Whether you are collaborating with a group in an office or workplace setting or having to work with a group via video conference, there are several things you can do to make the collaboration work well.  Even if you are not the ‘leader’ or the project manager you can guide the conversations to be productive if you work out some ground rules.   Agree with your group what the ground rules are, just like a meeting or committee might have.

Collaboration is based on mutual respect, empowerment, reciprocity, a sense of shared responsibility and especially role clarity. Make sure you have the right people in the group. Don’t get more people just like you, get people from other business groups or people who see things from a different perspective to join the group. Make sure they all know what the objective of the group is – the WHY of what you are trying to achieve.

One thing that often confounds a collaboration activity is that people will leave a meeting early, not show up or be distracted with other pressing matters. Make sure you have time and space to really spend quality time working on the issues. If you are working virtually make sure everyone knows the tools and can access the right files.

Early on during the collaboration it will be beneficial to have a roadmap and milestones – expectations about what will be achieved and where you want to get to. Set this up and share it with the group. The roadmap will evolve, it will also help people keep oriented to the task.

If you are the leader of the group, you will need to know when allow a conversation to flow and when to call a stop to it. Being dictatorial or inflexible in any collaborative or team situation only serves to alienate the contributors, and can threaten the achievement of goals or even the entire project.  Ensure that you exercise good judgement in relation to both people’s capacity and methods, so that your project can progress no matter what obstacles pop up along the way.

Carol

e: carol@onedaytraining.co.nz