What are the best ways to overcome hidden barriers to cross-team collaboration?

1 Identify the hidden barriers

The first step to overcoming the hidden barriers to cross-team collaboration is to identify them and how they affect your teams. Common hidden barriers include a lack of clarity, trust, diversity, and communication. When teams don't have a clear understanding of their roles, responsibilities, expectations, and goals, confusion, frustration, and conflict can arise. Without trust in each other's expertise, intentions, or feedback, information may not be shared or help requested. A lack of diversity in perspectives, skills, and backgrounds can lead to missed opportunities. And when teams don't communicate effectively, frequently, and respectfully, important information can be missed or misunderstood.

2 Address the hidden barriers

The second step to overcome the hidden barriers to cross-team collaboration is to address them with appropriate actions and interventions. To do this, it's important to clarify the vision and communicate the purpose, objectives, and outcomes of the collaboration. Additionally, it's important to build trust between teams by creating opportunities for them to get to know each other and appreciate each other's strengths. Moreover, embracing diversity and valuing different perspectives, skills, and backgrounds can be beneficial. Lastly, improving communication by establishing regular and transparent communication channels is key for teams to share information, feedback, and ideas.

3 Evaluate the results

The third step to overcome the hidden barriers to cross-team collaboration is to evaluate the results and measure the impact of your actions and interventions. To do this, collect feedback from teams involved in the collaboration, track progress on key performance indicators, and celebrate successes. Through these methods, you can gain insight into satisfaction levels, challenges, and suggestions for improvement. Additionally, recognizing and rewarding teams for their achievements, learnings, and efforts can motivate them to continue collaborating effectively.

4 Learn and improve

The fourth step to overcome the hidden barriers to cross-team collaboration is to learn from the results and improve your practices and processes. To do this, you should analyze feedback to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the collaboration, as well as the factors that influenced them. Then, you can implement changes to address any gaps, issues, or opportunities for improvement. Furthermore, it’s important to share best practices, lessons learned, and success stories with other teams and stakeholders.

5 Foster a collaborative culture

The fifth step to overcome the hidden barriers to cross-team collaboration is to foster a collaborative culture that supports and sustains it. You can model collaboration by demonstrating and promoting behaviors and values like openness, respect, curiosity, and accountability. Additionally, you should create and support conditions and incentives that encourage cross-team collaboration, such as autonomy, flexibility, recognition, and rewards. Furthermore, it is important to provide and facilitate resources and tools that nurture cross-team collaboration, such as training, coaching, mentoring, and technology.

6 Keep the momentum

The sixth and final step to overcome the hidden barriers to cross-team collaboration is to keep the momentum and maintain the cross-team collaboration. To do this, review and refine the collaboration periodically to meet the changing needs of the teams and organization. Reconnect and recommit the teams to the vision, goals, and outcomes of the collaboration, and remind them of its benefits. Additionally, reinforce and renew trust, communication, diversity, and clarity of the collaboration. Celebrate achievements and learnings along the way to further motivate teams.

7 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?