Clear goals and the right mix of engaged people will take you a long way towards effective collaboration efforts

The reality we’re constantly facing today is that we can no longer rely on ourselves alone to drive our business or careers. Speed has become the top priority for many businesses to ensure survival during this time of uncertainty. But doing things on our own cannot guarantee they’ll get done faster.

With speed in mind, effective collaboration becomes more and more important in ensuring our business can survive and will thrive. In a previous article, we discussed the importance of collaboration, especially today. Alone, we know we cannot scale up productivity and growth as quickly as we want to. But with the combined expertise of other people, we can drive productivity and growth faster.

So, how do we begin collaborating and how do we truly know whether our efforts will have a positive impact on our business?

Here is a checklist to help.

Become more aware

Understanding yourself, the people around you, and the situation is a key starting point. Without awareness, we cannot know what steps to take to ensure we will produce the results we want. It’s first important to understand your style of leading or working while keeping in mind your strengths, weaknesses, and the challenges you and your team are facing.

The outward mindset, a concept developed by the Arbinger Institute, emphasizes self-awareness as the stepping-stone to greater teamwork and collaboration. Without connecting with our inner selves, we cannot achieve the results we desire externally.

Clarify goals, objectives, timelines, and even potential challenges, and keep communications open

This stage is all about clarifying the direction and potential obstacles in the way. This helps everyone in the team and the organization to be on the same page as to what, how, and when to achieve the communicated goals.

If organizations aren’t clear on the direction, this can confuse people. In fact, according to a study by ClearCompany, only 5.9% of companies communicate their goals daily. Because of this, people aren’t going to be following the same direction, causing collaboration efforts to fail.

Ensure you have capable leaders and diverse team members

In a previous article, I emphasized that leaders don’t necessarily have leadership capabilities, while those with strong leadership capabilities don’t necessarily hold leadership positions. We need to ensure that our leaders do have strong leadership capabilities, and that team members with leadership capabilities have a diverse range of skills.

This list of capabilities and skills can be different in each team, business, and organization, but it mainly will consist of essential skills such as mindset, negotiation, people skills, and a couple of specialized skills such as research, digital marketing, and sales.

Engage the people in the organization

Findings from Gallup reveal that highly engaged teams benefit the business in many ways, with one of the results point to an increase of profitability of up to 21%. While engagement contributes to better employee retention, it also drives each person to work with passion.

Given those findings, it can also be added that highly engaged people in the organization are more willing to work together. The sense of belonging is part of being engaged with the company to drive results together.

You need the ability to manage crisis and conflict

The reality is that we will always face challenges no matter what. Problems arise during any collaboration effort and the longer they persist, the more intense they can get.

Having a strong ability to manage crisis and conflict is important if we want to ensure our organization’s collaboration efforts are effective. This can also strengthen the bonds between the people in the organization, further encouraging effective collaboration.

Integrate technology and ensure digital capabilities for both leaders and teams

In today’s environment, many organizations are still allowing their people to work remotely. Because of this, we may require more technology and digital capabilities to collaborate.

There are many tools available today, but the tough part is picking the right one that works. It should work for both your people and for your customers and potential brand collaborators.

Measure the efforts

While this may differ depending on the team and organization, measurement efforts can begin with seeing the results that come from the collaboration. This could be reflected in terms of KPI or even the overall team or workplace environment.

If your collaboration effort has succeeded, take note of the elements that worked well so that you can incorporate them into other projects. If it didn’t succeed, look at the checklist once more and see what elements need more work.

This checklist is not meant to be a formula for successful collaboration. Consider it more of a guide in understanding the elements that need to be prioritized when collaborating. Collaboration isn’t about one leader tells all — it is about working together to drive results together.

Arinya Talerngsri is Chief Capability Officer and Managing Director at SEAC – Southeast Asia’s Lifelong Learning Center. She can be reached by email at arinya_t@seasiacenter.com or https://www.linkedin.com/in/arinya-talerngsri-53b81aa. Explore and experience our lifelong learning ecosystem today at https://www.yournextu.com