Even the best leaders can struggle with collaboration. You must take the lead on the project, run the meetings, develop the project plan, and deliver a great finished product. It can be extraordinarily challenging, but an equally rewarding experience. By keeping a few points in mind you can dramatically increase the success of your projects.
1. Less is more.
Bosses often make teams too large. A common fallacy that a bigger team is better than a small one because they have more resources to draw upon. Rather than weigh your team down with too many viewpoints select a smaller team. If you need to include a range of experts consider bring in a specialist part-time. New members while holding everything else constant can lead to an increase in creative ideas.
2. Ground Rules.
Being vague is a common cause of failed teamwork and can be addressed by clear plans that have been explicitly agreed to by the participants. Take the time to formally lay out the goals of the team. Your plan should articulate expectations for communication, roles and responsibilities, and implications. What if people still don’t follow through? At that point, you have more justification to call them to account.
3. Celebrate wins to get people fired up.
At a time when uncertainty is being dealt with each day, you must take the time to celebrate success. This goes beyond acknowledgment – this is about taking a step-back and reflecting on what you have accomplished and what you have learned throughout the journey. People are not taking enough time to understand why they were successful and how their success reverberated and positively impacted those around them. The tremendous effort, sacrifice and perseverance of your team should be acknowledged.
4. Shorter status meetings are essential.
Standard-issue meetings end up being unproductive time sinks. Instead, try shorter meetings and focus on more pre-meeting preparation. Create an agenda and only cover what is on the agenda. A clear sense of direction energizes a group and keeps it focused. Little or no time is wasted pursuing work that isn’t relevant. The group needs meaning and purpose and if these are absent, members will consume a tremendous amount of time in search of this direction. Use a timekeeper to track time for each agenda item. They warn the group when time is running out and stop the group at the end of the allotted time period. The job appears simple; however, a good timekeeper must have the courage to interrupt a discussion when time has run out.
5. Written feedback.
Many leaders are prone to wait until a problem occurs before they ask for feedback. Feedback is the key to assuring any team is staying on track, but more importantly that it is improving each day. Feedback should be proactive and constant. Allow written feedback on both the positive and negative aspects of a given proposal. Open the floor to talk about the pro’s and con’s of each idea.
It takes great leadership to build great teams. Building a collaborative culture can be difficult; be persistent and rely on open, ongoing communication to make progress. Team building is both an art and a science and the leader who can consistently build high performance teams is worth their weight in gold.