How to Increase Collaboration at Work

6 Min. Read

There is an interesting paradox at the heart of the modern workplace. With the increase in matrixed organisations, flatter corporate structures, and flexible working, the need to collaborate effectively is greater than ever, yet it’s getting harder.  

In this article we will examine what effective collaboration looks like in practice, why it’s growing in importance, and how you can increase it in your business.  

What does effective collaboration at work look like?? 

When you see truly collaborative organisations, the interactions feel organic, natural, and agile. They are characterised by: 

• Open communication. Information flows freely and quickly, it’s not hoarded or sat on.  
• Calling problems out. Challenges are dealt with head on, problems are called out, and everyone is clear on what really matters. 
• High levels of trust. People care about each other on a human level, they are transparent, and share what needs to be shared.  
• Taking stock regularly. Frequently stop to review how flow and processes are working, and eliminate redundancies to achieve better results.   

Why is collaboration in the workplace important? 

Increasingly, departments within organisations are becoming inextricably interdependent. While in decades gone by siloed working could have been tolerated, in today’s global village, it’s impossible to grow your business if you’re not collaborating internally. Whether it’s on new product innovation, go to market, or reputational issues, your people need to be collaborating to make the best use of your resources and maximise your performance.  

What are the top three benefits of workplace collaboration? 

1. Greater innovation 

As market competition becomes fiercer and faster, product and service differentiation are essential to stand out, and take or retain market share. To differentiate, organisations need to be constantly innovating, which is more likely to happen when you bring in a wider and more diverse array of perspectives through collaboration. Encouraging different mindsets, approaches, and thinking generates more and better ideas, which will significantly increase your levels of innovation. 

2. Do more with less

Facing tough economic conditions, organisations are increasingly looking at how they can be more effective and efficient with what they have. Collaborating more effectively enables them to focus on what they can do, rather than what they can’t. At Walking the Talk, we call this an Above the Line mindset. Organisations who collaborate can pool resources, leverage strengths, find efficiencies, and deliver more than the sum of their parts. As a result, they really can do more with less.  

Connectivity and meaning at work 

We spend most of our lives at work. The more collaborative the workplace is, the greater our feelings of connectivity, meaning, and inclusion will be. This in turn generates a raft of benefits, including increased engagement, improved productivity, and healthier wellbeing. By being open, trusting, and sharing resources with each other, we also maximise the potential to cross-sell, instead of regretting opportunity costs through staying in our silos.   

Why are organisations struggling with collaboration?? 

The paradox that the more we need to collaborate, the harder it’s becoming may seem odd. After all, since the pandemic, we’ve never had so much technology that enables global, flexible working. However, there are common reasons why collaboration is getting tougher, not easier, and these are all related to a necessary change in behaviours. 

Clarification 

Effective collaboration requires a clear understanding of what you are collaborating on, why, how, and who needs to be involved. And this clarification needs to be regularly repeated.  

With the growth in flexible working and the ease of online collaboration platforms, there is a tendency for meeting overload, a lack of prioritisation, and as a result, people become confused and frustrated and shut down more than they open up. Collaboration is not about consulting everyone on everything or trying to achieve consensus. This hampers collaboration and is not a recipe for making progress on your strategy.  

Communication  

This is the cornerstone of collaboration. To collaborate meaningfully, you need to have the psychological safety that enables people to communicate openly, share concerns, and have difficult conversations. Many companies haven’t yet created these environments, so collaboration efforts are performative. It takes concerted effort, maturity, and resilience to create these types of organisations, and this is often underestimated.  

Feedback 

Connected with communication, this is about giving each other explicit feedback so that you better understand one another’s perspectives, hear what’s working and what isn’t, and can co-create together. What we often see is feedback that is vague, and assumptions that are not checked or corrected, which leads to people running off in different directions and hampers true collaboration. Frequent, high quality, actionable feedback builds trust; the opposite erodes it.    

Not building on individual differences 

We see this issue a lot, where organisations bring in amazing people but don’t fully leverage their wisdom, strengths, and experience. When collaborating, it’s critical to bring different approaches together so you don’t inadvertently create echo chambers. So, for example, if you’re wanting more ideas in your innovation pipeline, it would be good to pull in someone who demonstrates behaviours associated with high levels of innovation (experimentation etc). Our product The Taylor Assessment enables you to screen candidates for cultural contribution in this way, and can therefore mitigate against cookie cutter thinking.  

How can leaders improve collaboration in the workplace? 

1. Leadership role modelling

In any culture change, leadership role modelling is vital. In our experience, it is also consistently underestimated. If you want your people to collaborate more, then you must start behaving that way at the top of your organisation. People look up to leaders and replicate what they do, because they believe this is what good looks like and what is rewarded in the organisation. But to get there, you first need to spend time with your leaders helping them to understand the value of greater collaboration, and how to behave in a more collaborative fashion.  

2. Focus on relationships

Leadership teams need to focus less on what they are collaborating on (the topic) and far more on forging strong relationships. For example, as a leader, when you are face to face (off sites, meetings etc) ensure you are spending time really getting to know your peers on a personal level. In today’s always on world, it’s tempting to just discuss the matter in hand – performance etc. But if you spend the majority of your time deepening your relationships, the amount and quality of your collaboration will increase exponentially. Real human connection is the foundation of effective collaboration. 

3. Define ways of working 

Get clear on how you are going to work together as leadership team. For example: 

• How are you going to communicate with each other – your forums, rules of engagement etc.  
• When giving feedback to each other, how will you do it? 
• Are you prepared and ready to have difficult conversations? 

These ways of working need to be co-created and understood to form another bedrock of effective collaboration.  

What are some strategies to promote collaboration among employees? 

1. Create cross-functional projects

These will provide the opportunity for everybody to understand each other's different perspectives and challenges, promote more sharing of ideas, and bring in greater diversity of thought.  

2. Rotate leaders 

We have seen this concept work effectively with a few clients. Leaders are reassigned, typically every 3 or so years, to other functions. This gives them a deep understanding of different areas of the business, and creates more 'informed' collaboration.   

3. Set up feedback loops 

This takes intention, time, and practice, but to increase collaboration you need to create feedback loops. You start small – let’s say, dedicating the last five minutes of most meetings to check: 

• What went well in the way we led our meeting today? 
• What could be even better? 
• What will we do differently next time? 

Integrating these micro interventions on a consistent basis embeds the principles of effective collaboration so that it becomes a hallmark of your culture. 

How can leaders improve collaboration in a hybrid workplace? 

Hybrid working and the global nature of many businesses do pose challenges for collaboration. There is no one-size-fits-all approach, but three things to consider are:  

• Be agile – experiment with different ways of working and see what produces the greatest collaboration for your organisation.  
• Listen and incorporate feedback – speak to your employees, find out what’s working and what isn’t, and be open to new ideas and solutions.  
• Balance synchronous and asynchronous collaboration. While real-time collaboration promotes inclusion and belonging, it’s not always practical in a hybrid world. In this case, be clear about when you need to be together but also provide people with the tools for facilitating asynchronous collaboration that maintains, and can increase, productivity.  

To stay competitive in the modern world, getting better at collaboration is essential. While we have more technology than ever at our disposal, like all culture change, success comes down to changing behaviours, systems, and symbols. These take time, effort, and constant attention, but the rewards in terms of business performance are unquestionable. 

Contact us to begin your culture transformation journey and learn how to boost your team effectiveness.