Collaborating well with co-workers can be challenging, especially when working together with new teams for the first time remotely. However, successful collaboration can bring many benefits such as increased productivity, higher energy levels, and improved focus. When two great teams come together, they can become unstoppable.
However, with the challenges that come with smooth collaboration, what can you do to make sure it is successful? Thankfully, there are several ways that you can ensure smooth collaboration and many tools that can further improve the process. Here are some of the best tips for laying a strong groundwork to guarantee success.
Communicate Your Expectations & Mission Clearly
Before two teams collaborate, you need to sit down and clearly state what the end goals are. This way, both parties and all team members have a clear and defined common goal to work towards. This clarity can be very focusing and make everything going forward much easier. You also need to make your expectations known to all team members and ensure areas of responsibility are clear so that individuals know what is their sole responsibility, and what is a collaborative effort. Team goals, expectations, and missions should be discussed on a day-to-day basis.
Using communication tools such as Zoom or Slack for teams that are working remotely can help workers stay on track despite the distance. While Slack can keep the team well-versed and up-to-date, Zoom offers easy voice and video calls where team members can quickly get together to discuss the project.
Similarly, Google Drive is also useful for collaborating and sharing documents. Having a central cloud storage system in place for both messages and files is a great way for employees to be kept up-to-date on tasks. You may consider also adding in a project management tool such as Basecamp so you can assign tasks and make deadlines clear. This also allows everyone else to see what they have on, who is working on tasks related to their own and what the required output is.
Highlight & Utilise Team Member’s Strengths
Staff that feel appreciated are more likely to remain motivated in the workplace and as a result produce high-quality work consistently. Stop valuing your staff and it is not only individual tasks that suffer, but successful collaboration becomes near impossible.
One of the best things about team collaboration is that each employee’s skillsets will be unique, so you must utilise every member’s individual skills to create a high-performing team. The happier your staff are, the more willing they will be to work together knowing all of their voices are being heard.
Culture Amp is a great tool to help identify goals. It works by analysing top performers and seeing their similarities. This will help business leaders draw up goals to work toward and see where different skills can be best used. It aims to put culture first and makes all employees feel heard and valued, enhancing your business and keeping those lines of communication and collaboration wide open.
