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November 19, 2006Creating a Collaborative Workplace
Creating a productive and collaborative workplace is not easy, but as a small-business owner, building such an environment starts with you. Here are some tips:
1. Make sure everyone on the team knows exactly what the mission and goals are.
2. Clearly articulate everyone's roles and responsibilities.
3. Cultivate a variety of work styles, talents, and skills to ensure a creative mix of perspective, experience, and thought.
4. Create a relaxed work climate with an emphasis on collaboration.
5. Take advantage of lessons learned to leverage what has worked in the past and what missteps to avoid.
6. Confront problems as soon as they arise to clear the air and allow the work and relationships to move forward.
7. Empower the team to carry out its work.
Mallary Tytel
President and Founder
Healthy Workplaces
Sioux Falls, S.D.
10:29 PM
Comments
Mallary Tytel raises some excellent points with respect to creating a collaborative workplace. I would like to add, however, that it is nearly impossible to establish a collaborative workplace without establishing trust in the workplace. When trust is absent, relationships are characterized by an adversarial attitude: me vs. you; us vs. them. Rather than goodwill, there may be deep, often hidden animosities and resentments. We struggle against one another for what we want. The more you win, the more I lose and vice versa. Respect is lost and our performance is compromised as our energies go into manipulation, coercion, and protection rather than working towards our shared vision.
Organizations that create a collaborative workplace are those that know how to create a climate of trust among all of their employees. Doing so is not easy and requires the alignment of philosophy and organizational design. However, even more important than these elements is the quality of person-to-person interactions. Trust is a highly subjective experience that is strengthened or weakened each day through our interactions, the respect we demonstrate, the way we talk to people, and the way we go about working out our differences of opinion and competing needs.
Randy Bancino
Managing Partner
Profitable Growth Partners, LLC.
Posted by: Randy Bancino at November 22, 2006 03:55 PM
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