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Planning & Organization: Crash Course Study Skills #4

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What’s collaboration? How do you collaborate effectively? Collaboration involves working with others as a team to achieve a particular goal. Collaboration in theory sounds easy enough, but it can be challenging in practice. In this unit, you will learn strategies for successful collaboration. This will help you to explain how to organize a group and set goals as a team in your project. Strong collaboration skills will allow you to learn from others, connect with industry professionals, and succeed in achieving your professional goals.

This unit will help you master the following rubric items:

Recommend roles and tasks for each team member to organize group collaboration

Explain the importance of setting goals when collaborating on group work

Select a specific goal-setting strategies for the team and explains why

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Reading: 6 Skills Needed for Effective Collaboration

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Reading: 6 Skills Needed for Effective Collaboration

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Read this web article to learn how to set up your team to collaborate effectively. Specifically, you will review how communicating and compromising can help you to be a team player help achieves the group’s goals.

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RISE Beyond | Creating Conditions For Collaboration

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Does your team currently have the right skill set they need to work together effectively? As leaders or executives, the pressure is on us to increase our team's output and deliver better results, leaving us constantly on the lookout for innovative ways to increase productivity. One way to do this is through creating better conditions for collaboration to thrive.

In our experience, teams that have the necessary skills to collaborate effectively largely outperform those which don't. In this article, we share our expertise and insight by looking at 6 crucial skills that will largely transform the way your team interact with each other.

If you're currently leading a team and are involved in any collaborative efforts, you need to start by asking yourself some important questions. Is your team currently collaborating effectively? Have you created the conditions necessary for collaboration to thrive? Have you offered training and support to your team to develop the essential skills needed for collaboration?

Effective collaboration is achieved when the results of the team's efforts are greater than those which individual members could achieve on their own. But the bolstered results from effective collaboration don't come easily. Collaboration comes with its own set of challenges - challenges that require specific skills to overcome.

We've put together a list of the 6 most important skills needed by great collaborators:

1. Communication

One of the most crucial factors in collaboration is communication. Your team members need to be able to express themselves clearly to each other and successfully manage channels of communication with regards to their project. All individuals need to understand their responsibilities and report on them regularly to others. If everyone on your team has good communication skills, they will all be on the same page, working towards a common goal, all the while aware of current challenges encountered and milestones reached.

2. Authenticity

One of the reasons why collaboration is such a successful tool, is because it brings people from different walks of life together and harnesses the different strengths of each individual personality. This means that the ability to be authentic and true to one's self, is an important skill to have when collaborating. Effective collaboration will only be achieved if each team member is bringing their unique perspectives, talents and feedback to the table.

3. Compromise

For any team to work together in harmony and collectively solve problems, all individuals on the team need to have the skill of compromise. Not every battle has to be fought. If your team can compromise with each other, they will be able to reach the best possible solutions from an amalgamation of ideas. The ability to compromise is extremely important not only for results but also for team dynamics and work happiness. If there is someone on your team who does not know how to compromise, their stubbornness may be hindering the overall productivity and morale.

4. Tolerance

Everyone on your team must have the ability to be tolerant and accepting of others. Creating a team, means grouping individuals together who more than likely have an endless list of differences. Members may have different values, culture, perspectives, work methods as well as diverse ways of handling conflict and stress. It is vital that everyone involved can put differences aside and practice tolerance towards each other. Without tolerance, effective collaboration will not take place.

5. Team Player

For effective collaboration to occur, every person involved needs to be a team player who is focused on reaching a common goal. Individuals who are looking out for their own interests will not contribute to team efforts. Good collaborators need to be able to work well with others and conduct themselves in a way that adds value to the socially shared work task. Ability to work as part of a team is key for any collaborator - and it's unfortunately not a skill that everyone possesses naturally!

6. Reliability

Collaboration requires trust, and trust comes from reliability and consistency. Each and every collaborator has to have the skill of being consistent and being reliable. Members on the team need to have faith in each other in getting tasks done and in trust among one another when sharing ideas and giving feedback. If your team aren't reliable, your results will be unpredictable and often disappointing. Make sure that they are actively working on reliability and putting measures in place that keep them from dropping the ball.

The benefits of collaboration in any organisation are numerous. If the members of your team have the above 6 skills, the results from their collaborative efforts will reach all-new heights. As a team leader, you need to encourage your team to develop and work on these skills. You may need to provide training and support in improving their collaboration skills and even incorporate these skills into your organisation's values and culture.

At RISE Beyond, our expert consultants can help train you and your team in order to get the most from your team's efforts. Get in touch with us today to find out more about our executive level courses and management consulting services.

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6 Skills Needed for Effective Collaboration | | RISE Beyond

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Does your team currently have the right skill set they need to work together effectively? As leaders or executives, the pressure is on us to increase our team's output and deliver better results, leaving us constantly on the lookout for innovative ways to increase productivity.

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Reading: Emotional Intelligence for Enhanced Team Collaboration 

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Reading: Emotional Intelligence for Enhanced Team Collaboration 

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Read this web article to learn about emotional intelligence (EI). The ability to identify and manage your emotions and the emotions of others can strengthen collaboration. Emotional intelligence will help you to define clear roles, maintain open communication, and reach consensus about goals.

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If you needed to improve your team's overall productivity, what would you do? I imagine you may develop project templates; invest in some time-management training; create a collaborative project site; delegate work; help your team prioritize and communicate more efficiently, and so on. Each activity is certainly useful and worth undertaking. But what if these endeavors don't pay off? Developing an emotionally intelligent team could provide a solution.

Emotional intelligence (EI) refers to an individual's ability to recognize their emotions and understand how these emotions impact on others. An emotionally intelligent team relates to the ability of a group to manage and harness emotions for positive outcomes.

An emotionally intelligent team is not simply a combination of individual emotional intelligence and self-awareness, but rather, the result of active team development. Read on to learn more!

Daniel Goleman, Working with Emotional Intelligence

As noted by Daniel Goleman in his 1998 work, Working with Emotional Intelligence*, each of us only has part of the information and skills we need to do our jobs. We depend on the group mind - the collective experiences, skills, and knowledge within the team - to complete tasks, making collaboration essential to project and organizational success. Indeed, research indicates organizations are increasingly dependent on teams, not just individuals, for decision-making, problem-solving, and task completion.

Group mind, as Goleman explains, helps to save time when seeking new solutions and amplifies individual capability. However, tapping into this cumulative knowledge is only possible if the team trust each other and work well together. The team must be emotionally intelligent.

Goleman refers to emotionally intelligent teams as 'star teams', defined by:

Empathy

Cooperation

Open, honest communication

A desire to improve

Awareness of strengths and weaknesses

Proactive problem-solving

Self-confidence

Flexibility

Good relationships with other teams.

Emotionally intelligent teams are also more likely to achieve 'flow' and outperform expectations, thus emotional intelligence distinguishes high performing teams from less effective groups. Loyalty, focus, diverse talents, and strong collaboration are just some of the factors needed to generate group flow. Furthermore, leveraging the group mind becomes more complex as more millennials enter and change the working environment, making emotionally intelligence essential for managers and team.

Building the Emotional Intelligence of Teams

Every team has its own characteristics and norms; an emotionally intelligent team builds emotional capacity and influences emotions in positive, useful ways. Studies suggest there are three conditions required for an effective group: trust amongst members, a sense of group identity, and a sense of group efficacy. Team members who feel part of a worthwhile group and recognize that they work better together than apart are likely to reach higher levels of collaboration and productivity. They are also more confident when dealing with challenges and change. The desired process is illustrated below.

A deft leader who cultivates such group dynamics will find it much easier to engage and motivate teams, and in turn, make an impact within their organization. So how does this actually happen?

Three Levels of Team Interaction

Teams tend to interact at more levels than individuals so there are three areas to consider when developing an emotionally intelligent team: team to individuals, team to itself, and team to other teams.

1. Team to Individuals

As the project leader, you should establish behavioral norms to ensure that all members are on the same wavelength, and are open to listening to new ideas and other perspectives. It is also important to address conflict, even if this does lead to confrontation or difficult conversations. Individual negative emotions should be acknowledged and resolved where possible.

Suggestions for improving how teams and individuals interact include:

Encourage a respectful environment based on the 4Cs - Companions, Collaborative, Challenging and Can-Do attitude

Use meetings to give everyone a voice to discuss the project and any challenges or obstacles

Help team members to connect to their 'why', both in terms of the project's objectives and their own individual goals

Ensure team members switch off from work with regular breaks and vacations

Establish feedback mechanisms, for example, surveys or workshops

Celebrate success and acknowledge individual contributions.

2. Team to Itself

A strong team that understands its strengths and weaknesses, interactions, and processes at the group level, and seeks feedback from others, for example, customers, has taken significant steps towards emotional intelligence.

Team building exercises also help teams improve their communication and problem-solving skills, and more importantly, provide an opportunity to build relationships outside of the working environment. Such events can foster a personal connection with others, which often kicks into play during challenging tasks or unexpected issues.

3. Team to Other Teams

Teams often develop their own norms and modes of working, which can lead to unexpected clashes when working with other teams. After all, we tend to assume everyone has the same approaches and methods we do! Seek common ground when working with other teams. Use a kick-off meeting to establish agreed approaches to communication, tracking, reporting and so on. It is also advisable to adopt an 'ambassadorial' role with other teams. Recognize successes and look for ways to problem-solve together, for example, re-assigning resources or re-working the schedule to reduce the pressure on the other team.

Conclusion

Emotional intelligence enables project teams to reach their full potential. Use the steps and ideas above to create the right environment (trust, group identity, and group efficacy) for your project team.
Image credit
*Daniel Goleman, Working with Emotional Intelligence, 1998. Chapter 9: 'Collaboration, Teams, and the Group IQ'.

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How to Use Emotional Intelligence for Enhanced Team Collaboration

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If you needed to improve your team's overall productivity, what would you do? I imagine you may develop project templates; invest in some time-management training; create a collaborative project site; delegate work; help your team prioritize and communicate more efficiently, and so on. Each activity is certainly useful and worth undertaking.

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Reading: Organizational Behavior, Sections 9.4, 10.2, and 10.3

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Reading: Organizational Behavior, Sections 9.4, 10.2, and 10.3

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This Flatworld chapter will help you learn more about what conflict is, the various types of conflict and how not all conflict is negative. It will also help you to identify causes and outcomes of conflict as well as how to use strategy to manage and resolve conflict.

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Watch this video for tips on strategies to move past conflict.

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Cultivating Collaboration: Don't Be So Defensive! | Jim Tamm | TEDxSantaCruz

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Read Chapters 1 and 2