5 Strategies for Successful Workplace Collaboration

One of the most powerful forces at work is teamwork. When team members learn to collaborate well, greater things are achieved—projects are completed on time without compromising on quality, business targets are met which makes the stakeholders happy and the joy and satisfaction from doing impactful work motivates the team to go after bigger and better things. 

But collaboration is one of the most failed efforts at work. Despite best attempts from managers and leaders, collaboration continues to be a messy affair. 

Constructing teams that look beyond individual abilities, embraces each members strengths and complements their weaknesses, shows up with courage and vigour to face any obstacles that stands in their way and does not falter when faced with uncertainty continues to be a stretch target that most organizations fail to achieve.

Coming together is a beginning, staying together is progress, and working together is success.
— Henry Ford

Effective collaboration isn’t optional. Without it time, energy and resources are wasted. The frustration, resentment and dissatisfaction throughout the process also takes a toll on the team’s mental health and well-being. They’re discouraged from taking on work that requires collaborating with others and start preferring solo activities.  

No organization can succeed without implementing effective ways to bring people together and helping them navigate the dynamics of a successful workplace collaboration. Leaders and managers need to adopt these 5 strategies and put them into practice:

Agree on a common success criteria 

Collaboration breaks down when people in the team are given individual goals without a common success criteria. 

When each team member is focused on nitty gritties of their own task without the big picture, they fail to learn, adapt and course correct along the way. 

This gives way to complaining, blaming and sobbing—everyone thinks someone else must be the problem if they did their part of the job.

Time that should be spent in problem solving is wasted in pointing fingers. 

Instead of pivoting and refining strategy when things don’t work out as expected, focus is on fault finding and someone to blame.

A common goal with the desired end state and how to measure once it’s achieved is crucial for effective collaboration. It binds people in the team towards a common mission. It gives them a reason to work together instead of working alone.  

If you could get all the people in an organization rowing in the same direction, you could dominate any industry, in any market, against any competition, at any time.
— Patrick Lencioni, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team

Paint a picture for your team. Show them what success looks like. A well defined end goal will encourage everyone to come together and collaborate to reach the desired end state instead of focusing on individual goals and objectives. 

Face conflicts head on 

When people from different backgrounds, experiences and expectations come together, they all can’t think the same. They’re bound to have conflicts of interest, disagreements and differences of opinion. 

These different perspectives aren’t a bad thing—they invite voices which if ignored or suppressed will lead to problems that could have been easily avoided if people were encouraged to speak up. 

Sharing disagreement when collaborating is not only crucial, it’s a strong sign of a healthy work culture. It demonstrates a team’s ability to think clearly, navigate complexity and solve problems. Disagreements can save time and energy by preventing critical mistakes and course correcting before it’s too late. 

Healthy disagreements divulge the importance of commitment despite our differences. At its core, they support unity, maturity to disconnect our identity from our ideas and support others even when they do not agree with our point of view.

The very word “conflict” evokes people at battle, opposing forces. But not all conflict is negative. Conflict can illuminate risks, allow us to collaborate and improve processes, and affect positive change. The key is to continue to provide clarity, and usher folks toward productive conflict that is devoid of personal attacks, and focused on the larger goals.
― Sarah Drasner, Engineering Management for the Rest of Us

Encourage your team to disagree without taking it personally and turning it into a war. Effective collaboration does not involve arguments with the desire to win, but the will to do right by the team.  

Give and seek support

Working well together is simple when things are easy, but what does your team do when things get tough? 

Do they look at the problem collectively and support each other without confining themselves to artificial boundaries of their team? 

Do they ask for help when they’re stuck without worrying about being looked down upon or being judged?

Do they offer support in areas they have expertise or do they think solving others problems is not part of their job? 

Mutual support is the foundation of a strong team. It is the cornerstone to achieving great things together. True collaboration isn’t just about coming together and working towards a common goal. It involves lifting others up in the process. 

Support does not involve turning into a rescuer or acting as a victim to gain sympathy from others. Rescuing others promotes dependency instead of empowerment while victim mentality manipulates others to do things for you or your way. 

Encourage your team to give and seek support by:

1. Explaining the benefits of healthy collaboration and showing what good support looks like.
2. Telling them to go beyond team boundaries, acquire knowledge about other teams and functions and helping them out. 
3. Motivating them to ask for help without feeling embarrassed or ashamed. 

Success in collaboration isn’t measured by what you get, but by what you give to help others succeed.
— Adam Grant, Give and Take

A supportive team is more resilient and better equipped to face any obstacles on their path. Having people around to help and uphold enables them to approach challenges with a positive mindset.

Work on the process, not the outcomes 

Having goals and targets is important—it enables your team to track if they’re on the right path or need to pivot. 

However, when the end goal turns into an obsession, every failure is viewed as a major setback with feelings of self-doubt, low self-worth and inadequacy.

Outcome based thinking keeps the focus on the prize without paying attention to the steps needed to get there. 

Irrespective of how much your team obsesses about the results, they can never guarantee the outcomes they’ll achieve. However, the process is 100% in their control. They can define it, learn from it and adapt it to align with their goals. 

Process based thinking builds the focus to re-strategize when outcomes don’t turn out as expected, treat mistakes as learning lessons and spend time and energy on the future possibilities instead of lamenting about the past or missed opportunities. 

Destination is important, but more crucial is the journey. It decides where your team ends up—not just with the current goal at hand but how they handle future responsibilities. 

While the highs and lows of the outcomes achieved are soon forgotten as people move on to other work responsibilities, it’s the journey that sticks—moments spent together solving problems, overcoming challenges and building camaraderie that leave a lasting impact.

Setting goals is important, but true progress comes from the systems your team builds. Goals provide direction, but systems create consistency. Focusing only on goals without optimizing daily processes will leave them struggling to achieve success.

The best way to guarantee a good outcome is to focus on the inputs and processes that lead to it, rather than on the outcome itself.
— Cal Newport, Deep Work

Focus on the process, results will follow. Help your team create a system that encourages learning and adaptation. When they commit to refining the way they work and collaborate—running experimentation, making thoughtful decisions, and embracing feedback—the outcomes will naturally take care of themselves.

Set milestones for sustainable progress 

When multiple people work together, many things can go wrong—misalignment of expectations, wrong assumptions and misunderstandings around who is responsible for what and by when. Not identifying and correcting these issues early can lead to a lot of rework, frustration, resentment and burnout. 

Collaboration won’t turn into a messy affair if your team can recognize small problems early in the process and prevent them from turning into major setbacks. Setting milestones is a great way to achieve this. 

Breaking down work into manageable phases with specific checkpoints forces team members to review progress, identify roadblocks and determine the next steps to resolve issues before they escalate. 

Milestones bring in another advantage—they provide a roadmap for progress which is very important for effective collaboration because every small win provides a sense of accomplishment that keeps the team positive, motivated and develops trust in each other’s contributions. Every milestone is proof of the power of collective effort. Every success, no matter how small, is a testament to trust and growing stronger together.

High-performing teams set shared milestones, track progress transparently, and adjust together as needed.
— Daniel Coyle, The Culture Code 

Every milestone in collaboration is a commitment to collective success rather than individual achievement. It reinforces the power of teamwork and encourages team members to work together instead of trying to do it alone. 

Summary 

1. When people in the team don’t have a clear end goal and a common success criteria to measure their results, they focus on individual goals and tasks which turns collaboration into a nightmare. Days working together are filled with blame games, complaining and emotional outbursts as everyone thinks their direction is right and others must be at fault. A well-defined end goal and a common measure of success is crucial to help your team members row in the same direction. It gives them a reason to work together instead of trying to do it all alone.
2. Disagreements and differences of opinion are unavoidable when a group of people from different backgrounds, experiences and expectations come together. Instead of viewing them as obstacles in path, team members need to consider them as opportunities to identify problems, find the best possible solution and course correct before it’s too late. 
3. Every team member will hit some roadblock as they work towards their goals. In such moments, getting help and support is important to make forward progress instead of staying stuck. Having team members around to guide you, share their knowledge and expertise and push you to not give up goes a long way in keeping the momentum and continuing to stay positive. Giving and seeking support is essential for effective collaboration and teamwork. 
4. When team members give undue attention to a destination while ignoring the path needed to get there, they lose opportunities to re-strategize, pivot and incorporate learning lessons from the process. Obsessing about the outcome also turns every failure into a disaster and minor disappointments into major setbacks. It makes them lose hope due to feelings of lack of control. Shifting their focus from outcomes to process can give them hope because the journey to reach the end goal is completely in their control. 
5. Communication problems, wrong assumptions and misalignment of expectations are the norm when multiple people work towards a common goal. Eliminating these problems is not the solution because it’s impossible to achieve. However, identifying them early in the process and correcting them is the way to go. Milestones are a great way to achieve this. They not only help in minimizing these problems, but delivering a tangible result—however small it may be—boosts team’s motivation and trust in each other’s contributions.

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