Cultivating Collaboration: the cornerstone of a positive company culture
People in a collaborative workshop
How your people get together, meet and collaborate matters - it requires intention and thoughtful consideration
How does the way you come together affect your company culture? This is not simply just about social meet ups, but really working together to achieve team and organisational goals. After all, culture must always be diffused through the actual work the company does.
And in organisations where remote or hybrid is the established norm, being intentional, that is designing this aspect of your culture, is more important than ever.
‘How do you do things round here?’
Consider a new joiner, impressed with the promise of a highly collaborative and inclusive culture of work, looking forward to impactful, well run meetings with clear outcomes.
They will certainly expect to know what the expectations are for the different modes of working - that might be fully remote for deep focus work, and in-person for high intensity sessions. Personal development may be always in-person, other sessions might be done remotely, and so on.
If this unclear and the approach is very much ‘anything goes’, or there are no helpful guides or clear expected behaviours, then person new to the team and company is going to feel unsure and potentially even worse, they may feel let down very early in their employee experience.
There are more options for when, where and how to collaborate in hybrid work environments, but organisations and their leaders have to intentionally create those opportunities, provide the tools and any additional help needed in skills like facilitation.
Leaders and how to show up
How team leaders do those high priority, strategic sessions really matters too. These can often set the tone and expectations for the whole organisation. If you are looking to encourage people to meet and work together in person it’s not a great look if leaders rarely do it themselves. Neuroscience shows that people mimic leaders, especially in times of uncertainty.
If these ‘high priority’ sessions are done in pretty much the same way as a more informal weekly get together - without facilitation, a bit ad hoc and lacking any visual shared workspace to work in both synchronously and asynchronously, then that might suggest a haphazard approach to collaboration that might give the impression that the way you collaborate doesn’t really matter. Perception matters. Preparation and setting the right tone is important - if a team meeting or session feels like it’s not important, chances are people will believe it isn’t.
Of course leaders will have a preferred style and way, but with no consistency or guard rails, poor preparation and unskilled facilitation then you might be inadvertently creating a culture of ‘collaboration chaos’.
Collaboration requires a strategy
Don’t underestimate the importance of a well thought out collaboration strategy, these are priorities you consider and choices you need to make. You’ll need clear rules based on different ‘modes’. Leaders must learn the skills, tools and techniques of collaboration, and it is for organisations to help them with this.
This could be critical to the culture of your company, the power your teams have to deliver high performance, and how your people come together do their best work.