In part 1, we learnt about the different types of team collaboration. Now we are going to delve into what you can do to foster team collaboration within and between your teams.

In my experience you really only need 3 things:

1. Clear goals
2. Clear Roles & Responsibilities
3. Clear Rules of Engagement

Let’s tackle the first item, clear goals. What are clear goals? Why do we need clear goals? Isn’t it a no brainer that all businesses/teams /departments/projects have clear goals? It’s just common sense!

Well, you also know what they say about common sense right? It’s not so common!

So what exactly do I mean by clear goals? 5-star hotels are great examples of collaboration within and between teams. If you have ever stayed at a 5-star hotel, you will notice that your stay is pleasant, seamless and you feel like everyone knows exactly what you want. Sometimes even before you know it.

How do they pull this off? Well, they have a very clear goal! The overarching goal is to ensure the guest has a pleasant and memorable stay. Within each team, they then have their individual team goals that align with the overarching goal. So for the front office, it is to ensure that the guest is greeted warmly upon arrival and check-in and enquiries dealt with promptly and efficiently. For house-keeping, it is ensuring that the guest rooms are welcoming upon check-in and cleaned immaculately on a daily basis.

Now think back to your team. Are they clear on what the overarching goal is? Are they clear on the individual team goals? If they are not, how can you help them get clear?

For example, “Make $50k in sales every month”, is an acceptable goal for a sales team, but isn’t an acceptable goal at the organisational or business level. An acceptable goal at this level would be ‘Produce top quality, sustainable and ecological electrical cars ’.

Once you have clear goals, the next thing you need to have are clear roles and responsibilities for your team.

Going back to the hotel example, what would happen if we just assembled the staff, and told them, “Right. We need some people to be at the front desk, some people to be clean up the rooms, some people to cook and some people to work in the hotel restaurant. Make sure someone is there at all times, because we run a tight ship. We need to be around when our guests need us.”

What do you think is going to happen?

Utter chaos, that’s what. The best case scenario is, you will get a lot of overlaps in terms of people and tasks. But the more likely scenario is, you will have major gaps. No one will want to work the mid-night shift, or sign up for the ‘tough’ jobs and you will have too many people signing up for the ‘easier’ jobs. Seriously, who likes cleaning toilets?

So, to ensure we have a highly effective team, we not only need clear goals, but we need clear roles and responsibilities as well.

• Every team is very clear on their R&R within the hotel
• Every team member is very clear on their R&R within the team

The team members are also very clear on how their teams fit into the bigger picture of running a 5-star hotel.

This brings us to the last point of having clear rules of engagement. What des this entail? As the team lead it is your responsibility to set the guidelines on how the team operates.

Examples of rules of engagement are:

1. We are one team.
2. When one team member fails, the whole team fails
3. We respect each other

Have some fun with this. Come up with these with your team. This will increase buy in and will reduce the need for you to be the enforcer.

The key to this last point is enforcement. If you set rules and you don’t enforce them, then you are basically telling your team, “You can operate any which way you want, it doesn’t really matter. You want to discriminate against pregnant women, go ahead.”

If you notice certain team members are not abiding by the rules of engagement, you need to step in quickly and fix it. If they continually flout the rules, you may need to take the harsh step. All it takes is one bad apple to spoil the lot.

So a quick recap, in order to foster collaboration, you need 3 things:

1. Clearly defined and communicated goals
2. Clearly defined and communicated roles and responsibilities
3. Clearly defined and communicated rules of engagement

What is one new action you can take tomorrow to foster greater collaboration in your teams? Please leave a comment below.

Visit Empower Coaching page to find out more about Steph's work.

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