How do you build a collaborative team?

In my experience defining your vision is a very important aspect of building a collaborative team. A clear vision is a precursor for a clear direction, which in turn is a pre-requisite for getting to a clear destination. It is very pertinent that leaders create buy in into their vision while communicating it in order to achieve consistency of implementation across board. The vision should be so engrained in the organization to the degree that every member feel they need own. When everyone across board in an organization feels and think they own the vision, then we have been able to create frontline ownership because everyone sees their importance as a part in the whole and don’t want to be the missing part.

Once the vision and mission have been created it is crucial to create tangible and quantifiable goals that each team member, across any team, can relate to and use as a day to day objective. I see a lot of organisations that create exciting and ambitious visions but forget to translate them in smaller goals that can inspire team. Example of a dating app: - Vision: enable single people across the world to find love - Tangible goal: increase adoption and engagement with the app With a clear and tangible goals, each team can structure their day to day activities and understand how to collaborate. E.g. The marketing team will structure strategies to increase app reach (adoption), the product team to increase engagement, and so on.

I give you the following scenario: Resources are rightfully allocated, the target concept is well defined, the budget is generously lock. In this case the expectation is that any team must be inherently successful, what else would be missing? In my experience, team members would naturally tend to be unfocused in its objectives and scattered in its efforts. To build a successful and collaborative team as a leader you need to: 1. Hear 2. Define 3. Structure Hear: You need to build solid relationships with team members. Start by asking them what is their purpose and target?Do 1:1. Define: You need to define the actionable targets based on what you Hear. Structure: you need to provide the team with tools, set meetings with clear objectives.

Having a multi or cross functional working group is a great way to bring perspective to organizational problems. The working group doesn't have to be THE team every time, but having those SMEs in the same room at the same time with the goal of composing an effective collaborative team will yield better, often faster, and more holistic results.