Success isn’t found in solitude. Wherever your work life takes you, you can expect some level of collaboration with other people, and that’s because people do their greatest work when they work together. The key is knowing how to work together well. By effectively collaborating with your teammates, you will discover new strategies, solutions, and happiness for your business. So how do you do it?
One factor of strong teamwork is strong leadership. Indeed Career Guide discusses how good leaders “provide guidance, motivation, and focus” and unite the team to work towards the same goals. Their role should not be about exerting power but about connecting with team members to delegate tasks, support accomplishments, and help resolve solutions. Indeed also brings up the idea of regularly rotating leadership roles to provide a sense of shared responsibility.
Team leader or not, you must find a healthy balance of work when collaborating. You want to follow through on your responsibilities, but you can’t take on so many tasks that you are unable to complete your work. If you miss a deadline, you could keep another team member from completing their part. It’s good to help others, but be transparent about your time and energy so that everyone is taking on the appropriate amount of work to meet expectations together.
You won’t always get along perfectly well with your team, and that’s okay. The important thing is to have clear processes for providing constructive feedback and resolving disagreements. Indeed suggests that members respect each other’s ideas and focus on finding a compromise. It’s important to convey opinions clearly to handle disagreements before they balloon into bigger disputes.
Communication is vital, and technology is a great way to encourage it. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce blog states that “If you want your employees to collaborate, they will need the space and/or tools to do that.” They recommend tools like Slack and Microsoft Teams – platforms that let remote and in-office employees communicate through audio and video calls. This technology also provides easy access to shared documents for people to work on together.
Recurring meetings are another great way to maintain communication. You can set up meetings to create space for discussion, updates, coordination, and questions about projects and tasks. It keeps everyone in the loop and working in a group rather than trapped in their individual bubbles.
The Software for Hardware team has weekly morning meetings. Each team member gets the chance to communicate what they’re working on and ask questions if they need help. This ensures everyone is on the same page and has the same context.
The SFH team also has Good News Fridays, a tradition started by Univerus CAO Jennifer Hughes and CFO Liam Gravely. Each Friday morning, each team member talks about a good thing that happened that week or one thing that they’re looking forward to.
This gives people the chance to chat about their interests, families, friends, or anything else they’d like to talk about. It offers a break from work topics and lets team members get to know each other as people. Businesses may benefit from adopting a similar practice.
Overall, collaboration is a core principle of Univerus, and it’s one of the reasons Software for Hardware chose to be acquired by them over other companies. Employees across its business units are encouraged to work together to share ideas, learn tools, and exchange knowledge, which is highly valuable.
When people are excited to work together and share knowledge, new ideas are born. You may discover a conclusion you simply couldn’t reach on your own, like a new strategy for tackling a long-standing issue.
You can also find greater satisfaction with your work – with everyone invested in the same plan, there is comradery and shared motivation. And when you finally reach your goal, you have a team to celebrate it with. Make the most of working with your team and you’ll discover a much more successful, satisfying work life.
Anna Litofsky, Marketing Coordinator, Software For Hardware.
