How to Encourage Collaboration in A Team

Nowadays, it is not really so difficult to communicate. There are many devices and tools that can help you communicate with people around the globe. Even perhaps a person is in a remote area, it is still possible to reach that certain person when s/he is needed for a meeting or collaboration.

What Is Team Collaboration?

Team collaboration means that a group of people in a workplace – or not – work as one through sharing and thinking such ideas to accomplish a certain goal or goals. It is like teamwork in higher level. As it is, teamwork is typically the physical joining of people to accomplish a certain task. However, team collaboration can do the same even though the people are not physically together in one place. Therefore, you need to know how to encourage collaboration on your team as necessary.

How to Encourage Collaboration in A Team

Today, more and more teams become remote. It is very important to get the right people to form a team together to accomplish certain tasks or goals. The challenge that the majority of workers face is that they are not trained to do some collaboration at work. However, everyone belongs to the team while they work.

The current trend most likely relies on technology. This is a key factor on how to encourage collaboration in a team. Given below are tips to know how:

1. Everyone Should Be on the Same Page

To be able to successfully collaborate, you must not forget the most important thing: you and the members of your team must be on the same page. You must have the same goals to achieve. If every other member on your team is distracted because they work on their own tasks or projects, you will accomplish nothing.

As a team leader or team member to lead remote teams,  you all have to sit down together and discuss your short-term or long-term set of goals, talk among yourselves how you are going to achieve these and assign each and everyone who gets to work what. This way, you will be able to plan effectively and accomplish whatever it is that you need to.

2. Set Your Expectations

Related to number one, you have to set your expectations or goals. The team members must know what they need to know and do. They also have to do it by themselves as necessary. They should learn how much work or amount of hours that they should work and is expected of them. They must know what or which part of a certain project they have to work on, who they can work with, who they can count on for resources or support and so on.

On the other hand, as a team leader you must connect each team members and your goals to create the strategic plan for the good of the company. It is essential that individual expectations are aligned with the rest of the team. You have to establish a program metrics aside from timelines so that you can share the progress updates and let the people know whether or not some things have been accomplished. Also, they can focus on the other important aspects of a certain project.

Reporting is very important in a remote team collaboration. So, do not forget to update everyone on the team like your boss, the executives or other team members about the status of your own work so that there is a steady progress shown for everyone. With this, everyone is aware what is going on with your project.

3. Everyone Should Be Open

If there is any problem that you might encounter, you have to let your team know. If you hold back, you might hinder the collaboration between your team members. There must be transparency among the members of the team. This way, when a problem arises, it can be dealt with immediately.

4. Have Fruitful Meetings

There are times that teams waste their time during a virtual meeting. They tend to catch up about their personal lives. But before you start the meeting, you have to have reason to call for it. Inform each member that they need to bring something like agenda to set it. By this, you can hold a fruitful meeting wherein you discuss what is needed and time is then set accurately so that no time is wasted.

5. Use Effective Tools

For a good team collaboration, you use effective tools to be successful. Nowadays, technology is used to set and conduct meetings. ezTalks Video Conferencing can be utilized as a platform. You can use video conferencing that lets participants share their ideas via a communicating whiteboard tool. It can be easily maneuvered and the meeting can be readily recorded for future reference to the team collaboration.

Conclusion

Team collaboration is not difficult to do nowadays especially that technology is used. ezTalks Cloud Meeting can be used as a platform when you collaborate with the other team members to achieve your set goals.