The Best Kept Secrets About How To Lead A Collaborative Team

Collaboration is a pretty big buzzword in the modern business world. Every company wants that cloud technologies and content sharing platforms will enable their employees to efficiently work together, no matter where they are. But unless leaders are truly committed to creating a culture of collaboration, their employees will never reap the full benefits of those tools.

The more the workplace teams are becoming remote, the more it becomes essential to get the right team together to accomplish set goals. But the problem is that most workers aren’t trained to collaborate. Team collaboration is the key to a successful business. It helps in increasing levels of trust, a more engaged workforce, and improved performance.

Simply put, team collaboration is about accountability and creating an ownership culture. Businesses look at it as the only path forward for them. Individual development and achievement can help in organizational growth. So, businesses need to shift gears and focus on collaboration at all levels to accelerate growth.

Let’s take you through 5 ways to build and lead a collaborative team.

1: Make Teamwork a Company Culture

Companies recognize individual performance when individual employees go extra miles. There is nothing wrong with this approach. In fact, employees’ morale gets boosted when their organization appreciates their efforts and rewards them. But then, it’s better off for organizations to bet on team performance over individual performance. The reason is, appreciation for team performance can make the whole team work committed toward company goals over personal goals.

2: Communicate Your Expectation for Collaboration

Let your team know what you expect from them. Unless doing so, your team’s goal will not be set and unlikely work together. So, set your expectation for collaboration as a minimum standard, from the beginning. Even better, you can make it a part of your onboarding process so that potential recruits know your prioritize teamwork.

3: Marshal a Mentoring Culture

Senior leaders are responsible for establishing a mentoring culture in a company. They should mentor and coach their team members, and encourage formal mentoring backed by clear-cut goals and responsibilities. If it’s possible, they can do it on a day-to-day basis, which will help establish and lead a collaborative team.

4: Shepherd Both Task and Relationship-oriented Leadership

Be flexible to your leadership approach. Relationship-oriented leadership is appropriate because people love to share knowledge in an environment of trust and confidence. On the other hand, task-oriented leadership is the best form to have clear objectives about the task at hand and feedback at the same time. In the early stage, a task-oriented leadership approach to your employees may be okay, but as time progresses, change over to a relationship-oriented approach, which will help your team collaboration work better.

5: Make Sharing a Norm

Celebrate small and big milestones by throwing up team lunches, by holding team excursions, etc. Positive, personal stories of high-performing team mates with others can also be shared, which will encourage team members to thank each other, resulting in boosting team collaboration.

Bonus: Build Cross-functional Work Groups

Focus on building trust and cohesion among employees of different departments, such as sales, marketing, finance and more. It will work toward a common goal. In order to do so, you can handpick different employees from different departments, such as an individual good at designing posters and others at promoting them on different social media platforms. You can bring them together to make a success of your social media or email campaigns. Cross-functional work groups help people to learn from each other and see for themselves how their service deliveries contribute to the business growth and overall success of the team.

To Conclude:

Whether you are a large company or a small startup, you have to ensure that you have a collaborative team. Your leadership can ensure it with their management skills and experience. If they lack it, they must go for team management training.

Promise Training & Consultancy, a premier corporate training and management institute, provides leadership skills management training. If you want to shine through your career and learn to lead a collaborative team, get started at Promise Training & Consultancy.