How To Encourage Collaboration in The Workplace
By Agastya W.
Published on June 8, 2023
What Is Collaboration
Collaboration means working together to create or build something with a purpose. In a workplace, collaboration is conducted by leaders to achieve vital goals.
Generating sales, product innovation and handling customer experiences are the result of team collaboration. Predictions show that 50%-70% of future products will come from teamwork and collaboration.
However, collaboration is not always running smoothly.
Linking person to person, group to group seems to put the puzzle together. Everyone has their own opinions, ideas and thoughts. This is how the challenge of collaboration rises.
The 3 Factors Why Collaboration Is Hard
Psychological is the main factor for employees to get exhausted in their jobs. Here are 3 common factors based on our experience of why collaboration is challenging.
1) Low Level of Emotional Intelligence
In leadership research, 25% from 100% of leaders can empathize, build trust, and develop relationships with their line managers. The rest found it hard.
Some leaders unconsciously have destructive behaviors such as defensiveness, lack of awareness of blind spots, etc.
Hence, employees must face this kind of challenges with a high level of emotional intelligence.
2) Different People, Different Love Languages
At work, people are making friends. However, not everyone can get along with others. Knowing each other’s emotions, habits, and negative or positive sides will take time.
As a result, a team often lacks communication. In this situation, team members feel uncomfortable, and it affects the team target and goal.
3) Assignment Ambiguity
As a line manager, the direct duties of the leader will be clearly defined up front. However, transferring the baton to a member of a team, group or division may be missed.
The missed communication leads to ambiguity and confusion. Moreover, it causes a lack of trust and confidence.
Why Supporting Team Collaboration Is Important?
Everyone can understand that helping each other is very important after reading about three things that have a big impact on failed collaborations. In addition to achieving goals, cultivating a collaborative spirit gives people a boost of energy and productivity.
Quote from Indeed, there are 5 benefits of maintaining collaboration at work.
- Morale – Good morale from co-workers or leaders will increase your confidence and self-esteem.
- Support – Helping each other has benefits for both parties. Those who help you can teach you new things too.
- Leadership – Being a leader doesn’t always mean being a boss. You can act as a leader for colleagues who need assistance, and you’ll get a new perspective on your job.
- Health – No doubt. Healthy conditions in everywhere increase everything in your body, mind, and soul.
- Productivity – When workers are happy and healthy, productivity will automatically increase.
Work Together Online
In the Industry 4.0 era, workers collaborate digitally.
Using collaboration software provides team members to work from anywhere. Moreover, some software offers trivia features. As a result, work will be more fun with technology.
Working together online is an impactful method to support team collaboration, especially for lone workers.
Here’s how to make a collaborative environment look fun.
Building A Fun Collaborative Environment
As a team member, you can suggest these methods to create a better work environment.
- Put member’s job description with their avatar – Several collaboration software allows people to change their display picture with avatars: animals, emojis, and emoticons that represented their colleagues.
- Discuss with team members in a fun way – Slack and Discord are great examples of communication software. Workers can create multiple rooms for different purposes, but with an interactive user interface.
- Create quotes and mottos to express unity – Ask your team to choose one or two mottos to stay focused. Then, attach the mottos to memos or threads in group software to remind everyone of their goals.
- Work from a cafe – When you use collaborative tools, you become independent from the hardware in the office, which may require a short trip. Anywhere can be your office as long as your team succeeds in reaching its objective!
Start Your Collaboration Journey!
Combining technology with psychology may prevent workers from burnout. Create your own healthy collaboration team now.
