Collaboration with Teams
Wonder Pets, a popular children's cartoon series, shows three elementary classroom pets – Linny the Guinea Pig, Tuck the Turtle, and Ming-Ming the Duckling – working together as a trio of heroes rescuing baby animals as they demonstrate the benefits of teamwork. The show's theme song describes the Wonder Pets as being "not too big" and "not too tough" but most importantly, "when we work together we've got the right stuff." Linny, in the chorus, asks the others when there is trouble, "What's gonna work?" And the answer from Tuck and Ming-Ming is a firm "Teamwork!"
Teamwork is a popular answer to life's challenges. Educational systems preach the benefits of teamwork as children grow older. The benefits of teamwork and its sister concept of team collaboration have been demonstrated. For example, the benefits of teamwork and team collaboration were demonstrated in the famous 1950s study by social psychology pioneer Muzafer Sherif. Sherif showed that rivaling youths were willing to put aside their differences and cooperate and collaborate as teams in order to achieve mutually desired outcomes. These mutually desired outcomes were described by Sherif as "superordinate goals" and they fostered team collaboration making friends out of once enemy youths.
The lesson from Sherif is that youths will put aside individual or team differences and cooperate and collaborate as teams when motivated by shared goals. This lesson is at the heart of fostering team collaboration. Accordingly, team projects must have clearly identified goals that are shared by all individuals in order to motivate team collaboration.
MBA programs often divide coursework into team activities with the intention of challenging students to collaborate with teammates for obtainment of classroom tasks. Students are encouraged to put aside individual differences valuing team collaboration. These team collaboration activities are considered a necessary part of education as these skills are fundamental to workplace participation and leadership development.
The MBA programs are correct in assuming that team collaboration is an essential skill for workplace success. In corporate organizations, leaders must understand how to effectively use teams to collaborate to achieve corporate goals. Without team collaboration, corporate goals will be negatively affected.
This principle is important to understand as team collaboration considers the benefits derived from individuals together as a whole. As Stephen R. Covey describes it, "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts." Accordingly, team collaboration is the result of synergy garnered from combined efforts of individual team members. Synergy can also result as various teams collaborate together towards achieving desired goals. This analogy might be best exemplified in corporate settings where the sum of the individual teams collaborating together produces a result greater than one that could be produced alone.
A difficult challenge for leaders managing various projects involving collaboration with teams is a means to assign roles and track progress along the way. Some of the difficulties of team collaboration include issues of time and space as teams and their individual members might not be able to meet to report on their progress. Team collaboration requires allowing delegation with flexible options for the individual parts to most effectively pass value to the whole.
Mindjet's MindManager software helps with team collaboration as team members are able to share mind maps outlining various roles with assigned priorities. The mind map is a centralized document tracking project success. Also, Mindjet's Catalyst software assists team collaboration further by supporting an online workspace for documents sharing. With this workspace, teams can collaborate in online meetings, working together in a real time environment on shared documents including mind maps.
Mindjet's Catalyst software also provides flexibility needed for effective team collaboration as colleagues can work from remote locations still utilizing the shared workspace. Accordingly, updates can be made to team documents at varying times with needed notation. After updates are saved, notifications can be sent to team members. Alternatively, Mindjet Catalyst has a built in chat feature allowing instant messaging to teammates. The chat feature provides the benefits of synchronous team collaborative communication.
For more information on MindManager or Mindjet Catalyst and how these products can help with team collaboration, please visit our demo. These products can also be downloaded for a free 30 day trial.
