5 teamwork tips for 2019

Teamwork and collaboration between stakeholders can make or break a project. Organizations are increasingly aware of the role team cooperation plays in their success on the market.

That’s why they invest in innovative tools that break the barriers between different departments, allowing the formation of cross-departmental teams that drive innovation and boost the efficiency of the entire company.

But tools aren’t enough to ensure a high level and quality of collaboration at your company. You also need to know what the latest teamwork best practices are and how to implement them at your organization.

In this article, I take a closer look at some recent collaboration trends tips are essential for every organization that wants to achieve success in 2019.

Conflict is part and parcel of work carried out in every team. It’s absolutely normal for conflicts to happen when people work together on one project. You may consider some forms of conflict as signs that your team members have different perspectives about how to complete specific tasks. In that context, conflict is like two ideas clashing with each other to become a creative force in your team.

But some conflicts arise from communication issues – and they require your attention. Your team needs to have processes in place that allow managing conflicts. For example, if a team member has an issue, who should they speak to first and how should they handle it?

Formalize a procedure for managing team conflicts. Make your expectations clear from the very beginning. Equip your team with a set of practices to deal with challenging situations. That’s how you can help your team resolve problems quickly and keep a good working environment.

Make sure that every team member is always doing their part and not more than what the definition of their job involves. That’s how you get your people to get the job done well and trust you to guide other team members in the same way. It’s essential that everyone in your team knows what their job is and where they need to step in when support is required.

To address the challenges of teamwork, smart team leaders invest in project management platforms that allow keeping all the project information in one place and sharing it with the team, across departments, or even the entire organization and all project stakeholders.

The market is full of project management tools that help in introducing transparency, formalizing workflows, and allowing team members to collaborate more efficiently with countless other features.

One of the leading solutions is Atlassian’s Jira, a comprehensive project management platform that works for both technical and business teams. Using its functionalities, project managers can effectively oversee the project’s progress by assigning tasks, creating workflows, and having all the progress reports delivered to them through performance analytics dashboards.

Thanks to such tools, team leaders can be sure that everyone is on the same page and has access to all the information required for the project’s success.

Some teams don’t really care about their job or the company’s business objectives. They do the work required of them and seem to be in harmony – but deep down, they aren’t okay. Lack of commitment and buy-in can create a negative culture behind that surface.

And that’s how organizations miss out on all the positive energy and enthusiasm that comes with employees who put a lot of effort and passion into their contributions. That can only happen when team members feel like they’re part of one team set to meet a goal.

Do your best to empower individual team members. Encourage them to share their ideas and become part of the decision-making process. Flatten the hierarchy in your team and involve team members at every level of the project. That’s how you develop a commitment to the company’s mission and goals.

One of the most serious mistakes team leaders make is not managing expectations properly. It’s vital that every single team member is on the same page when it comes to project deliverables and key business goals of the organization. You don’t want to create a huge communication gap between project managers and the team. Most of the time, that’s the reason behind project failure.

Another mistake project managers make is that they fail to share information about the project across the team. It doesn’t make sense to expect the team to succeed when they don’t have all the information and facts required for that.

When project information is siloed, the project will suffer in the balance between its progress and client expectations. Silos can also be threatening to projects that involve teams from different departments. If supervising staff doesn’t invest in building bridges and encouraging cross-team communication, they risk that the project becomes a failure.

Recognizing a job well done is essential for building confidence and high morale among your team members. Praise your people for excellent work. That will encourage them to keep it up.

How about offering team members a small incentive like special delivery of doughnuts when they manage to finish a month meeting set goals? You can even create a larger objective like a party when the project is completed on time.

It doesn’t matter what becomes your reward. The important thing is that you find a way for your team members to connect on a level that’s not entirely work-related. That’s how they get to build a strong and lasting bond.

During some weeks of hard work, your team members will be spending more time together than with their families. Make sure that you open the communication line about the completed work which includes feedback, sharing insights, giving praise, or addressing problems the team might be experiencing.

Teamwork is all about communication processes that allow delivering work smoothly and collaborating on project efficiently. There are many ways in which team leaders can increase the quality of communication in their teams, but I believe that the best strategy is introducing a project management tool.

Jira is an excellent example of a versatile project management platform that allows both technical and business team to communicate with one another, become more transparent, and complete their goals better.

If you have any questions about implementing project management tools like Jira at your organization, reach out to our consultants – we have plenty of experience in introducing new tools and processes to improve team productivity for our clients.