An effective organisation is about more than just bringing together talented individuals. These individuals will also need the ability to work well as a cohesive unit. This applies whether you’re working on a task together in an office environment, assigning jobs in a commercial kitchen, or trying to sell appliances over the internet.

Whatever the nature of your work, the ability to collaborate effectively matters. So, how do you promote collaboration?

Cultivate a Collaborative Culture

The culture of your business is fundamental. It’s a vehicle for spreading good habits and bad ones too. Lead by example and try to exemplify the qualities you expect from everyone else. Encourage workers to not only work together but also to address the barriers that impede effective teamwork. An atmosphere of mutual respect and a rigorous process for addressing toxic behaviour can help everyone to work well as a team.

Implement Cross-Functional Teams

In a sufficiently large organization, teams might keep to themselves. The finance department might be used to the quirks and procedures that prevail in finance. The sales, HR, and tech support teams might all occupy their own little worlds too.

This can be problematic, as it leads to information siloing. Often, there are longstanding problems in one department that could be easily fixed with the help of a small change in another. But when different parts of a business fail to communicate with one another, these changes effectively become impossible.

For this reason, it’s important to bring together individuals from different departments. These meetings might help to drive innovation through viewpoint diversity. They can also help different members of the team to understand and empathize with the struggles faced by colleagues.

Leverage Technology to Connect Teams

Increasingly, teams are able to talk to one another through technological means. Videoconferencing platforms provide a much more vivid and immediate way of conveying information than email does (although email remains crucial). In-person meetings can also be facilitated by technology. Make sure that you have dedicated meeting rooms and that they’re appropriately equipped with displays and the range of cables and connectors necessary to deal with whatever laptop is brought into the room.

Invest in Soft Skills Development

Effective collaboration is often built on a bedrock of interpersonal skills. Put simply, employees who cannot talk to one another effectively will be poor collaborators. What’s more, even people who consider themselves extroverted and comfortable with conversation might not be able to communicate the right details effectively. Fortunately, these shortcomings can often be addressed through training. The right workshops, seminars, and training sessions can help everyone to become a more effective team player.

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