808 Sicario is a music production team also a creative collective at large, located in Lagos, Nigeria.
Why Is Teamwork Important:
I would say it is essential and team collaboration is growing in importance. Let me explain why.
Collaboration drives creativity because innovation emerges from a series of sparks – never a single flash of insight.
Well maybe not always from a series of sparks, but a vast majority of times anyway. No question. And certainly a great reason to work with your team on collaboration. It takes a great entrepreneur with vision to start a business, but it requires strong leadership collaboration skills and a collaboration of many people to make it a success.
Collaboration is working together to achieve a goal. It is a recursive process where two or more people or organizations work together to realize shared goals. Note that collaboration is NOT cooperation … it is much more than the intersection of common goals. It is a collective determination to reach an identical objective by sharing knowledge, learning, and building consensus.
Collaboration is an attribute that cuts across many businesses and business processes. We need to make it an intentional process and cultivate it into any team’s culture. That’s where leadership comes in as a key ingredient, to drive the collaborative process to make the whole team better than the sum of the parts.
It all starts with individual traits and skills with team members of your group , but then extends to learning collaborative group skills. You need both … they are very interactive obviously. I will examine both. Let’s start with individual collaborative traits and skills:
One of the most important traits you should look for is the ability to get along well with people. A people person … someone who is concerned for the wellbeing and success of the team.
People who are very self-motivated make great team members. Always looking for ways they can contribute, not for themselves, but for the team’s success.
Your success depends on people who take the initiative and are prepared in advance.
Look for ones who pay attention to the little details. They are the ones who are rarely surprised.
People who are most accountable for their actions make the best collaborators. Almost never find reasons to point a finger for blame. Very destructive to your team’s collaborative efforts.
Create more energy than consume
Avoid those that need lots of attention and the team’s energy. For the best team collaboration you need those that create more energy than they consume.
You don’t need those that are hesitant to speak up. Nor do you need those that are always pushing the edge. But ones that are ready to challenge points they readily disagree with. Not just to point out the bad, but to offer good alternatives.
Inspire new ideas in group
The ultimate goal is to create chemistry in individuals who are looking to inspire and bring out the best in others on the team.
Ok, those are the traits we look for and train in our individual staff. Here is how we develop group collaboration skills to build a great collaborative team:
Trust is a key element we all need to set aside vulnerability, but it is hard to build, and easy to lose. It is not built on words, but through actions and evidence. Only when it works can a team address the necessary issues to win.
Preach adaptation and change
Change is the only constant in business, so make it your competitive advantage. Initiate change rather than react to it, and give clear instructions to help the team understand why the change is necessary, and how it will make the situation better.
Foster continuous communication
Communication is the glue that forms the bond between leaders and teams, and holds great teams together. Credibility is a required base.
Conflict and then consensus
Conflicts and fights are not the same thing. Conflicts are normal and required factual push backs in business, whereas fights are emotional, often personal, disagreements which do not lead forward to consensus.
Establish structure as well delegation and control
The challenge is to strike the right balance. With none, things fall into chaos, but too much can have the effect of stifling innovation and creativity.
In general, any decision is better than no decision. Usually a blended approach is the best, between independent decisions, and collaborative decisions factoring in the best team input.
Recognition drives motivation and human behavior, and human behavior drives results. Recognition validates people and their purpose. Always celebrate even the smallest successes. An absolute must have.
Create continuous learning experiences
We all have a desire to learn and grow. The best learning opportunities are experience and sharing .
In today’s fast-moving digital business age, we face an entirely new environment for innovation and collaboration. The best companies are the best collaborators.
In the new networked world, more and more business will be done through collaboration within, as well as, between companies. This will occur for a very simple reason: the next layer of value creation … whether in technology, marketing, service or manufacturing- are becoming so complex that few companies or company departments are able to master them alone.
