Traditionally, when a team does well, its leader tends to attract an especially large share of the credit — as has been the case with such historically influential visionaries as Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. However, any business that gains success can thank more than just one individual for it.
If you run a business and have assembled a team for it, keep in mind that collaborative teams perform more than five times better than their peers, as per research highlighted by UC Today. So, what can do you to work effectively with your employees?
Use the right tools
Some members of your team might be working from their respective homes, while other workers could be based entirely in the office or split their time between that and home.
Hence, there could be quite a patchwork of work arrangements even just within your team. This situation underlines the importance of you deploying work tools your staffers would be able to use in a range of settings — such as on trains and in hotels during business trips.
Deploy multifaceted solutions
Obviously, many businesspeople today routinely interact with their work colleagues by phone or email. However, exactly what kind of communication tool a worker ought to utilise at any given time will depend on what they want to achieve.
For example, while videoconferencing is ideal for use in situations where conversations will inevitably need to be complex, a less sophisticated contact method — like instant messaging — would work better if you just want a quick catch-up or to confirm something.
Lead by example
“A collaborative culture should be something that employees feel rather than something that the executive team talks about,” Kevin Lynch, managing director of Douglas Beach Capital, has told Business News Daily.
When this does happen, he added, “it inspires a sense of community within an organisation while driving productivity, insight and innovation.” The trick is to initially show your team members work practices that they would subsequently be able to emulate to impressive collaborative effect.
Opt for flexible solutions
This is important because your team’s needs could naturally evolve over time, and so you ideally want to provide your workers with an array of digital platforms that you would be able to integrate with new tools or services further down the line.
It can especially pay for you to keep a close eye on what is developing in the world of tech. You might not have realised, for example, that Microsoft Teams telephony is the new way of collaboration on Microsoft Teams.
Spur friendly competition among your workers
Though ‘competition’ can often feel like a dirty word in the workplace, it is possible to leverage competition in a sufficiently strategic manner for keeping workers motivated and engaged.
To this end, you could let employees see how they are faring compared to their co-workers. If someone feels like they are falling behind, they could be motivated to up their game.
Another option is offering rewards in exchange for certain results being achieved by a particular deadline.
