Benefits of Team Collaboration

Digital Marketing - Study Notes:

The benefits of effective team collaboration can be divided into two categories: project or process benefits, and personal benefits.

Project and process benefits

When a group comes together to collaborate, it inevitably results in the sharing of knowledge and experience. By the end of the collaboration, long-held beliefs are likely to have been challenged, established systems and work practices pulled apart, and workable shortcuts identified. As a result, specific skills and ‘hacks’ that help achieve project or task success get widely distributed throughout an organization and even become commonplace. This amplifies the positive impact of an effective collaborating team throughout the company, and future collaborations can build on its success.

At the end of a successful collaboration, team members themselves are better equipped to bring projects to fruition, having worked through various shared processes and systems in different cultures and environments. This, in turn, should eventually result in greater and wider organizational success.

Team members have also learnt how and when mistakes occur, and what they can learn from them. In effect, they become ‘bloodhounds’ who are constantly seeking to streamline and improve future projects, processes, and systems.

Personal benefits

Working with a group of people on a common project, with a common goal, is a powerful driver of personal success. Being part of an effective collaborating team can help you earn a reputation as a person who gets stuff done and who achieves results.

It can also help you to feel good. When you engage with others in the collaboration process, positive endorphins are released. You are more likely to experience powerful feelings like camaraderie and a sense of fun in your work environment. In addition, you enjoy an increased sense of personal worth from belonging to an effective team. If the team is successful with its assigned project, you will soon start to recognize the powerful feelings generated by success, and will want to replicate those feelings again and again into the future. Success feels good.

As an individual within a collaborating team, life can be fast-paced and exciting. As you get used to working collaboratively, you will probably find that your own pace of work - and success rate - increases too.

After successful collaborations, individual achievements are likely to be recognized, formally acknowledged, and celebrated. You may find yourself getting promoted based on your involvement in a successful collaboration. At the very least, you will enjoy increased personal recognition throughout your organization, and will be more likely to be invited to join future team collaborations.

How to reap benefits

To reap the many benefits that collaboration can bring, aim to follow these guidelines:

• Always be open to new processes and people.
• Police your own team, and set high standards for your work practices.
• React positively and assertively to failure, in order to conquer it and get back on track.
• Suspend judgment on subjects in which you are not an expert.
• Be open and receptive to working with people who use different methods or approaches than you do.

Learn to work within the dynamic of a team collaboration. While it may seem faster to work on a solution on your own or with a very small cohort, it is in fact the wider collaborating team that does the real heavy lifting.