Do you ever feel like your title should just be “Master Problem Solver?” Every business has problems and if you want to grow, you need to know when to step back and let your team solve problems. That’s how you grow.
If you don’t step back and let your team help you, you’ll end up doing everything yourself and stunting your company’s growth– not to mention your employee’s growth. And by stunting your employees’ growth, you’ll likely be the reason your star employees leave after realizing they’re not challenged enough and not given enough autonomy.
Part of letting go and letting your team help you achieve success is making sure you have a solid team that can collaborate effectively to solve problems. Team collaboration is often an overlooked lever to success.
So if you want to succeed and lead your team to help you get there, check out this 5 step guide to better team collaboration.
Transcribed infographic:
5 Tips For Effective Collaboration in the Workplace
Encouraging a collaborative workplace helps your business leverage the resources you have. Those resources are your employees.
When you and your team collaborate effectively, you are able to be productive and stay motivated while working on team projects.
1. Define & Discuss Goals
When everyone is aware of the main goal for the company, they are motivated to work together because they are all working towards something bigger and know where they are going.
2. Identify Strengths
We have different personalities, strengths, weaknesses, perspectives and ideas. These differences can be leveraged to achieve success. When you identify what people are good at, you can set them up for success by pairing them with appropriate tasks and roles that suit their strengths.
3. Define Roles & Responsibilities
After figuring out what each person is good at, you can assign tasks and responsibilities more easily. This helps empower each team member by creating a sense of importance.
4. Encourage a Creative Environment
The best part of collaborating is the ability to brainstorm as a group.
Hearing various perspectives from different personality types in your group can help spark and refine solutions that work well for everyone
5. Celebrate Success
When people receive positive reinforcement for what they do well, they feel accomplished and want to continue to do well. Use this upward spiral of positive reinforcement to keep the good work coming.
When collaborating, people should feel supported by their team members and encouraged to keep moving forward. Let your team know when they have a great idea and encourage everyone to participate.
After celebrating that a goal was reached, you can repeat the cycle by defining the next set of goals.
You can use past collaborative projects to identify what people did well and make modifications based on newly identifies strengths and challenges.
Throughout this collaborative process, maintain an emphasis on communication.
Keep the lines of communication open so that everyone feels comfortable with contributing ideas and helping to solve problems that happen along the way. It’s good to have a leader of a team, but everyone should feel like they have a voice that matters.
About the author:
Kristie Holden is an online marketing consultant. She helps startups get more leads by clarifying their message and creating a marketing strategy to attract and convert their ideal client. Connect with her on Instagram.
