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Article provided from guest writer Courtney Rosenfeld
Every business has various moving pieces which need to work in synergy to achieve success. The key to creating this synergy is collaboration, which involves having everyone in your business on the same page in terms of goals and timelines. While one may feel sending an email or organizing one meeting might do the trick, maintaining collaboration is much harder than that. To help your business function like a well-oiled machine, this article by Professional Global Etiquette has compiled the best industry practices for you to adopt.
Set Expectations Early
Employees tend to function better when they know what’s expected of them. This can include project deadlines, performance metrics, and more. Ambiguity among a single employee can quickly spread to others, creating confusion and delays. While setting expectations, it’s important to allow employees the freedom to be innovative and maintain their unique personalities, which help them be productive.
Here are a few ways to communicate expectations to your employees:
According to Indeed, have face-to-face conversations as they are more impactfulthan sharing information
digitally. Additionally, it allows employees to clarify any doubts or concerns.
Be confident in the expectations you set. For instance, do not set goals that you are doubtful of, as your team will resonate the same emotions.
When talking to employees, remain composed and respectful, this will help create positive relationships, allowing your employees to feel comfortable approaching you when needed.
Additionally, during meetings, always direct someone to write minutes and then share them with all concerned stakeholders. This ensures no important points are lost in conversation.
Use Collaborative Tools
Whether your team is working from the office, remotely or a combination of both, it’s important to have your information stored centrally, where it can be accessed by anyone, anytime. This becomes extremely useful for cross-departmental projects, as even if members of different teams don’t communicate with each other personally, they can remain up to date with all recent updates and maintain synergy towards achieving goals.
Miro has one of the best online process mapping tools, allowing businesses to achieve better organization and higher productivity. Using their process map template, you can create exhaustive plans for all your projects, whether that be for marketing, funding, product development, and more. In addition to including goal metrics, the tool allows you to assign stakeholders resulting in complete clarity regarding timelines and expectations.
Develop a Culture of Personal Accountability
To encourage your employees to be leaders themselves, it’s important to create a culture of personal accountability. This includes taking responsibility for achieving their performance metrics with minimal supervision. Here are two ways to inculcate such a culture in your business:
Empower Your Managers: As reported by IFP, whether it be the senior management, department heads, or team supervisors provide them the freedom to set goals and make decisions. This will motivate them to create collaborative teams for meeting targets.
Empower Your Employees: If done right, your managers will pass on the same attitude to employees, providing them the motivation to undertake responsibility for tasks and collaborating with fellow team members to complete projects.
Organize Social Events Beyond Work
Employees can form stronger relationships if they socialize beyond work as this allows them to communicate with each other as individuals rather than subordinates. Additionally, it helps them to show other sides of their personality which they may not be able to express in the workplace.
When it comes to helping new employees assimilate with your business, organizing social events is the way to go, this can include dinners, brunches, one-night trips, family days, and more.
Stronger social bonds among employees will translate into better collaboration in the workplace. For instance, a new recruit who would be hesitant to call their supervisor for assistance at first may now do so without hesitation. This will overcome any subsequent delays and achievement of goals at the personal, team, and organization levels.
Creating a collaborative work environment will translate to your business working at higher efficiency than competitors. Additionally, strong relationships among employees will create a healthy work environment, resulting in meeting goals in a timely and efficient manner.