{"id":10220,"date":"2013-02-20T03:14:10","date_gmt":"2013-02-19T16:14:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stage.creately.com\/blog\/?p=10220"},"modified":"2013-05-09T17:19:35","modified_gmt":"2013-05-09T06:19:35","slug":"improving-team-collaboration-office","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stage.creately.com\/blog\/experience\/improving-team-collaboration-office\/","title":{"rendered":"Improving Team Collaboration in the Office"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Imagine if you took the best parts of each team member and made one superstar. You might take Tom\u2019s smarts, combine it with Renee\u2019s empathy, add a dash of Joe\u2019s writing skills and top it off with Tina\u2019s sales ability. With a person like that working for you, your company would be unstoppable! Of course this person might come out a little funny looking\u2026<\/p>\n

The truth is you don\u2019t need some Weird Science<\/i><\/a> experiment to get more from your team. You can get more from your team when they work more together.When ideas, and communication crosses department and even business unit boundaries there are terrific opportunities for innovation. \u00a0Just imagine the impact that would have on your company!<\/p>\n

\"team<\/a>

Improving team collaboration can do wonders for your company<\/p><\/div>\n

Team Collaboration can mean a lot of things \u2013 from overhearing a co-worker who\u2019s struggling with a piece of software and walking over to show them an easier tool; to researchers sharing their best ideas to see if they can learn from each other\u2019s discovery, and everything in between. But getting people to work together is more art than science.<\/p>\n

Five Steps for Greater Team Collaboration<\/h3>\n
    \n
  1. Set the stage.<\/b>
    \nIn order to get people working together, and more importantly sharing their best ideas and innovations, you have to have a culture that values the team above the individual, that respects ideas no matter where they come from, and where listening is valued. These are the baseline. Without respect, team orientation and listening it\u2019s difficult to get anyone to share anything.<\/li>\n
  2. Create the space.<\/b>
    \nOnce we have the psychic space, we need to address the physical space.Collaboration happens best when it \u201cjust happens\u201d. Chance encounters, overheard conversations, and hallway meetings produce more innovation and collaboration than 1000 \u201cbrainstorming sessions\u201d. How can you locate your team in such a way to promote those chance encounters? Maybe it\u2019s not the physical office; there are lots of online tools for knowledge sharing and collaboration that can facilitate it too.<\/li>\n
  3. Celebrate a good thing.<\/b>
    \nWhen you start to see results from the collaboration, celebrate that by sending out a note recognizing the team members who took a risk, celebrating the results they achieved and holding them up as examples to follow. When you do this it gives you the opportunity to reinforce the values of respect, team orientation and listening too!<\/li>\n
  4. Stir the pot.<\/b>
    \nOnce\u00a0you’ve\u00a0got collaboration started, don\u2019t let it grow stale. People tend to collaborate more with folks they know, like and trust. So mix up your teams a bit; invite marketing folks to your production meeting. Send the whole office out for drinks or to a bowling alley. Create some social or team building event that requires folks to work with teams that they\u00a0wouldn’t\u00a0ordinarily connect with. The more that people have positive experiences with one another, the more likely they are to collaborate.<\/li>\n
  5. Provide the Tools<\/strong>
    \nEncourage them even further by providing tools that are built for team collaboration. From     diagram software<\/a> like Creately to task management tools like Asana there are hundreds of product that encourage collaboration. Features like real-time collaboration<\/a> makes working together fun and productive increasing the\u00a0likely-hood\u00a0of people working together.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Now it\u2019s your turn! What ideas do you have to improve team collaboration? Let me know in the comments below!<\/i><\/p>\n

    About The Author: Brad Farris works for EnMast<\/a>. They help small businesses get on the right track with tools and processes that are built for success.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Imagine if you took the best parts of each team member and made one superstar. You might take Tom\u2019s smarts, combine it with Renee\u2019s empathy, add a dash of Joe\u2019s writing skills and top it off with Tina\u2019s sales ability…. Read More<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":10225,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[407,408,254,406],"class_list":["post-10220","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-experience","tag-office-collaboration","tag-productive-offices","tag-real-time-collaboration","tag-team-collaboration"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stage.creately.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10220","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stage.creately.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stage.creately.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stage.creately.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stage.creately.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10220"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/stage.creately.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10220\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10402,"href":"https:\/\/stage.creately.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10220\/revisions\/10402"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stage.creately.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10225"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stage.creately.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10220"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stage.creately.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10220"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stage.creately.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10220"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}