How To Collaborate Effectively With Your Team

It is essential that you build your team-building skills so that you can collaborate successfully with employees from every division. When we work together more efficiently, we break down barriers, create bonds, and learn how to celebrate each individual in our teams. Collaborative skills grow over time for individuals and teams when working together.

As your teams grow closer together and know one another better, collaborating will feel easier and more natural. Your team will be more engaged and more productive when they take the time to nurture their relationships. The more comfortable your project team members are working with and communicating with each other, the more likely they are to engage--and engagement drives innovation.

All this can be avoided if the members of a project team do their part to collaborate and engage. Collaboration happens when team members feel they can bring their whole selves to the job.

To collaborate as a team, and avoid miscommunications among teammates, you are better off using tools built for group communications instead of sending emails as individuals. In-person collaboration or communication is infeasible in a remote working environment; thus, communicating actively with your team members is essential. Good collaboration among teams and participation in planning and estimation may help to mitigate risks, especially those related to communication.

Honest conversations about problems and blocks of work, and sharing of even minor wins, are critical for improving cooperation on remote teams. Open, honest communication is not always the easiest--or most comfortable--thing to do, but being a collaborative team means building better solutions collaboratively, listening to the contributions of others on your team, and working together toward a common goal. Let go of your need to be right, because even when you are right, you may still be wrong; collaboration is not possible if interactions destroy mutual respect and trust in your relationships with colleagues, which is why keeping an open mind and being willing to listen could be the difference between a productive and flawed team. Having a management team who does not embody the behaviors and values that you are advocating for is one of the worst things that can happen to your efforts to foster better collaboration.

Such challenges also indicate to you that your team needs a strong leader to motivate your members, communicate the values of group collaboration, and rally the group around shared goals. Not only does working toward a common goal inspire a stronger sense of purpose among the members, but collaboration also allows the members to close the gaps in one another's skills and share work so it plays to each person's strengths. An effective, collaborative team culture has positive impacts on not just project success, but organizational success as well. A collaborative culture requires not only clear organization and an understanding of business processes, it depends the tools that are used to enhance the team bond.

Supporting one another is the key here to create a stable, productive, collaborative team. Teams who get to know one another in and out know one another better - and therefore, can more easily connect when engaged on their next projects and work together more efficiently.