Humans crave collaboration both in life and at work.
Connecting with others improves your mood, boosts resilience, and helps you avoid loneliness. And these benefits are especially pertinent to workplace environments that thrive on collaboration to reach common goals.
But in professional settings, interacting may not come naturally. You may want to keep your head in your tasks and avoid social distractions — and that’s reasonable.
Although you might prefer jobs for introverts that avoid group work, even the most independent jobs ask for some. You’ll sit in meetings, seek feedback, and brainstorm with coworkers, no matter where you work or what you do. And learning the power of collaborative working is the first step to approaching it with ease.
Here’s everything you need to know about the benefits of collaboration and how to harness them, along with how great teamwork helps individuals, groups, and companies thrive.
Why collaboration is important
According to an analysis from the New York Times, social interaction is great for your health — both emotional and physical. People with strong social health live longer, experience higher self-esteem, and avoid stress.
But collaboration is important for more reasons than just individual health. It also:
Creates space for different perspectives
Collaboration among employees gives everyone access to diverse perspectives and opposing views. Even if you’re an expert at your craft and work well alone, a teammate can offer a solution to a problem you wouldn’t have thought of or teach you a skill that lets you complete tasks more efficiently.
Take the example of cross-functional development teams. Developers learn client-interaction tips from their marketing colleagues, and developers help marketers break down complex tech ideas for clients.
Supports an inevitable process
Every job involves some collaboration, whether you’re working remotely for a startup or in person at a small local office. And productive teamwork takes practice — no matter the format.
Without the right tools, any group can accidentally build information silos or have trouble resolving conflict. Acknowledging the importance of collaboration is the first step to identifying teamwork issues and learning how to solve them.
Lets you do more
With group collaboration, you can take on more complicated projects than you could have alone. You gain access to different skills, increase your capacity, and get help checking for errors. And some projects just need more hands on deck to complete everything on time.
3 benefits of collaboration for individuals
The benefits of teamwork don’t just involve group success. In-person and online collaboration help you grow as a person. The process of collaboration also:
1. Promotes skill-sharing
Teamwork is an opportunity to learn from your peers. Everyone always has hard and soft skills you don’t, and watching them work helps you mimic their behavior and learn along the way. If you want to work on your active listening skills, find a team member who’s a good listener and watch their process.
2. Boosts morale
You can only get so much done independently. When your team helps finish important projects fast or incite significant change, you can see how your hard work pays off and celebrate with the people around you. Since your projects and achievements will be bigger, so will the reward. And employee morale brings a better workplace environment for everyone.
3. Increases confidence
Collaboration gives everyone a chance to spot issues and share solutions. And when you have the chance to speak up and get feedback from others, you might feel more confident in your abilities.
4 benefits of collaboration for teams
Every department benefits from team collaboration, and not just because its members are happier and healthier. Here are four ways that groups collectively improve their work with collaboration:
1. Aids problem-solving
Obstacles are inevitable, and on a team, everyone shares the responsibility of solving them. Team members with different skills bring different problem-solving strategies to the table, helping everyone resolve roadblocks faster and more efficiently.
Take the example of a data breach. A communications lead keeps clients updated, while an IT lead works to restore safe system use, and a documentation lead works to create a record of an incident. They couldn’t solve the problem without each other.
2. Prevents information silos
Team members have to share information to run efficient projects, and good collaboration makes sure that information never hits blocks. Teams that collaborate well use tools, like project dashboards, that display tasks and assignments so everyone’s always on the same page. This focus on sharing means that important data and communication don’t fall through the cracks.
3. Promotes efficiency
Teams that collaborate well often finish work faster because they’re more productive together. Information-sharing ensures no one hits a bottleneck when they don’t have access to a file, and skill-sharing minimizes the risk of error because everyone’s better equipped to deal with problems. More people means more knowledge, and with that comes better work.
4. Fosters productive meetings
Imagine a team that doesn’t communicate well, isn’t willing to work together, and picks at issues without envisioning solutions. This group wouldn’t get much done in a meeting, let alone a whole project.
Instead, teams with a collaborative mindset create meeting agendas that respect everyone’s time and establish rules of engagement that foster respect, like who gets to talk when and how long the session should last. Productive meetings address key issues, identify and solve roadblocks, and let everyone return to work quickly.
4 benefits of collaboration for companies
When individuals take pride in their work and teams perform tasks efficiently, companies see the benefits. Here are a few reasons why excellent collaboration is essential to organizations:
1. Promotes organizational change
Not everyone loves change. Some people adapt to it better than others. But change is inevitable in professional environments, whether an organization adopts a new software or adjusts its core values. In a healthy collaborative environment, group members who embrace change can help those who resist it — even if just by passing on positive encouragement.
2. Discourages vertical hierarchies
Traditional hierarchies encourage authority bias and prevent everyone from contributing to decisions. But collaborative structures that encourage communication between people at all levels avoid those problems. Any employee can have a great idea or make an important observation that saves time and resources, and collaboration allows that insight.
3. Creates enjoyable workplaces
Workplace friendships are key to avoiding burnout and creating a healthy and supportive environment, and they can’t happen without teamwork. Active collaboration fosters interpersonal connection and helps teams bond. With the right interactions, employees shouldn’t feel afraid of managers, in competition with their peers, or as if their merits matter less than those of others. Instead, they recognize their flaws and know everyone has their back.
4. Encourages inclusivity
Collaborative environments are inclusive in that they respect ideas from all minds without discrimination, whether that’s during brainstorming sessions or the hiring process. Teams who work well together respectfully navigate cultural differences and learn to validate everyone’s ideas, creating an environment that encourages diversity.
How to avoid collaboration overload
Collaboration has countless benefits for individuals, teams, and organizations. But that doesn’t mean it always works. Collaboration at its core is a positive thing because it helps you meet team goals, but the demand it puts on employee time and company resources can create challenges.
The good news is that collaboration overload — a phenomenon in which teams communicate too often, breaking focus and losing time — is avoidable. Here are a few tactics to try:
Get the right collaboration tools
Productivity tools that streamline communication worthy investments for collaborative teams. Instead of losing time on inefficient email chains or searching for files, groups can centralize work in one place. These include chat tools like Slack or project management tools like Notion.
Using collaboration tools right means finding a combination that works. One team could use a project management platform to provide better task visibility for all members and a separate tool to host documents like knowledge bases and onboarding guides. But another might benefit from keeping everything in one place.
Think critically about meetings
Before inviting your team to a group meeting, ask yourself: “Does this need to be a meeting, or could it be a quick message?” Sometimes, sharing information is more effective over email. Avoiding excessive meetings saves employees time and helps prevent collaboration overload.
Embrace asynchronous communication
Checking Slack and seeing 50+ unread messages is overwhelming, especially if you’re short on time. And with that in mind, you can’t expect every team member to always respond to messages right away. An employee could be in a flow state and unable to check the chat. Or a teammate could be out of office.
Expecting excessive communication can be a key factor in collaboration overload, so try to limit emails and text conversations to necessary ones only. Asynchronous communication is still a great way to collaborate, as long as you clarify expectations and try not to overwhelm.
The secret to productive teamwork is healthy collaboration
Collaboration doesn’t just happen. It’s a soft skill that requires the participation and dedication of teams, leaders, and organizations — and getting it right is worth it.
Healthy collaboration cultivates a friendly and accepting company culture, increases well-being, and makes employees feel a greater sense of pride in their work. Help set your team up with tools that facilitate communication, and encourage everyone to speak up and share skills. The extensive benefits of collaboration might surprise you.
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