The most successful work environments are those where collaboration is facilitated among team members. It promotes out of the box thinking, improves employee retention, and helps discover viable solutions to long-standing problems. When teammates and colleagues are able to work together to achieve common goals, amazing things can happen. And when collaboration sessions are scheduled, an agenda provided in advance, and discussion notes documented for all to see in the moment, it makes the collaboration much more productive.
In order to facilitate this type of interaction, you need to keep two main points in mind: (1) communicate with empathy and (2) build trust among the team. Showing empathy is the act of acknowledging and understanding the perspective of another person. When empathetic communication techniques are utilized, employees feel that their opinions are valued. You can use teh recapping technique such as “So what I hear you saying is ….. is this correct?”. This technique helps them to feel heard and safe opening up and participating in difficult conversations.
As the team leader, your job is to facilitate trust among the team. You need to earn the trust, while also showing how trust allows everyone to remain engaged and productive. A great start to building trust is having the team complete a DISC Wiley Team assessment with a specialist. This specialist knows how to interpret the data and share the findings tactfully. Assessments, such as these, can quickly identify dysfunctions and preferred styles of communication among the team. Once you illuminate the level of trust and communication styles, you can more effectively guide the team through more productive meetings, build empathy, encourage safe and open collaboration, and start to hold everyone accountable
A great way to improve your collaboration skills is to create and use a standard meeting agenda template and read Dare to Lead by Brené Brown and The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni. These pieces of literature will share techniques to become a better facilitator of collaborative work. You can take it a step further and ask the team to read the book and share their top 3 take away’s with everyone else.