Insights on Cross-Functional Collaboration
If you’ve ever played a sport, you’d know that you can’t win a game alone. Games are collaborative efforts that require teams to leverage the strengths of each respective player to meet a common goal which is often scoring enough points to eventually win a game in some way. This same idea can be applied to teams and businesses.
Collaboration is a key ingredient that many businesses and teams are missing. The core idea when it comes to collaboration amongst teams is making sure you have a cohesive plan to get everyone on the same page working towards the same goal. However, we often note that teams are complex and with this complexity comes unforeseen challenges.
People come from such diverse and extensive backgrounds and collaboration is essential to ensure these different expectations are brought towards a unified, common goal. With this in mind, let’s uncover some key insights surrounding cross-collaboration.
Five Cross-Collaboration Insights
Giving A Voice
“Giving a voice to everyone,” allows you to collect a “diversity of voices”. This diversity can be used to develop a framework based on the experiences of individuals at all different levels within an organization. Only then can you establish true authenticity which is often rooted in the collective perspectives of all individuals, not solely those within leadership or those with power.
Solving Complex Problems
When it comes to complex problems, collaboration is often the only way to uncover insights from a diversity of lived experiences that are essential to the overall success of an idea. Many times problems need to be analyzed from different angles and from individuals of different disciplines. Each person then can be provided the opportunity to speak their own “language” and communicate in a way that allows them to learn from one another to see a problem in its entirety.
Appreciating Knowledge Exchange
Collaboration is very useful when it comes to establishing and fostering knowledge exchanges. By practicing being empathetic during these exchanges, you create an environment where everyone feels safe to discuss their ideas and openly argue on topics while engaging in design thinking.
Learning to Adapt
Working in a cross-functional environment requires every individual on the team to adapt. Flexibility is a skill often required to effectively find ways to communicate with one another to understand each other’s perspectives. We must be flexible in changing our minds and learn that we don’t have the solution to every problem at hand.
Focusing On Listening
When you give your group a voice and focus on allowing everyone to bring their ideas forth, it’s important to not forget to also practice active listening. When engaging in active listening that means you’re focused merely on listening and absorbing new information. All comments, judgments, and remarks are reserved for a better time in the conversation, if appropriate. When leveraged, active listening allows teams to develop stronger bonds and relationships as individuals are more focused and engaged instead of spending the time thinking of a remark or a corresponding response.
Final Thoughts
Sometimes you have to sit back and remind yourself, you’re not the smartest person in the room. We all bring our own unique challenges, perspectives, and insight to the table.
No idea is simply too small and with our individualized approaches and ideas working towards a common goal from different angles, we will then begin to make a change.
Are you ready to adapt and make the changes required for effective cross-functional collaboration in your teams?
