Many organisations have often stressed the importance of teamwork, but may struggle when it comes to facilitating successful collaboration. While both teamwork and collaboration entail a group working together to achieve a shared goal or vision, they differ slightly. Members of a team may work together but as individuals, with each member playing a specific role or managing an assigned task. True collaboration only happens when members not only work together, but think together and share in the responsibilities of each individual.
With the pandemic changing the face of the workplace, collaboration has now become more important than ever, especially in larger and high-growth organisations. These days, most companies believe that fostering effective collaboration is the key to improving a company’s overall performance, and indeed, this is a topic that is close to our hearts as well at GudangAda.
Recognising the need for employees to remain connected and work collaboratively while remaining physically distant, the company organised a series of educational sessions on the topic to train leaders and team members on how to better manage their workflows and teams.
Following our successful first session with followyourflow.id, we invited leaders at GudangAda to join a Leadership Masterclass titled: 10X Collaboration in a Hyper-Growth Organisation.
During the session, attendees learned about the value of leadership through collaboration. Through participating in interactive group discussions, employees at GudangAda also shared several interesting insights from their day-to-day work. Many employees expressed a keen interest to foster stronger collaboration with other members within the organisation. Despite this, they face difficulties in translating that into actual behaviours.
In order to improve collaboration across teams and within an organisation, here are several recommendations by professionals to improve your team’s collaboration in high-growth organisations. Let’s go through them!
Staying true to organisational values
To foster successful collaboration, the values of the team play an important role in ensuring all team members are aligned in their vision to contribute to a shared goal. By emphasising the values that are important to an organisation, team members can serve as advocates who live up to these values. This would ensure that the team would not only strive to achieve organisational goals, but help to build an environment of mutual respect and open communication.
Team leads take part in daily collaboration
The best leaders lead by example and inviting the team leads to commit and set collaborative habits in the team’s day-to-day collaboration could also improve the quality of effective collaboration. These are some best practices team leads can consider adopting:
Listen to each other with positive intent
Clarifying our understanding if something is unclear
Minimise and eliminate assumptions
Avoid making judgmental statements
Collaborate as a team
Clarifying how a company initiative would affect everybody
Fostering empathy with other teams
Supporting instead of blaming team members
Make compassion the norm
Putting yourself in the other person’s shoes to understand their perspective
Building an inclusive organisational culture by taking into account all views from team members, regardless of their designation
Supporting our colleagues like a family
Regularly reflect on your efforts!
Hindsight is always 20/20 and a simple monthly self-reflection could help a leader in determining whether the collaboration within an organisation has improved over time.
Amid tough times, companies need to pay attention to workplace dynamics within their organisation. With an increasingly remote and globalised workforce, the diverse and strong talents within a company can affect how they work collaboratively on a daily basis. Each person, no matter their rank or background, can contribute to fostering effective collaboration and in building a strong team culture within a high-growth organisation. Talent is the most important resource for many organisations so ensuring a close-knitted and supportive culture will put companies on a positive growth trajectory without compromising on the well-being of employees and the company’s values.
Do you have other recommendations? Leave a comment and share your thoughts with us!
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