If you want your business to be successful, this article will show you several ways how collaboration works for you. In case you are already a business owner or if you are thinking about the ways your business can improve, collaboration is the number one thing you should prioritize.
When a team works together, there is a lot of space for improvement, imagination, and new ideas.
Collaboration benefits both teams and individuals since it can facilitate your workflow, make your job easier, and inspire you to do your work better.
Top 5 Reasons Why Collaboration Works In Favor Of Your Business
If you think that your business is self-sufficient and that you do not need collaboration between teams or other employees, you might need to rethink your strategy. Here are the top 5 reasons why collaboration works:
Collaboration Needs Communication
Collaboration works only if your team members communicate with each other. The importance of good communication is sometimes overlooked because many business owners or project managers somehow think that team members already know how to communicate productively.
Working on communication skills during meetings should be a must at least for new members and new teams. This will be beneficial for employees and managers. Managers can save a lot of time explaining things when there is good and well-structured communication habit between team members.
There are several ways you can inspire your team to communicate better:
- Let them express their feelings
- Do not interrupt each other when presenting important views or facts
- Try not to leave room for irrelevant talk and personal debates
- Use your skills as a manager or a leader to inspire your team and lead by example
Effective communication helps transparency and confidence. If your team members know exactly what their job is and what they need to do, it is easy to share ideas, opinions, or potential problems. All of this makes your business more productive.
Collaboration Wants Teamwork
When you work on a project, there is a common goal that all teams want to achieve. In order to fulfill the company’s goals, you need teamwork. Collaboration makes people work together. When a group of people has the same goal, they feel more inspired and motivated to finish it. This gives the team a sense of usefulness and productiveness.
Every team has people who are good at different things. When different talents, different strengths, and skills join, results can be so gratifying for everyone involved. However, these skills and talents need to be guided properly, and that is why a successful manager needs to remind of how important teamwork is.
Collaboration Encourages Creativity
When there are different people working together on one or more tasks they share ideas and different approaches to problems or outcomes, which can inspire creativity. Individuals feel inspired to try new things and to learn more about certain topics.
Some managers have realized that creativeness is inspired by freedom. You should let your employees fully express their opinions and you should provide proper feedback.
Creativity is supported by collaboration because creative ideas are shared among team members and these can be some new viewpoints that the team would not consider otherwise. Collaborative work brings improvement. This can inspire more creative solutions and your team might find themselves more motivated for work.
Collaboration Defines Company’s Culture
If you are a closed company that does not want to work with others and if your teams do not collaborate with each other, this can greatly affect your company’s culture. Collaboration works well with teams that are open to listening to other’s opinions, ideas, and suggestions.
These teams can face increased job satisfaction and motivation. They become more engaged and feel supported by other team members. This is a culture every company should strive for.
How Do You Implement Collaboration In Your Company
If you are a business owner, a project manager, HR, or a scrum/agile master, chances are, collaboration is on top of your list of important things for any team. When you work on projects and you need to manage teams, your main focus should be trying to make everyone work together towards a collective goal.
There are several ways you can motivate your team members towards more collaborative work.
Use Collaboration-Oriented Tools
There are several tools that are designed to motivate a more collaborative culture within teams. One of these tools is Easynote.
Easynote is a 5-in-1 tool that makes collaboration easy. You can easily manage any type of project or task. No matter which industry you work in, Easynote can facilitate your workflow by having the best dashboard experience on the market.
You can easily assign tasks to your team members or include them in your own projects. Meetings are also done easily through the app and your whole team can have a meeting together just one click away since Easynote integrates apps like Google Meets.
Also, you can write some meeting minutes directly on the app and you can see how well your team did following certain deadlines.
There are other apps similar to Easynote, like Trello, Asana, and many more.
Organize Team Building Activities
Even though team-building activities have become a ‘quick fix’ for collaboration problems for some companies, do not underestimate the time your team spends together outside the office.
This is a perfect opportunity for your team members to collaborate and learn about each other’s ways of communicating. Team building can help your teams build stronger connections outside office hours and this can also be their motivation.
What better way to learn to work as a team and about collaborative work than by completing a fun activity together?
Provide Resources
Some of the main resources that you need to provide to your team should be
- Time
- Money
- Tools
You need to give your team time to adjust, investigate, learn, and organize. With apps like Easynote, it is easy to stay organized and learn about your responsibilities. Additionally, you need to give them time to do their work and not disturb the process. This does not mean you shouldn’t be included in the process but you need to know when to step in and decide if it is necessary.
Your team needs to have funds to realize your project. This means that you need to distribute the budget according to the number of employees, different positions, tasks, and other important things. Distributing money is one of the most important parts of your project management work because you do not want to be short of time and/or money.
Your team cannot be inspired or creative without proper tools. You need to provide them with good software that will help them work correctly and save them time.
Collaboration Works Best When There Is Positivity
If you gather positivity and work towards a positive collaboration environment, your team will flourish. It is important to be a positive leader who lets their team members feel free to express their ideas. A positive atmosphere is the best motivator.
Being relaxed but with a firm routine is one of the best ways you can ensure that your team members work productively.
Possible Collaboration Problems
Collaboration can be a great tool to help your business by bringing teams together who share different ideas and perspectives. However, there can be different problems that might arise during a project life cycle and result in unexpected difficulties. This can make your business experience some turmoil, so it is best to learn what they are and prepare for them the best you can.
Bad communication skills
As we already mentioned, communication skills are an important part of every project’s success. When there is a bad communication flow and when teams are closed-off, this might affect your business and its progress. It can result in delays, not meeting deadlines, etc.
Your team shows no trust
Trust is very important for good collaboration. When your team shows no signs of trust in your decisions, processes, or you as a manager, these things can result in bad communication. They will uphold their ideas, and their problems so you might lack genuine connection and progress.
You don’t have the same priorities
When team members have different priorities it is difficult to maintain good communication and collaboration. For example, some employees might care more about their salaries or time off than the time they need to invest in the realization of the project. This can result in clashing opinions and difficulty in teamwork.
Try to explain the priorities early on and stick to the rules while maintaining a friendly approach.
Imbalanced participation
Workers who work more than others might feel used and frustrated. It is not fair to distribute more tasks to some people or teams who might be better skilled while others have a relaxed schedule. Distributing tasks to your team members should be fair.
If not, this can easily affect your team’s collaboration and productivity. Frustrated team members might fail to find inspiration to continue working well. That is why it is important to distribute tasks well during project planning.
Cultural differences
When you hire new people, it is important to respect their culture and to respect the diversity of your team. What is easily understood by some people is hard to understand by others. This can lead to miscommunication and some teams doing the work faster than others.
The best way to distribute people is by mixing different cultures and age groups in one team.
Your employees might have different working styles
When you work with a group of people, everyone has their own style and approach to tasks. Some people love working alone, while others enjoy working in teams.
It is sometimes difficult to balance your worker’s priorities and their style of work with the company’s rules.
As a project manager, your job is to make sure all your employees agree on the strategies and techniques that will be used while working. But this does not mean that you should not let your team’s creative side out and not appreciate their opinions.
Collaboration Works For Small Businesses As Well
If you are a small business owner, you might think that two or three-people teams do not need so much collaboration as each team member knows exactly what their job is.
This is not true simply because your teams are always better connected and more creative when you leave room for collaboration. When team members share new ideas or help each other with the workload, they feel like a part of a community and they work towards the same goal.
This is important because this can motivate small business teams to do better and build a company’s reputation.
Collaboration is also useful for project managers who start with new team members to set the tone of the company culture. It is always easier to manage teams who know exactly how they should behave when their team members need help or support.
This is also great for sudden sick leaves or vacation times because the team learns to work as a whole and not depend on an individual.
Final Thoughts
After all the listed advice, it is up to you to decide how and when you will implement a collaborative approach within your teams There are many ways to do it, but try to see how your team feels about these strategies and work with them.
We are sure that the tools you use and their features will make all your collaborative work much easier.
