![]() For some of my coaching clients that can mean as little as 10 minutes once a day to skim through the most relevant messages. Decide how often and for how long you’ll engage with the appropriate channels. Message AwayĪlthough collaborative chat tools, like Slack, Teams, and Flock, are incredibly popular and often seen as the “key” to team collaboration, make sure that they’re working for you instead of you working for them. The positive peer pressure that someone is physically present with you and expects you to get a certain activity done in that window of time can be a good incentive to help you overcome approach avoidance. This strategy is also effective if you find yourself avoiding something difficult at work. Since the person is already “there” and working on something similar, the collaboration can move forward more smoothly. This way, you can easily stop and ask them a question or ask for feedback whenever you get stuck. What this looks like is on a video call with a colleague, do your work on a particular shared project at the same time. But for some of my coaching clients who work remotely, I’ve seen a trend toward “virtual side-by-side” working. If you’re back in the office - or never left - working side by side may naturally happen. Everything should be self-explanatory, so that if your colleague has to look at the document after they’ve tucked in their kids at night (and therefore can’t reach out to a teammate in the moment), no clarification is required. When you use this method, be sure to set a deadline for review, turn on track changes, and be clear on exactly what you need from the reviewers in the document. You can do this through Google Docs, Teams, Slack, or whatever other file-sharing service is approved by your organization. If you need feedback on material, and it’s okay for the communication to be asynchronous, share a document. Also, have someone take notes and route them to stakeholders, so you don’t have to waste precious time by having another meeting about the same topic in the future. Set an agenda in advance and assign someone to facilitate the meeting to keep the group on track and drive decision making. You may be tempted to add a recurring meeting to the calendar, but when you can, try to work these items into existing standing meetings instead, so you’re not adding more to people’s already overcrowded schedules - for example, you may decide that once a month your regular team meeting takes a more strategic focus instead of a tactical one. If you need to brainstorm, set vision, align roles, agree on goals, or do other creative and strategic discussions, a meeting will likely be your most efficient method for getting these activities done. Here’s how to do team collaboration right, even as you’re facing pandemic- and remote work-related challenges. How do you get team members to come together to focus their time and attention on your project?Īs a time management coach, I know to be most effective at work, you have to be purposeful about how you invest every precious minute. Many individuals have extra work on their plates, due to Covid-19-related complexities and hiring freezes, and their schedules are more disparate than ever, juggling working from home with child care and remote schooling. The logistics of collaboration are not the only obstacle facing team members. For team collaboration to work remotely, you and your teammates must be clear and strategic about how you will collaborate. And collaboration isn’t effective when you loosely and sporadically message about initiatives and don’t have a structured approach to answering important questions, aligning team members, and driving to the main goal. Catching up on the latest projects and exciting new experiments - or where a project may be struggling - could easily be covered during frequent hallway chats, but those opportunities won’t happen in a remote environment unless you’re intentional. Organic collaboration is almost impossible when you’re working remotely. Done wrong, collaborative projects can feel like a waste of time where individuals spend more time talking about doing things than actually getting things done.Ĭollaboration is especially difficult now, during the pandemic. ![]() ![]() But even the best collaborations, filled with smart, capable, and experienced team members, can be a struggle. Team collaboration done right is a powerful force to align a group of individuals to accomplish a common goal in the most effective way possible. To get all of HBR’s content delivered to your inbox, sign up for the Daily Alert newsletter. In these difficult times, we’ve made a number of our coronavirus articles free for all readers. ![]()
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