Collaboration is a working practice whereby people cooperate to a typical reason to accomplish business advantage. It empowers people to cooperate and accomplish a common team goal.
In our current day and age, it is essential to collaborate in order to meet the ever increasing standards of organisational performance and goals. An organisation with effective teambuilding collaboration can be propelled to great heights. However, many corporate teams are still operating below their true potential, due to lack of collaboration.
It is important for corporate teams to set aside time to fully evaluate their teams and to identify and solve any standing issues. Thus, our need to understand some of the reasons as to why corporate teams struggle to collaborate effectively as stated below:
- Lack of Leadership Example – Leadership is important when it comes to maximising the effectiveness of team collaboration as it sets the structure and condition for the entire team. Team members constantly look to their leader for direction and instructions, awaiting feedback to further progress. Leaders who fail to do so may hinder their team from reaching their true potential. Similarly, acknowledgement or rewarding collaborative progress is also important when leading a team.This boosts team morale and lets them know that they are on the right track!
- Tribal Mentality – In a corporate environment, it is important that all departments work together cohesively to ensure the company’s success. However, this is often not the case as individual departments are usually only concerned with their own side of affairs. This mentality causes the lack of active listening and empathy when it comes to issues of perspectives, struggles or challenges that other departments face. Departments with the tribal mentality tend to lack deliberate meaningful exchanges with people of different departments.
- Lack of Clarity – A machine can only function to its fullest capability when all of its parts are working well with one another. Similarly, Corporate teams can only maximise their potential when all departments are performing their individual unique roles well. Without clearly defined roles, timelines and performance goals, team members do not know what is expected of them. They also often manage multiple versions of the same information and reinvention of work which can be a waste of time and effort. Thus, lack of clarity may hinder effective team collaboration.
- Lack of Synchronisation – Shared Work processes play a huge part when it comes to a team’s ability to synchronise. It helps employees keep on top of their tasks and different departments facilitate work collaboration, ensuring that things move along in a timely manner. The use of a team “dashboard” or other similar tools can help with synchronisation within a corporate team as it helps with transparency.
- Unwillingness to Change – It is important to adapt and evolve to keep up the ever-changing ways of the corporate world. The unwillingness to break out and experiment with new ways to achieve greater efficiency, productivity and profitability can cause organisations to become slow and less relevant. Therefore, companies should not constantly stick to old paradigms, systems and processes.
- Lack of Social Interaction – Teams at socialise and take the time to bond outside their working environment tend to work better together. Hence, teams that don’t spend time with each other in fun and easy-going settings do not share an “all for one and one for all” type mentality. This shows us that proactive and deliberate corporate team building is just as important as the work itself and the lack of it may potentially cause problems.
- Long Meetings – Team meetings that are too long and lack focus can cause teams to lose interest, engagement, participation and feel fatigued. This decreases productivity and can even lower employee morale, hindering effective team collaboration.
- Large Groups – Groups that are too large can restrict quality sharing time and discussions. This means that not everyone is able to share their perspective on work processes and individual members are not give equal and full opportunities to state their case. Large groups can also be harder to manage and oversee, making it more difficult to maintain the standard of quality produced.
- Not Addressing the Truth – Turning a blind eye and avoiding tough questions about the current state of work processes and goals can hinder further growth of the organisation. Thus, being unable to explore the true potential and effectiveness of the team. Team members should also be honest and push each other to strive for better results, improving themselves individually as well as members of a team.
- Wrong Team Members – Divisive members in a team that have a “‘I’ instead of ‘we’” mentality can hinder effective team collaboration. Having people that simply do not get along in the same team means that individual strengths and skills are not matched to compliment or synergise with one another. This may also cause tensions to rise and issues to form within the team, hindering effective team collaboration.
- Not Listening to New Ideas – At times, teams do not pay enough attention to the ideas and solutions that creative people, who often challenge the status quo, bring forward. This can also be linked back to point number 4, where sometimes people may ignore new ideas as they are unwilling to change. Leaders should have a “no idea is a bad idea” mentality and be willing to hear all team member’s ideas and thoughts.
These are some of the main reasons as to why teams fail to collaborate effectively. Identifying and acknowledging these issues can help employers and team leaders improve collaborative efforts within and between teams.
By proactively facing these poor team collaboration issues and resolving them with strategies for collaboration, it allows different departments and teams to comes together to collaborate seamlessly and ultimately, help achieve the organisation’s goals.