Working well together as a team is necessary to the success of any enterprise. But building an effective, well-oiled team is no easy task. Here’s our guide to how to build a powerful collaborative team.

Why Is Collaborative Teamwork Important?

Be it in sports or business, teamwork is always the road that leads to success. It’s the best weapon you have in your arsenal against competitors, and it’s vital that you and everyone on your team understand this because talent, according to Michael Jordan, wins games, but teamwork wins championships.

Collaboration helps you to create a team-oriented workforce that promotes a great environment to work and ensures your employees’ job satisfaction. However, it is a challenging task to implement a collaborative environment as it calls for a paradigm shift, changing the focus to the success of the team as a whole and not individual accomplishment. That being said, collaboration is a teachable skill. All your team needs to do is actively harness their strengths and work together to reach common organizational goals. So how do you do that?

Create And Clearly Define A Compelling Cause

To create a cohesion, team members must be provided with a convincing reason to be a part of the company’s mission. The more compelling and exciting the mission, the easier it is to inspire team members to want to be a part of what the company aspires to accomplish. When they are given a clear and gripping cause to be involved with, team members naturally become as passionate about the goals and objectives of their leaders. If team members do not care or are unclear about the goals and objectives presented to them, they will find all kinds of reasons not to work together. For collaboration to work, the vision and purpose must be clear.

Establish Standards

It is essential to establish team norms to define how each member interact with each other and conduct themselves. Establishing ground rules helps team members express things that are important to them and learn from each other without disturbing the work culture. In addition, it plays a significant role in the success of a project. Having ground rules in place even before starting a project will provide a context for discussing any issues arising in the future. This will help you avoid frustrating interactions and grievances, arising due to miscommunication or misunderstanding. Clear ground rules also diffuse some of the stress so that your team members can better focus on the end results.

Set SMART Goals

To drive success in team members, it’s important to set measurable goals for each on a quarterly basis. The purpose of these goals is to provide team members with achievable wins. These wins have a magical way of breaking down barriers and creating positive momentum individually and collectively.

Further, it’s imperative to re-evaluate goals and redirect whenever necessary. At each quarter’s end, the outcomes of quarterly goals must be made available to the whole team as a way to measure and celebrate progress, and to determine where improvements need to be made. Working with this type of transparency decreases confusion, finger-pointing and the disintegration of team cohesion.

All of your team’s goals should follow the “SMART” framework which means they must all be Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Timely. Simply saying “Improve the company” or “Increase revenue” is not an acceptable goal.

Now that you know how to build a powerful collaborative team, don’t hesitate to contact us today for a free consultation on how to put them into effect. With an average growth rate of 165%, our clients are redefining what success looks like. Isn’t it time you did too?