your employees a sense of purpose by ensuring they understand how they contribute to this.
• Set expectations and goals. Make sure team members know what they are trying to accomplish, then step back and let the team figure out how to achieve these goals together.
• Provide opportunities for collaboration. Present tasks that a single person can’t solve. Or, assign tasks that could be solved alone but will be easier and faster if team members work together.
• Identify and leverage team members’ strengths. We all have our areas of expertise our unique strengths. By pairing team members with complementary strengths and different areas of expertise, you can leverage everyone’s unique skill set.
• Encourage team sharing and innovation. Allow employees to bounce ideas off of one another more freely.

Need Help?

Collaboration is an excellent way to improve teamwork. However, creating a collaborative workplace will take time and effort, but the payoff is well worth it. Rome itself was not built in a day. Momentum consultants are skilled at promoting collaborative environments. Let us help you!

Written by Farhaan Sultan

Farhaan is a student in Montgomery County Public School’s Summer RISE