Building Team Collaboration

There is a saying, ‘No man is an island unto himself’ and this has never been truer than in our modern world. In the workplace, collaboration represents the blending of many skills to produce collective achievement. Even in teams where members are competitive by nature, there are simple things you can do to inspire genuine collaboration.

If the team wins everyone wins – bit if the team loses, nobody wins.   

It doesn’t matter if one person is the best player in the game, if his/her team loses then he/she has also lost. Individual incentive should always be tied to team achievement, not just individual achievement.

Focus on team goals.

Keeping the team’s goals uppermost in everyone’s mind and explaining how each person’s individual tasks and goals contribute to the team’s mission, encourages team members to be more collaborative as individuals, in order to be more competitive as a team, and therefore more successful as individuals.

Focus team members on doing their best (not on “besting” other teammates).  

Make sure members know that they’ve been put on the team not to showcase what they can do personally, but rather to assist in making the team successful. Identify each person’s strengths from the perspective of how those strengths will blend with others to help the team achieve its desired outcomes.

Reward the team by distributing rewards cooperatively rather than competitivey.   

Celebrate as a group when the team defeats its “opponent” (such as solving a key problem) and only then recognize individual contributions toward that victory.

Don’t confine collaboration. 

Apply the team concept beyond the team itself – encourage team members to find ways of collaborating with other departments and outside entities to uncover fresh insights and new ways of doing things and opening up new opportunities.