It can be easy to lose sight of collaboration best practices with deadlines looming overhead, but implementing them throughout the entire project will help optimize team performance.
While meetings can be a valuable time for collaboration, unnecessarily long meetings can be a collaboration killer. When scheduling a meeting, remember these tips:
· Lose status update meetings and use a software tool instead.
· Only invite people who are absolutely necessary. Don’t waste other people’s time.
· Create a goal-oriented agenda and stick to it.
· End your meeting by clarifying everyone’s next steps.
Brainstorming meetings can help spark collaborative thinking and great new ideas. But when brainstorming goes wrong, it can actually discourage team members from contributing — or even worse, make them feel like their opinions aren’t valued.
When embarking on a brainstorming session, try one of these techniques to make it more effective and empowering:
· Brain writing: The team leader shares the topic with the team, and the team members individually write down their ideas. This creates a safe space for everyone to come up with ideas individually before any discussion begin.
· Figuring storming: Think about how a person such as your boss, a famous celebrity, or a successful CEO might handle the situation. It’s like role playing, but with a creative problem in mind.
· Brain-netting: Create a communal folder in your project management platform where your team members (especially remote workers) can jot down ideas and share them with the entire team.
· Rapid ideation: Clarify the ideas and solutions you want your team to brainstorm. Set time limit and have your team come up with as many ideas as possible using whiteboards, post-its, or plain pen and paper.
· Round robin brainstorming: Gather in a circle and have each person offer an idea in turn, while a facilitator records each idea. Discussion starts only after everyone’s had a chance to share.
· Starbursting: Challenge the team to come up with as many questions as they can about your topic. Start with the 5 Ws: who, what, where, when, and why.
· Stepladder Technique: Once the topic is shared, everyone leaves the room except two members of the team. These two discuss the topic and their ideas. Then, one new member is added and will contribute his/her idea before the original two share theirs. Repeat the process until everyone from the original group is back in the room.