Have you noticed that key projects aren’t being delivered on time? Perhaps the results of current collaborations aren’t what you expected and you find your staff getting caught up in a blame culture of why things haven’t worked out?
Whatever your need for better collaboration, our five tried and tested leadership tips are here to help you re-launch your collaborative efforts and get the results you’ve been aiming for.
What went wrong?
One of the key elements of good collaboration is assessing what hasn’t worked so you can avoid making the same mistakes next time around.
Issues such as trust within teams, competitiveness amongst individuals and some team members being burdened with unrealistic workloads can all point to collaborative failure. Take the time to survey or gain feedback from your team in a judgement-free, private setting as this can help you glean real insights into what needs to be fixed going forward.
Team chemistry
The key to collaborative working is having a team that works. When it comes to collaborations, there is no room for lone rangers who have their own agenda and disrupt the general community feel that all collaborations should have in order to be successful.
Take the time to sift through the various personalities that are present within a team. If the current mix isn’t working, don’t be afraid to bring in fresh blood in order to create a more harmonious, productive unit.
Replicate best practice
Having a model for all team collaborations is an excellent way of standardising working methods and ensuring that you nurture the behaviours you want to see in all projects in the future.
Take a look at other companies and teams to see what works well for them and try out their models for yourself as this can help you to formulate best practice, tailored to fit with your own company culture.
Create team accountability
If your previous collaborations have failed and team members are all too ready to point the finger at others, then accountability for the overall result is a problem.
The cornerstone of good collaboration is that the entire team is accountable for the success of the project as a whole with no one individual to blame for any shortcomings. It is up to you to instil this culture of team spirit and common goals into your business as this will directly affect the success of workgroups as it trickles down into smaller collaborative groups.
Check-in on a semi-regular basis
No team wants to be micromanaged, nor do they want to feel that they’ve been completely abandoned by senior management when working to achieve an important business objective, so it’s important to strike the right balance between the two.
Setting aside time for monthly or quarterly catch up once your team is up and running well is always beneficial and gives you the opportunity to make sure things are continuing to run smoothly. If you are putting a new group together for the first time, an informal weekly get together for everyone involved is a good idea as it will give you the chance to adjust anything that isn’t quite working as well as expected or to weed out any members that might be hindering the collaborative model that you’ve worked hard to put into place.
What are your favourite collaboration tips? Share them with me on social media!
