What is the term for cooperating and working together to complete tasks and reach common goals?

Teamwork. We talk about it, we read about it, we do exercises to build it, and we even go to keynote speeches and workshops to understand how better to implement it in our organizations.

So, what is teamwork? And why do we talk about it so much? In this article, we’ll attempt to better define teamwork, go into greater depth on its integral role in today’s workplace, and help you learn how to create a collaborative environment where teamwork is central.    

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Defining teamwork

What is teamwork?
Teamwork is, “The process of working collaboratively with a group of people in order to achieve a goal. Teamwork is often a crucial part of a business, as it is often necessary for colleagues to work well together, trying their best in any circumstance. Teamwork means that people will try to cooperate, using their individual skills and providing constructive feedback, despite any personal conflict between individuals.” (Source: BusinessDictionary.com)

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Teamwork is selfless. It focuses on the end goal. Teamwork runs on the concept that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. It’s the classic “one plus one equals three” idea.

Personalities and skillsets differ which can create personal conflict. When the entire team focuses on doing great work, however, the team members’ differences turn into strengths and goals are met and even exceeded.

What is teamwork built on?
When people collaborate, they work together toward a common goal. Thus, the foundation for teamwork is a common goal. If each team member has a different agenda, collaboration will be difficult, and it will become much harder to produce exceptional work and achieve goals.

Ensure your team is set up to work together and collaborate effectively by clearly defining goals on a regular basis. Have frequent meetings with each individual team member to ensure that they understand and are in line with the goals of your team.

If any member of the team struggles to align themselves with your team’s goals, figure out why. Do your best to resolve conflicts of interest and determine differing goals. If a particular employee continually struggles to work toward the common goal of the team, it may be time to part ways.

Understanding the importance of teamwork in the workplace

Why is teamwork so important in the workplace?
There is very little disputation surrounding the importance of teamwork and collaboration at work. The vast majority seem to understand that working together is absolutely vital in today’s business world. In fact, research shows that nearly 3 in 4 employers rank teamwork and collaboration as “very important.”

Not only do leaders grasp that teamwork is important, they also understand why it’s so crucial. They seem to understand that the results of an initiative are greatly dependent on how well a team works together. A whopping 97% of corporate executives, employees, and educators believe a lack of alignment within a team directly impacts the outcome of a task or project.”

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The fact that most leaders grasp the importance of collaboration and teamwork is encouraging, as this understanding is vital to the success of an organization. With the business world changing almost constantly as new technologies and innovations emerge, companies need to collaborate in order to survive.

As teams work together to share their experiences and knowledge, they can come to strategic and creative solutions. Every employee brings different skills and perspectives to the table, and multiple viewpoints help companies find strategic approaches to continually innovate in today’s fast-paced world.

Though most understand the importance of teamwork, there is still a glaring problem that plagues many organizations– actually working as a team. Sadly, though the understanding is there, the application is often not. We’ll give you some tips on how you can foster collaboration within your company so you can better reach your goals.    

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Creating a collaborative work environment

With so many different personalities on any given team at work, fostering teamwork can be a real challenge. As mentioned earlier, however, if team members can all focus on a common goal, differences can become strengths.

How do you create an environment where this is possible? Dave Mattson, CEO and President of Sandler Training, has some great insights and several tips for fostering teamwork. In this article, we’ll highlight six of them and give our analysis on each.

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1. Get to know your team members
Team leaders, above all, should take it upon themselves to become friends with every member of their team. Regular one-on-one meetings can help with this, but a lot of getting to know someone comes from being around them and showing you care by listening and sharing in everyday conversation.

As leaders greater come to know and understand their team members, they’ll be able to help them grasp the goals of the team. Team members should also be encouraged to get to know each other. The better the team understands each other’s tendencies, skillsets, personalities, and working styles, the better collaboration will be.

2. Agree on a team mission
Remember how a common goal is the basis for teamwork? Leaders should guide the team in understanding individual roles and the team’s overall mission, but feedback and suggestions should always be welcomed. Hold a meeting to establish goals and clearly define individual responsibilities and watch as the team begins to work together.

3. Promote sharing
Since every personality is different, some team members may be naturally more vocal than others. Seek out those who don’t speak out as much and ask their opinion on projects. Often, the quieter ones have some of the best feedback and ideas. If you as a leader share thoughts, feedback, and ideas often, your whole team will feel more comfortable doing so.

4. Map goals and timelines
No one should have to wonder what the goals and milestones are and when certain tasks should be completed. Make them very clear and you’ll spend less time explaining so your team can spend more time collaboratively working.

5. Ensure clear communication
So many issues stem simply from miscommunication. Make it a goal to communicate effectively and efficiently. As you communicate well, others will learn to follow your example. Every time you communicate an assignment, make sure it was fully understood by asking if there are any questions.

6. Build the team relationship outside the office
Sometimes being in the office creates pressure to perform and doesn’t allow employees to fully express themselves. Facilitate casual gatherings outside of work that allow team members to voice their opinion. Having little parties can encourage unity and team building and naturally unveil personalities. This may even help you craft an awards strategy that fits best with your team.

Put it all together

We’ve walked through what teamwork is, why it’s important, and how you can foster it in your organization. Now it’s time to get to work on defining your own teamwork definition.

It’ll take some time to build a foundation where collaboration and teamwork can flourish, but once that foundation is built, productivity will soar and overall employee engagementand satisfaction will increase.

Be patient, take your time, and enjoy the process of creating a more collaborative environment within your company. The sooner you start, the sooner you’ll see the positive results.

In an age of digital workplaces, one needs to be highly successful at transfer of information. It’s impossible to take for granted that your colleagues know what you intended to convey. It is essential to develop methods of communication that ensure critical information is not misconstrued or dropped off entirely. Building a skillset that lets you transfer information with minimal loss is key to succeeding at collaboration.

2. A mindset for collaboration

It has long been a popular adage with digital work that collaboration cannot be taught. Good collaboration needs to be built as an ecosystem, and it’s important to realise that you’re a key part of that transformation. Collaboration requires a certain kind of open mindset that is more about the team than it is about you. It is important to approach everything with an open mind and discuss possibilities instead of challenges.

3. Learn to interact with technology

The work landscapes of the future will be rife with constantly changing and evolving technology. In such a scenario, it is important to understand how those technologies work, learn how to use them to drive collaboration. It’s not just enough to know what tools you need and gain a basic understanding of them. It is important that you master these technologies and their interfaces.

The benefits of collaboration

Effective collaboration brings many benefits to organizations that seek to succeed in an evolving environment. At the outset, a good collaborative work culture puts you at the head of the pack when it comes to competitiveness. An organization where employees collaborate effectively is already miles ahead of the competition. So what else does effective collaboration bring to your organization.

Benefits of effective collaboration in an organization.

1. Unfettered innovation
2. Collective knowledge
3. Enhanced teamwork
4. Maximum redundancy
5. Minimal oversight
6. Maximum performance
7. Effective analytics
8. Accessible data
9. Efficient processes
10. Overall happiness

Why is collaboration important to business success?

In the age of digital workplaces, globally distributed teams and remote work, new methods of collaboration take on a whole new meaning when it comes to business success. Legacy tools and good old conference rooms have given way to information superhighways, integrated tools, powerful data analytics and virtual meetings. In such an atmosphere, businesses that still rely on traditional methods of collaboration will find themselves quickly outgunned and outdated against their competition.

Your organization might have great collaboration already in place. However, the fundamentals are changing as quickly as we can adapt to them and there is a real need to align teams to collaborate better in the age of digital work. Collaboration at its best improves overall productivity, performance and creativity in the organization by channelling disparate skillsets into well aligned teams that work efficiently together towards common goals. Effective collaboration increases employee satisfaction, higher success rates, better team performance and overall business success.

Importance of Collaboration in an Organization

The most important thing effective collaboration can achieve within an organization is making employees happier, reducing stress by making work easier, making way for better work relationships and reducing overall stress.

It is important to remember that traditional levels of collaboration that you think you might have achieved have already become outdated in the new normal. The organizations that will succeed in this decade will be the ones who have managed to successfully fuse a digital culture with an agile workplace to best derive the benefits of new-age collaboration.

Off-the-bat, better and more effective collaboration gives an organization a huge advantage when it comes to brainstorming, value creation and equal opportunity. If you think of an organization as an automobile, collaboration becomes the undefined force that makes it all work together like clockwork. You can increase efficiency, enhance job satisfaction and employee retention by placing a high level of importance on collaboration.

A few things you need to remember about collaboration within an organization in the era of digital transformations.

1. Your employees are telling you about what works. Listen intently
2. Reward teamwork over individual achievements
3. Obtain a powerful collaboration platform like a digital workplace tool to measure metrics and analyze performance data
4. Digital collaboration is tricky. The key is to persist and fix flaws on the go
5. Tools are evolving and it is important to continue adapting to trends
6. A culture of collaboration begins with leadership
7. Collaboration creates happiness, success is merely the result
8. Technology is important, but the strategy is essential to collaboration success
9. Collaboration inspires responsibility, ensures employee freedom
10. Micromanagement is counterproductive to collaboration

How does collaboration improve work? ​

It’s pretty common for businesses to think that the only benefit of collaboration is better coordination between employees. While that’s one of the advantages, it certainly isn’t the only one.

Think of the effects of collaboration from three different perspectives – operations, employees, and customers.

1. Operations

1. When done right, collaboration speeds up processes.
2. When people, resources, and processes work in tandem, it results in greater efficiency in the business.
3. Collaborative operations also facilitate increased transparency.

2. Employees

• Collaboration gives employees a sense of purpose, which boosts their satisfaction levels at work.
• It enables the pooling of varied skillsets and data for better outcomes.
• A culture of collaboration helps keep remote workers and freelancers invested in organizational goals.
• Collaboration necessitates cutting through departmental silos. This encourages big picture perspective.

3. Customers

A truly connected workplace makes for happier, more motivated employees who increase organizational productivity and efficiency. When everything within the organization functions like clockwork, you can focus on your customers and ensure that their expectations are exceeded every time.

So how can a business collaborate better? More meetings? Heavens, no!

What is successful collaboration?

Successful collaboration is when teams comprising people with diverse backgrounds, strengths and skills work together to deliver work with high productivity, efficiency and speed. In simpler words, it is the phenomenon of a team working closely together to deliver successful results at work. There are many ways to achieve successful collaboration, however, often, the most important ingredients are flexibility, agility, resourcefulness, skilled teams and a culture that is geared for growth.

Kissflow Digital Workplace – powering effective collaboration

Kissflow Digital Workplace is a potent choice for collaboration software. It’s designed with ease of use in mind and makes high-quality collaboration an absolute breeze. It facilitates file sharing and content creation of varied formats. Confidential information can be protected using secret channels.

Communication can be more layered with nested comments. You can conduct surveys and make announcements effortlessly. Kissflow also has a powerful search feature that can help users find the necessary information in an instant. Kissflow makes for a happier, more connected, driven workforce. With better collaboration, you’ll see productivity soar.