Internal Collaboration: Who’s Around Your Table?

One of the greatest assets any company has is its employees. Without my amazing team, I would never have seen the success that I have thus far. I’ve worked hard to make sure that Solany’s work environment is fun and challenging, but the most important thing I think any good CEO or manager can do is create a collaborative work environment. When employees work as a team, the results are better by miles and your staff is more content. Here are a couple key ingredients to building a great collaborative team.

Trust

If you can’t trust your coworkers, then there will never be a team. I believe trust is probably the most important building block for creating a team. I trust everyone on my team until they give me a reason not to and I am open and up front with them.

Clear Roles

Of course, when you’re working as a team, sometimes the roles of each person can get blurred. I think most people who have ever been in management are guilty of letting roles get a little too lax and when that happens, sometimes boundaries get crossed and people in the group get upset. I try and remind my employees what their individual responsibilities are from time to time so they can bring that particular skill to the group and own it.

Common Goals

If the group isn’t working towards some common goal(s), the group will inevitably fracture. Make sure that you have one or two large goals for the entire team to reach in addition to their day-to-day tasks that they handle individually. These common goals are important from our clients’ perspectives as well, as they know that our team as a whole are working to ensure their success.

Open Communication

This ties into trust big time. Foster an environment where people feel comfortable to communicate with one another and you’ll see your team work together like clockwork. When people feel comfortable sharing ideas without being shot down or criticized, you start getting creative solutions and employees eagerly waiting for the next opportunity to contribute.

Balance

There’s always that one employee that takes on too many tasks and then gets overwhelmed. I try to make sure that everyone on my staff has a relatively even workload so that resentment doesn’t build up within the group. This can be the trickiest part of forming a good team, since I trust my staff to tell me when they have too much on their plate. If they aren’t open with me, then they may be doing too much or too little.

As with any team, each one is different and you’ll find that you may need to focus on some aspect more than others, but these pieces are a great foundation to building a strong team and a collaborative environment.

Posted by: John Cushman on September 29th, 2011 // View Comments
Posted in: News
Tags: Business, Business Productivity, Business Tips
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