We all know effective collaboration when we see it. 

You might have seen it while watching your favorite sports team playing their finest. Any team has a limit on the number of players they can use, but when each member gives 100%, the whole team can reach that next level. 

Then the output becomes greater than the sum of its parts.

Effective team collaboration enables this team synergy, and it is especially powerful in the workplace.

So today’s article will break down what “effective collaboration” does for a company, and then provide you with 8 principles and strategies to optimize team collaboration.

Let’s get started.

What exactly does “collaboration” mean for a workplace?

Collaboration can be defined as “two or more people working together to complete a project or task, or to develop new ideas.” It differs from two people cooperating with one another, as collaboration creates a shared sense of ownership at the end.

You could think of an example of two singers collaborating on a new record. Both artists enter the studio with their own strengths and skills, and both listen to the other’s creative ideas keenly. They get the track laid down and both feel a sense of pride and ownership.

Effective collaboration is important for developing problem-solving skills and promoting new ideas. Relying too much on routine workflows almost always becomes stale over time, and if people never collaborate then it’s almost impossible to innovate in an industry.

You need an open-minded environment, where people don’t withhold their perspectives and insights. Iterative and continuous learning are second nature to a collaborative team

Setting the stage for efficient collaboration isn’t easy, but today, we’ve got you covered.

8 Strategies to build a collaborative team

Here are 8 strategies to harness the power of collaboration in your teams. Delve into our project collaboration tips and incorporate as many of these principles as you can:

Advertise collaborative culture from the start

To kickstart our list, being more proactive rather than reactive is putting your best foot forward. During the hiring process, ensure that the collaborative culture you seek is emphasized. This means, don’t just describe the roles and responsibilities in a job posting. Emphatically display that collaboration means a lot to your company and your teams. Sing it from the rooftops.

You want to ensure that when a person sees the job posting in your company, a collaborative style of working is endorsed and encouraged.

Many people enter the workforce believing that all they need to do is whatever is required of them. That might be a good way to work, for the first month or two. After settling in, you want your team to be confidently collaborating with their colleagues, and able to adapt and experiment with new, creative styles of working. 

Collaborative teams thrive on open communication and free expression. Team members will often have at least partial ownership of the projects they work on. Express how much you value collaboration and teamwork when advertising the company culture. Be sure to include words that demonstrate a collaborative culture, such as:

• Collaborative
• Innovative
• Autonomous
• Iterative
• Nimble
• Fast-paced
• Flexible
• Trusting
• Progressive

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Getting the work culture advertised in the right way lets applicants know they’re entering a company that values collaborative working.

Develop collaborative onboarding

Leading on from advertising your job posts, you could incorporate collaboration in your onboarding program. Most onboarding programs cover the big picture of the company, like organizational purpose and values. 

For most companies, the duration of onboarding lasts for a few weeks to several months. In this period, your new hires will be striving to get up to speed with their tasks at work. For a new recruit, this really could be a lot to digest. Have you made sure the big picture is broken down into day-to-day collaborative activities? Do you have your feedback channels set up, making sure their viewpoint is understood?

Enhance the spirit of collaboration by integrating them into your onboarding principles. When a new recruit feels that they’re supported through onboarding, it’s easier for them to get to grips with their responsibilities and show their strengths.

Go deeper into collaborative practices by giving them a personalized onboarding buddy.  An onboarding buddy can go the extra mile to support a new recruit. In this process, a new hire might have some truly valuable insights, and they might just be a little too nervous to suggest it. 

Collaborative working with an onboarding buddy is an extremely valuable tool for new hire integration. Incorporate it into your onboarding practices

Enhance trust in the workplace

Once employees are onboarded and integrated, prioritizing workplace trust can be an instigator for collaborative working. Emphasizing trust can lay the foundation for collaborative working, and is often overlooked, or carried out inefficiently.

If you’ve ever managed a team of people who don’t trust each other, you know how frustrating it can be. A lack of trust when groups work together is one of the biggest reasons why teamwork fails. Team members struggle to communicate for fear that they’ll be blamed for anything that goes wrong. Losing trust is hugely detrimental to the output of teams.

So implement trust exercises and activities in your workplace. We’re talking about more than trust-falls (though they can kickstart fun conversations). Designing and implementing trust-building activities encourages team members to feel more comfortable when collaborating. 

Workshops and seminars for trust-building can enhance how confidently your teams communicate. If open, non-judgemental project communication is the norm, members are more likely to speak up and give insights when collaborating. 

Having team trust allows us to function at our best. Trust-building activities function as a cornerstone for collegial friendship building, and research from a Gallup poll shows a concrete link between having a “best friend at work” and increased effort when performing work tasks.

So tap into the collaborative power of trust-building and build upwards with your teams. Collaboration will come naturally when trust has been established.

Model the collaborative behavior you seek

Leading from the top isn’t easy. Constantly delegating tasks to your teams may, at times, make you appear a little difficult to approach. Effective collaboration relies on the ability to be open and communicative with your work partner. Couldn’t this be the perfect time to physically embody the collaborative work you desire? We think it is.

Modeling collaborative work behavior gives a point of reference as your teams improve their collaborative skills. Design workshops and seminars that emphasize the ways you want your teams to collaborate. Throughout these sessions, be the shining model of collaboration your teams can learn from. 

In order to model healthy collaborative behavior, leaders must:

• Show respect for the points of view and opinions of others
• Be consistent, and be honest
• Be able to handle accountability
• Do what you said you would do
• Balance the needs of the business with the needs of team members
• Show support for employees, even when mistakes are made
• Be able to provide constructive and insightful feedback

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Develop your collaborative leadership skills by modeling behavior that promotes collaboration. They’ll feel supported by your guidance and will see that effective collaboration is achievable. 

Modeling what you want to see in the workplace is a great way to set meaningful principles. However, it’s often easier to talk about behavior than to actually do it. Apply yourself as the model your teams need to see in order to collaborate at their best.

Optimize your collaboration tools

So now you have some collaborative work practices and principles in place, it could be the perfect time to review and optimize your tools of collaboration. There is only so much collaboration your teams can carry out, if their tools aren’t up to scratch.

Start from the top-down, researching the strengths and capabilities of your current setup.  Start with your immediate communication channels and message boards. Are your tools easy to use? Do they really help your teams to collaborate? Would your messaging boards work better with the perks of Slack? Would project management be more streamlined with an app like Asana?

Research the most efficient and reliable tools for your industry, and thoroughly check if they apply to your teams as they collaborate. Your company might use highly specified software, so integrate as many apps together as you can. Your computers should be strong enough to handle demanding tasks, and staff shouldn’t need to use up time switching between equipment. Seamless integration is what you should be aiming for.

Then you’ve got to get everyone onto the same page. Training sessions and workshops are essential if you bring in any changes to your collaboration tools. Nobody should feel left behind, so you’ve really got to dig deep and understand the perspective of a new user. Throughout training, use feedback channels and encourage open discussion to get insights from your teams.

The best craftsmen need the best tools to get the job done. Reflectively analyze the setup of your tools and delve deeper into collaborative software to get the most out of team collaboration.

Carry collaboration into remote work

Leading on from optimizing collaboration tools inside the office, get further into remote collaboration principles to ensure further optimization. Carrying collaborative efforts into remote work can require some thoughtful tweaks to your approach.

Isolation is one of the biggest challenges that remote workers face, and it can be hard to establish a strong atmosphere of collaboration when people feel disconnected. Regularly check in with remote workers with video calls to help them feel more connected.

Set clear expectations for your remote staff as they collaborate. Collaboration often means people need to be working together in real-time. This means that hourly availability should be clearly communicated and thoroughly followed. Define when and how your remote workers should be available and which tools are needed for each task (like emails for formal updates, and Zoom for brainstorming sessions). 

You don’t want to create endless meetings, but at the same time, you need your remote workers to see that you are present and available too. Let your remote employees see that you’re following the collaboration principles of trust and accountability. Remote collaboration is at its best when each person feels empowered to manage their own schedules, while still meeting team goals.

Don’t let distance stand in the way of the perfect remote setup. When collaboration is baked into your remote workflow, team members stay aligned, regardless of where they’re working from.

Clarify roles and responsibilities

Whether your teams are remote, hybrid, or on-site, clarifying roles and responsibilities is critical for collaboration. If each crewmate on a ship is unaware of their responsibilities, a voyage across a stormy sea would be extremely dangerous.

Collaboration at times does involve honest feedback and idea generation, but how can these things be done if people aren’t on the same page? Without having specific parts of the project to take ownership of, people easily become confused and work starts to overlap. If two team members are performing the same functions without realizing it, a lot of time can go to waste.

Many modern project collaboration tools can help with designating roles and responsibilities in teams. Each member needs to know exactly what they are responsible for, as well as their specific title in the project. By specifying the details, accountability can be more easily traced. That’s not to encourage criticism if something goes wrong but to encourage iterative and continuous learning for the whole group.

Keep your communication channels as open as possible for all team members. Each role should be flexible enough for collaboration and cross-functional support, as and when it is needed. Regularly check in with each member and encourage them to open up about their role. Do they feel like they’re collaborating, or just cooperating?

If all roles and responsibilities are laid out, you’re setting the stage for rock-solid collaboration in your teams. Help them focus on the tasks at hand and fuel the fire that leads them toward their goals.

Delve into DEI practices

Our final principle to let collaboration flourish among your teams is to evaluate and iterate healthy diversity, equity and inclusion. DEI practices are of growing importance in the modern workplace, and getting DEI right can be the key to building truly collaborative teams.

A team with the most collaborative strength is made up of people with diverse perspectives and insights. Start off by getting the workplace culture right. It needs to feel inclusive, where every member feels heard, and nobody feels left out.

Then ensure equity is the cornerstone of how your teams operate. Operations should feel equal, and an individual’s personal background should not be the reason a task is allocated to them. If a team only allocated roles depending on a person’s past, nothing new would ever be created and fresh insights would go unheard.

Finally, ensure teams consist of diverse members, including in your recruitment process. Collaboration between people from diverse backgrounds often results in more potential outcomes. Challenge conventional team roles and your teams will feel the wind in their sails.

Being inclusive of every team member and promoting a system of fairness goes way beyond ticking boxes. It goes to show you’re ready for insightful collaboration and can lead to innovative ideas.

Harness the power of collaboration with your staff on a team retreat!

When teams function well together, watching them collaborate is electrifying. We’ve all seen sparks fly when teams are working at their best. One of the best ways to elevate your teams to the next level is getting everyone in the company together on a team-building retreat.

Here at Surf Office, organizing team retreats is what we do best.  

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Here’s what we offer:

• Stress-free transfers? We got you! ✅
• Quality-assured accommodations? Check! ✅
• Engaging team-building activities? Our speciality ✅
• Restaurant reservations? That's on us! ✅
• Expert retreat planning assistance? Of course, we have this covered! ✅
• Onsite support, tailored to your needs? Absolutely ✅

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Not only this but we also have access to 160+ locations around Europe, APAC, the US, Latin America, and now Africa, meaning the sky is your limit when it comes to choosing the right location for you and your team.

Never underestimate the power of solidified team bonds. Integrate collaboration games and activities on a team-building retreat, and watch your teams touch the sky!

Let us sort out the tricky logistics for you. Spaces are very limited, so get in touch now!