Team Collaboration is one of the most key success factors of any team. It can easily lift (if done right) or floor (if done wrong) the performance and success ratio of the project in hand.
Project Teams and businesses that give attention to this critical issue feel the difference in their productivity because the entire unit works closely with each other to chase similar targets.
It is not a process that can be done in one particular way because it requires some time and trying different methods to see which one is working best to bring collaboration among your teams.
According to a study conducted by Forbes says that companies that encourage team collaboration deliver five times more than the companies where team collaboration is not given any importance.
But the million-dollar question is how to increase collaboration between teams because it is not a walk in the park.
To address all these concerns like what is team collaboration, and empower businesses to overcome team management and team collaboration issues, we have put together a list of 50 team collaboration tips to help you work as a single unit.
1 - Comprehend the Aim of Team Collaboration
Team collaboration plays a major role in the overall success of a business because it allows all the members to think together about achieving a similar goal.
The first and foremost thing is to understand the purpose and importance of team collaboration like what are the goals, why are these people involved in a team, how it affects achieving targets, and so on.
2 - Set the Goals of the Work
Setting achievable goals will not only help teams to have the right direction but also aligns all the members of a team. You can have more clarity in making decisions and can track the performance in a better way to see if you are going in the right direction.
3 - Identify Roles among Team Members
Almost every business has a group of people divided into different departments. All of them have some specific roles to handle for which they are hired.
Defining the roles to all the members is quite helpful in letting them know about their contribution and the company’s expectations. It enables them to come up with a better plan to deliver great results.
4 - Identify why it’s Not Working
Finding all the factors that are negatively affecting team collaboration is an important step. There can be several hurdles like employer chemistry, competition among them, strict working environment, and many more.
Identifying the root cause of the problem can enable you to fix the team collaboration issues.
5 - See How Others Are Doing It
Observe the businesses that work on team collaboration best practices and find out the ways how they are managing it. You can also talk with your colleagues that are a part of a successful team to understand which tactics they are using. Implementing all of these best practices can place you on the same boat.
6 - Define Responsibilities
Setting responsibilities of every individual member are more important than assigning it to a whole team because it makes everyone aware of their tasks and they will try their best to find the solution via collaboration with other members to quickly get the job done.
7 - Create Partnerships among Employees
Best team collaboration is only possible when people work together. Creating partnerships between similar teams will help them work together and eliminate the communication gap between them. You can also do it among cross teams so that they can better understand each others’ job roles and collaborate with team members efficiently.
8 - Classify Team Strengths
Identifying the strengths of the team will make sure that you have an exact idea regarding their capabilities because every individual has specific qualities and skills which make them the master in their trade. It is also very effective to build trust and assist each other to boost their creativity together.
9 - Support an innovative Atmosphere
An innovative environment is extremely helpful to bring the best out of your employees. It will help your team to find new ways of improving their performance because it allows them to think out of the box. It also maximizes the chances of getting top-quality work from your employees because they continuously keep on learning new ways to handle the workload.
10 - Good Relationships among Employees
Knowing each other and having a good understanding between them is very effective for a successful team because it helps them understand the strengths and weaknesses of each other. The turnover of employees normally goes down if they have less conflict with each other. It helps the business to keep their talented employees with them for a longer period.
11 - Show Trust in Your Employees
Trust is one of the major factors to boost the performance of your employees. Every successful entrepreneur knows the importance of trust between employers and employees. It does not only help in improving productivity by saving time on issues like finalizing key decisions, but also helps in maintaining a positive culture. This turns out to produce positive outcomes for the business.
12 - Be Transparent With Employees
Sometimes, employers are unable to get the job done perfectly, and they make some mistakes. It is quite normal when dealing with complicated tasks. Asking for help on these occasions does not only help employers to resolve the issue in a better way but also improves the communication and relationship with the employees. This promotes team collaboration in a sufficient way.
13 - Resolve Conflict Rapidly
Conflicts can be both, positive and negative. Positive conflicts should be encouraged because they have the power to explore or invent great solutions whereas; negative conflicts can create further problems if not dealt with properly in time. Handling conflicts at the early stage can save a company from losing its productivity.
14 - Organize Annual Gatherings
Employees’ gatherings provide an opportunity to interact with each other and blend with each other in a better way. This relationship-building helps them in their professional life as well, which is fruitful for the business and for the employees as well. It also brings an excellent platform for the business to discuss their business strategy and share their views.
15 - Highlight Individual Performances
Encouraging the performance of an individual employee will not only boost his confidence but also push other members to perform better as well. It is a nice way to spot out the efforts of your talented employees and let them know their contribution matters a lot to your business.
16 - Celebrate Team’s Success
The celebration of the entire team’s success has a positive impact on other departments of a large business where several teams work together to meet the targets. It is a nice way to create a competitive atmosphere in a company and maximize their performance by doing quality work.
17 - Arrange Meetings for Specific Purposes
Team meetings can work as fuel for large organizations to quickly resolve work-related issues. These gathering platforms provide a lively environment to discuss all the obstacles that are creating issues. It can never be replaced with other communication mediums like email, chat, etc.
18 - Don’t Set Meetings for Irrelevant Discussion
Meetings should only be arranged to discuss important issues that need the attention of employees instead of talking about irrelevant things that can waste the time. The duration of the meeting and the agenda in it should be properly planned beforehand so you can save more time.
19 - Don’t Utilize Email for Collaboration Purpose
Email is a good medium of formal communication, but it is not preferred for best team collaboration. It is because if you lost your email, then the essential data attached to it will also be lost. Email is also not that effective to share your ideas regarding a project with your teammates because there are certain things that need live interactions and visualizations for better understanding.
20 - Make Use of Visualization Practices
Visualization techniques help to clarify the ideas in a better way. It has the power to overcome the negative thoughts into positive such as if your team members are given a tough task to accomplish then the visualization practice keeps them motivated by focusing on how to achieve it instead of its complexity.
21 - Use Frequent Communication Methods
Frequent communication with your teammates is a good practice but it should not be meant to interrupt them. The idea here is to involve with them but with certain limitations. Proper communication should be aimed at ensuring the proper understanding of the project requirements. It is essential to find the balance between interrupting the teammates and overcoming the challenge communication gap.
22 - Listen Actively With Complete Concentration
Active listening ensures that you understand the project details clearly. By giving full attention and blocking all the distractions that are hampering your focus at work, you can easily comprehend the message and can perform better because you got the point which the management wants to convey to you.
23 - Give Rewards to Teams Achieving Targets
Talented employees are undoubtedly the most valuable asset for any organization. They play a crucial role in the productivity and profitability of a business. So, by rewarding them for their exceptional performance after hitting the targets, you can make them feel special. It encourages them to carry on working smartly in the future.
24 - Be Realistic
Being realistic is something that increases the level of trust among each other. It gives a real image of a person which is a positive thing in increasing collaboration. It makes you an easy person to talk to, who accepts mistakes and who welcomes criticism on any idea or work on rational grounds.
25 - Stay Positive and Promote Positivity
Working conditions can vary all the time because sometimes you deal with easy projects, on the other hand, some projects are extremely complex. Staying positive in difficult situations is necessary to let your employees believe that they can do it. It works quite well to encounter negative thoughts and emphasis on problems.
26 - Keep Project Details in Shared Place
Having all the data in shared devices is also a nice move for team collaboration because it promotes team productivity and helps with project management. It also helps all the members of your team to see who is doing what so that they can easily find the right person if they catch any difficulty.
27 - Use Video Call Instead of Chat
Video calls are more effective than voice calls or chat because they provide an improved communication system and let the people get familiar with each other easily. Normally, businesses that work with employees all over the world need their employers to communicate with each other using various communication mediums. Among all, video calls are the perfect solution in these conditions to keep them all on the same page.
28 - Ensure Availability after Scheduling Meetings
It is essential to be available for a meeting once you have scheduled it with your employees because if you don’t respond properly to it, then you are going to compromise team collaboration which can have negative impacts on your business.
29 - Give Open Space to Employees
Enforcing the rules and regulations does not work well every time. Sometimes, it’s better to give the freedom to your teammates to create a plan on how to deal competently with a project rather than asking them to follow the precise set of rules.
30 - Be Persistent At Work
Being persistent is easy when things are fine, but when something is not going as planned, then persistence becomes a major challenge. While working together in a team, persistent people have some realistic goals in their minds that work as a motivating factor for them to perform better than others.
31 - Make Necessary Adjustments to Stay On Top
Doing essential changes after finding which strategy is producing better results for your business is a good move. Updating your business with the latest industry tips will make sure that your business is following new strategies to confront everyday challenges at work.
32 - Share Progress with Management
Sharing the report of a project with management is very important because it helps in bridging the gap between employees and management. The management will be able to keep an eye on how things are going and can also add their expert advice if they feel that there is a better way to execute a task than how the team is doing it.
33 - Use Software to Track Progress
Using task management software to view the impact of strategies that you have devised for achieving your goals is a great option. It will provide you with detailed information on the performance of every team member, and you can easily find the weak areas that are negatively affecting your team collaboration skills and progress.
34 - Make sure that Projects are Accessible to Managers
In order to keep your managers updated with daily activities, it is noteworthy to provide them with the convenience of viewing your projects. Collaboration with them has its own importance because they have a much better view of handling projects because of their massive experience in the field.
35 - Set a Specific Limit of Authorities
The final approval of the project depends a lot on its successful completion on time. Setting a precise limit of authorities at the start of the project for approving the step-by-step working process can make things easy because you exactly know the people who have the power and you can try your level best to come up to their expectations.
36 - Use Automation Wisely
Before automating any process, you should check if it was the correct way of managing a task otherwise; things will go wrong because if you automate a process that is already unsuccessful in the future, then you can’t expect it to do the job for you.
37 - Take Your Time While Selecting the Tool for Work
Using different tools for working like email, spreadsheets, etc. can make the working environment quite messy, and it will be quite difficult for employees to view the changes in the projects. The best way to deal with this situation is to use a perfect task management tool that does not only make things easy to comprehend but also improves the collaboration among your teams.
38 - Don’t Waste Your Time on Free Tools
Tools no doubt have the power to increase collaboration and save time, but that doesn’t mean using any tool without checking its functionalities and features would be beneficial. The wrong tools, specially the free tools, can make you face various issues like incomplete data, duplicate information, etc. which impact the overall progress of the team.
39 - Keep All Work at a Single Work Management System
Make sure that you place all your important work-related documents in a remarkable work management system because it’s easy to carry on with a specific software than changing them time to time. Your employees will also get used to of it and receiving benefits from its features as well.
40 - Encourage Employees to Socialize Outside Of Work
Socializing with team members is a nice way to encounter collaboration issues and get rid of all the misconceptions about each other. It provides them an easier way to come closer to each other and discuss the work-related issues in a relaxing atmosphere.
41 - Good Communication Skills
Team leaders should have excellent communication skills to involve the team in group conversations. Providing clear instructions regarding a project mean a lot to project delivery which can become possible if team leader engages the entire team asking questions to them and let them share their views as well.
It is strongly believed by almost 86% of employees that inappropriate communication is the major reason of project failures.
42 - Ensure Employee Engagement
A study says that around 75% of employers believe that team collaboration matters a lot. Employee engagement is a must to let them stay focused on a project. It can be easily encountered by letting every employee know about their specific contribution to the project because if they do not show engagement towards the project, then team collaboration will suffer.
43 - Select Expert Leader
A leader has a significant role to play in team collaboration because that person takes the responsibility of guiding a team towards the success. The team leader should not only be selected on the basis of technical skills but also on the basis of communication skills so that they can help the collaboration process in the team.
44 - Quality of Compromise
There are several people in a team with different mindsets and their approach towards working on a project is also not similar. Developing the skill of compromise among your team members will help them all to agree on a single solution and let them think similarly to find the solution.
45 - Develop a Team Player Approach
The attitude of working as a team player counts a lot to team collaboration skills because it alters the thinking of individual achievement to the group effort. Together a team can hit the milestones easily and rapidly instead of thinking as an individual.
46 - Allow Open Dialogue on Feedback
The teams that work together for a task can understand the efforts behind it. Giving the opportunity of open dialogue to your employees for exchanging views can create an environment where constructive criticism is valued. It starts to reflect in the performance and collaboration of teams.
47 - Be Accountable To Entire Team Performance
For strong team collaboration, the performance of every single member should be measured because it requires a combined effort to deal with complex projects. The accountability of all the members ensures the participation of everyone in the project.
48 - Check-in Continuously To Stay On Track
Consistently checking the performance of your team let you discover all the obstacles that are making things worse for them. It will help you to take immediate decisions to fix all the troubles that can be out of control if neglected for a long time.
49 - Involve Team in Critical Decisions
Normally, managers are supposed to take all the big decisions because they have the ability to understand the situation more accurately. But if you involve your teammates and listen to their views while finalizing a decision, then it can give a major push to the team collaboration.
50 - Knowing Each Other
Everyone has a different way of reacting to a situation, so it’s better to spend some time to understand each other. It works perfectly to ease the interaction between various team members because you know the behavior of each other quite well.
Wrap Up
A collaborative environment is a perfect way to start a successful venture because the strong bonding among employers set the tone for a business to become the future industry leader. The team collaboration tips mentioned in this article will not only bring unity back to your teams but also let them chase success together instead of going after it individually.
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