"8 Ways to Build Collaborative Teams"

Lynda Gratton and Tamara Erickson

Harvard Business Review

November 2007, pp. 101-109

The authors of this article studied 55 large virtual teams at 15 multinational companies. Out of more than 100 factors examined by the researchers, eight practices were found that best seem to correlate with success in such teams, and that helped the teams overcome inherent difficulties posed by size, long-distance communication, diversity and specialization:

• Investing in signature practices—In a variety of idiosyncratic, company-specific ways, the company’s top executive invested in building and maintaining collaborative relationships throughout the organization.
• Modeling collaborative behavior—Besides emphasizing collaborative behavior for others in the organization, the senior executives also model that behavior themselves. The senior management teams collaborate very well.
• Creating a “gift culture”—This refers to the generous mentoring and coaching of others so they can build the networks they need to work collaboratively with various parts of the organization.
• Ensuring the requisite skills—HR needs to provide training and support for skills such as “appreciating others, being able to engage in purposeful conversations, productively and creatively resolving conflicts, and program management”.
• Supporting a strong sense of community—HR takes an active role in sponsoring group events and activities, and creating policies and practices that encourage them.
• Assigning team leaders that are both task- and relationship-oriented—These leaders usually started of the early stages of the team with task-oriented behavior, but at a later stage they switched to more of a relationship orientation.
• Building on heritage relationships—The researchers found that when 20-40% of the Participants already had previous solid working relationships, then the team had strong collaboration right from the start. However, there is the danger of subgroups if too many of the participants have varying previous relationships.
• Understanding role clarity and task ambiguity—The research found that it was best if the individual roles were clearly defined, but the team itself is given latitude on how to approach and achieve the task.

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