Maintaining quality cross-functional teamwork is one of the biggest headaches on ICC’s client list of challenges. Collaboration is the answer, but what does it look like, and how can we optimise it??
Gone are the days of the hierarchy. In its place sit flat, collaborative functions, reliant on each other to commit to action with a combined sense of purpose and level of trust. These collaborative teams are often larger in size, virtual or remote, with specific but unshared skills and knowledge base. These team characteristics have an alarming tendency to decrease collaboration!?
What are the characteristics that we’d expect to see in highly collaborative teams??
- High investment in relationship building practices. Collaborative businesses move people around regularly, building social networks as they go.??
- Executive role-modelling. Executives not only champion collaboration but they make it visible, holding face-to face and virtual meetings as often as possible, and by keeping communication frequent and open.?
- Fostering a coaching culture. Mentoring and coaching is standard practice, not just among executives, but throughout the organisation. And the real value doesn’t just come from formal processes, but from informal everyday mentoring and coaching, across networks.?
- Support from HR. Skills training around collaborative behaviour, and support for informal community building provide the highest collaboration gains for HR. Moreso than integrating collaboration criteria within selection and performance management processes.?
- Skills review. Uncertainty creates avoidance - the culture might encourage collaboration, the teams might want to collaborate, but they might not know how to do it well. Skills training focusing on purposeful conversations, productive and creative conflict resolution, networking, and emotional intelligence are vital.?
- Developing a sense of community. Supporting informal communities is standard practice for a collaborative organisation. As projects are completed and working groups disband, employees continue to maintain networks of connections.?
- Leaders who flex between task and relationships. The most productive and innovative teams are typically led by those who pay attention to setting clear goals, agreeing responsibilities, and focusing on commitments, while also initiating and fostering an environment of trust, openness, and goodwill.?
- Clearly defined roles. We often assume that a well-defined approach to achieving a goal is likely to give us the best uptick in collaborative activity: if everyone knows exactly what is required, then the team will work out who is best to take on differing tasks, promoting ownership. However, this actually leads to un-necessary negotiations and, occasionally, the odd turf war. Leave the approach up for discussion, to foster creativity, and spend energy in clearly defining roles and responsibilities, creating independence and ownership within the collaborative space.?
Collaboration challenges are not a new thing, what is new though is how teams are structured, along with the ways in which they communicate. Has your approach to collaboration evolved with the modern team dynamic? Could we support you to optimise performance??
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