6 Creative Business Collaboration Techniques to Follow
Collaboration. Cooperation. Commitment. Communication. Camaraderie. These are powerful concepts relevant in any workplace, business, or group dynamics. If you own or are planning to start a small business and have a small team, for that matter, you are dealing with people who have differing personalities, motivations, goals, and productivity levels.
Your challenge is to work with these differences such that they can be harnessed to achieve a shared goal or an aspiration. Business collaboration works this way, something that you do by using out-of-the-box techniques.
Business Collaboration in Action
Your team is collaborating when each of you contributes your talent, skill, or ideas to resolve a problem or accomplish a particular goal. For this collaboration to happen, there should be open, efficient, and effective communication flowing among the team.
Each must, ideally, have a sense of ownership of the project such that they know that their actions can contribute to the project’s success or failure. While all team members can do this on the individual level, they should not forget to work and move as a unit. So how do you foster this collaboration by creative means?
Daily Huddles to Break Hurdles
They say meetings are another excuse to get people out of their desks, but when appropriately utilized, huddles are an excellent venue for discussion and improvement. While the setting is still corporate, you can set the tone of the meeting, where everyone can freely speak up especially about their blockers. The team may be able to resolve issues that can affect their work or productivity.
To come up with more relaxed daily huddles, you can go outside the boardroom and into a café or a nearby park to discuss, have icebreakers, or prepare simple games to get the meeting started.
Meet Outside Work for Non-work Matters
If huddles are for work, then after-work get-togethers are for fun and camaraderie. Your goal is to get everyone together. You especially want to get those who are shy and reserved to go out and interact with coworkers. Something like this does not happen every day because of work priorities.
Meet-ups like these provide the perfect opportunity to get to know everyone outside the realm of the workplace. See them loosen up, laugh, and enjoy themselves without the nagging fear of work.
Sell Clothes for the Community
Put collaboration outside work and into real-life practice such as by selling gently used items for fund-raising projects. One of your teammates may have an e-commerce store where you can pool together clothes in good condition and use the money raised for community outreach projects.
This exercise will foster coordination and cooperation as everyone has to work together for two goals: to raise money and to organize the project where the money goes.
Meet-ups like these provide the perfect opportunity to get to know each other outside work. Who knows, your subordinates are doing wildlife photography, playing host to weddings, or selling on Shopify in their free time. Don’t be surprised when you see them huddled together in the cafeteria, browsing online shops and establishing friendships before you know it.
Bring the Fun Back to Team Building
Over the years, team-building activities have become a tedious affair for some employees who have come to dread them. Your duty is to bring the fun back to these activities all while making teamwork and trust your foremost priority.
Try it as well as playing online games in your next team-building session. The key is to get everyone to participate and have fun.
Make the Most of Seating Arrangements
If a seating arrangement is required, you can seat the people who need to collaborate all the time in one corner or place. You’ll see that, aside from the work chat or email, these people can talk to or poke each other when they need something.
Hot desking has not enjoyed a good reputation the past years, but you can try one with a twist. That is, each one can choose where to sit, provided that they are still within reach of people they need to be in constant communication with.
Celebrate Wins and Pats on the Back
Your team has reached its productivity goals for the month. One worker has done exceptionally well. While you don’t have to hand out medals every time someone in your team performs well, that person will surely appreciate a pat on the back for a job well done.
Get your team even more motivated to hit the numbers by being generous with your compliments and treating them every once in a while to a lunch out or a happy hour. If you like, you can do your version of Japan’s Premium Fridays, when everyone can go home early when each has completed their tasks for the week.
You and your team are in for a long haul; you can work toward an open and collaborative work culture where everyone has a say on the future and outcome of any project.
