Creating a common goal that drives teamwork
When you have a team that truly collaborates, it’s a wonderful thing. Harmonious working with all team members working toward a collective goal, as information is shared openly, not only positively impacts organisational results, it also improves individual performance and effectiveness. When your team gels, new starters get up to speed faster, your team becomes more agile, and efficiency increases. The question is, how to motivate team collaboration?
How important is it to motivate team collaboration in the workplace?
Consider the findings of two workplace surveys:
- A work.com study found that 97% of executives and employees believe that collaboration in the workplace directly impacts the outcome of a project or task
- A Fierce, Inc. survey found that 86% of 1,400 respondents blamed lack of collaboration for workplace failures
It is no surprise that these opposing positions are so closely matched. The positive effects of collaboration and negative effects of dissociation are two sides of the same coin.
The mistake of focussing on process-based collaboration
A common mistake made by many organisations in their effort to motivate team collaboration is to focus on process. They mistakenly believe that by providing collaborative tools, technology, and environment, then greater collaboration will follow.
Investment into tools that enable teamwork, and spaces that remove physical barriers to openness, merely set the scene for collaboration to take place. They don’t provide the impetus. For people to want to work together, and use collaborative tools to their full potential, organisations must motivate team collaboration by engaging employees in a single vision.
The dynamics of vision in collaboration
It is possible for people to believe they share the same vision, but those visions to be completely different. Take the example of a couple booking their annual holiday. They both write down their wish lists, and come up with identical desires:
- Warm and sunny
- Plenty of fresh air
- Opportunity to exercise
- No more than five hours to travel
Despite this similarity, the holidays of which both are thinking could be very different. One visualises a cycling holiday in Cornwall, while the other dreams of a golfing getaway in Spain.
These dynamics of vision are at play in the workplace, too. Though your vision is conveyed in the same words to all your employees, those words are likely be visualised differently by different people. If this happens, there is no common vision to motivate team collaboration, and your business ojjectives are likely to remain unaccomplished.
Thus, helping people adopt a collective vision is the key to motivate team collaboration in the workplace.
How we create vision to motivate team collaboration
Whether onboarding new employees or conducting an organisational change programme, helping your employees to experience the same vision of the future is imperative to creating a collaborative environment.
In our work, we combine constructive conversations with a powerful visual depiction of meaning. We work with our clients to make sure what we produce conveys the real meaning of the plethora of words, ideas and opinions that they want to include. The result is a visual depiction of an agreed collective goal or objective supported by a strong story and narrative – a common vision to which all employees can relate and work toward.
This is the basis of how to motivate team collaboration through vision – by creating a real picture that acts as a point of reference. This focuses ideation on a single vision rather than a range of different interpretations. The result is meaningful and constructive discussion that serves to develop teams around a well-defined (and singularly understood) collective vision.
To discover how our Learning Map could help to motivate your team to more effective collaboration, get in touch today.
