4 Ways To Foster Collaboration In Your Team

In today's fast-paced and competitive business environment, fostering collaboration in your team is more important than ever. And although digital tools might help to create collaboration more effectively and even asynchronously, the basis remains a human effort in building trusting relationships and culture.

There are many steps leaders can take if collaboration is a priority. However, the foundation isn't built overnight. It requires culture, communication, goals, and opportunities. Here are my recommendations for tackling each of these aspects.

Build a positive and inclusive team culture.

Culture is at the heart of any organisation. It influences the environment that a team finds and, therefore, significantly impacts behaviours and decision-making. For example, in a toxic culture, people are more prone to avoid responsibility and pointing fingers and are generally less engaged.

So a positive and inclusive team culture is an essential component of collaboration. Leadership has to create an atmosphere where every team member feels valued and respected and where different perspectives and ideas are welcomed. In short: They have to ensure psychological safety.

Some of the potential actions a leader can take:

1. Establish clear values and expectations for behaviour within the team to create a sense of shared purpose and ensure everyone is on the same page regarding how they should treat each other and work together.
2. Encourage open communication and dialogue among team members to create a sense of trust and inclusion within the team.
3. Provide opportunities to get to know each other personally as it builds stronger relationships and a sense of camaraderie within the team.
4. Offer support and resources for team members to grow and develop to demonstrate a sense of investment in each other's success and a sense of belonging within the team.
5. Lead by example and show vulnerability to prove to the other team members that you want a safe environment to share ideas, disagree, and grow.

Encourage open communication and dialogue among team members.

While culture is at the heart of collaboration, effective communication is crucial to business success. Unfortunately, we've all experienced miscommunication ruining an initially great idea or project.

Therefore, great collaboration requires open and honest communication among team members. Encourage your team to share their ideas, thoughts, and concerns—even if it means you may face pushback.

Some of the potential actions a leader can take:

1. Create a safe and supportive environment where team members feel comfortable sharing their thoughts and ideas. It can involve setting ground rules for communication, like respecting each other's opinions and avoiding judgment or criticism.
2. Encourage active listening and responsiveness among team members, which includes asking questions, seeking clarification, and providing feedback respectfully and constructively.
3. Provide opportunities to have regular, open discussions about their work and ideas. You need to carve out dedicated time for team meetings or retrospectives.
4. Be open and transparent in your own communication with team members. Sharing information about the team's goals, progress, and challenges and being open to feedback and suggestions from team members is essential.

Establish clear goals and expectations for your team.

Having a clear understanding of what your team is working towards can help to foster collaboration. When everyone knows the end goal, the team can work together and achieve it more effectively.

Some of the potential actions a leader can take:

1. Implement a structured approach to goal-setting and expectation management. One potential framework might be Objectives & Key Results (OKR), which fosters self-leadership and agency.
2. Ensure the team's goals are SMART, so specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound to reduce the amount of uncertainty and different interpretations.
3. Communicate the goals and expectations regularly. Goals and expectations should always be clearly stated, even in writing. It's also helpful to have frequent discussions to understand the goals and expectations to align everybody in the team.
4. Monitor progress towards the goals and provide feedback and support to team members. Whether you're applying a framework like OKR or not, regular check-ins to discuss progress, challenges, and successes are vital for collaboration to improve constantly.
5. Celebrate successes and achievements along the way. We tend to spend too much time on failures and miss out on adequately recognising our achievements. Carve out some time to celebrate success, as it's an important motivator.

Create opportunities for team members to work together.

Even with culture, goals, and communication all set, there must be appropriate opportunities for team members to collaborate, even more so if you're trying to break silos between different departments and teams.

While forcing teams and people to collaborate is risky, some nudging might be advised. However, it's also important not to judge success and productivity after the first trial in collaboration as the people require time to adjust and build trust.

Some of the potential actions a leader can take:

1. Assign team members to work on projects that require collaboration (for example, with other teams). It provides a natural opportunity for team members to work together and coordinate their efforts.
2. Encourage team members to seek out opportunities for collaboration on their own. It means you have to provide resources and support to identify those areas and communicate the added value of cooperation.
3. Provide tools and resources to collaborate effectively. It could mean implementing technology solutions (such as collaboration software) that make it easier for team members to share ideas, documents, and other resources but also frameworks and templates for collaborative workshops and meetings.
4. Recognise and reward collaboration. No matter the outcome of a specific collaborative effort, you should recognise collaboration to encourage it even more.