Building a Culture of Collaboration and Open Communication in Your Business

When you watch a professional sports team in a championship game hoist a trophy at the end of the season, one message usually gets repeated by whomever the reporter is covering the game decides to interview at the end of the game. The player usually says something like this,

“It was a team effort and I couldn’t have done it without the help of my teammates.”

The main point we’re trying to convey from this message is the word teamwork. Success in life or business is rarely possible without teamwork attached in some shape or form. Check out some of the back stories behind successful entrepreneurs like Kevin O’Leary, Lewis Howes, or Bill Gates and you will hear them all say to some degree that they couldn’t have achieved what they have by themselves.

Collaborating with your teammates whether its a business or sports team is crucial to success and we want to highlight a few ways you can increase collaboration in your team provided by the founding team of Influencive, CEO Brian D. Evans, and COO Clinton Senkow.

Implement the Right Tools Within Your Team to Collaborate

With the way we all use technology at a rapid pace today, it’s important to choose the right tools for your business that allow team members to collaborate and communicate at all times. In today’s business world its common to have team members from all over the world vs in one physical location so having the proper tools and apps in your business that promote collaboration is essential.

One that we love to use here at Influencive is Cisco Webex. It allows our founding team to connect on calls when they both operate out of different countries. Our CEO is based in the US while our COO is based in Canada. They use Cisco Webex to schedule weekly calls between each other, hold team meetings if needed (they aren’t big fans of LONG unnecessary meetings), so it’s important to have a tool or app they can rely on.

The team isn’t able to see each other frequently so Cisco Webex allows the team to video conference each other when needed. According to a recent study of remote work done by Owl Labs, “video conferencing performs 30% better for communication than audio-only setups”. So if you aren’t video conferencing your team right now, give it a try and see how it does.

Have a Team Chat That Allows Communication in Real Time

I can’t think of any other time in history where we as people are so impatient. Seriously though think about it, we get mad at our friends or coworkers when they don’t text us or email us back right away, creating stress, tension, and anxiety.

Some of this is warranted, but most of it isn’t. One way to help mitigate this within your business is to have a team messaging platform you can use within your internal team. When a co-worker has a question or needs a simple answer, the best way isn’t to send an email anymore. Sending an email is actually probably the worst way. We get so many emails now that it will just get lost in the shuffle.

Having a messaging application for your internal team is essential in 2018. One that we at Influencive recommend that is both easy to use and secure is Cisco Spark. They have end-to-end encryption that keeps your content safe, while also having the functionality to allow your team to message with one another, have a quick call, or even draw diagrams to each other.

(Picture of me and/or Brian on our phones talking to one another or something)

Remember those good old days when you had to write something on a piece of paper, then take a picture or scan or maybe even fax it to your co-worker? Ya, you won’t have to do that at all with Cisco Spark because all of this is available within the app itself.

Reward and Incentivize Your Team to Speak Up

One thing that both Brian and Clinton are huge proponents of is having other team members or contributors to Influencive speak up about things that can be done more efficiently or perhaps an idea that can help the business.

Promoting an environment where your team is not afraid to speak up and they feel their input is valued is a crucial part of building a cohesive company culture. This has to start from leadership and be instilled in the team that input and ideas are valued.

You can choose to reward employees or team members who come forward with successful ideas or suggestions depending on the outcome of your business. Always remember that your team, audience, or customers are the lifeblood of your business, so allow their voices to be heard.

Now that you have a few suggestions as to what tools to use and how to use them effectively to build your business and create a culture of collaboration in your business, it’s time to actually start implementing this stuff.

If you’re still stuck and want to get real-time insights into how to create a culture of collaboration, similar to how we have here at Influencive, tune into the Facebook live stream that Brian and Clinton will be doing on April 11th.  Feel free to confirm your attendance here.

Remember one thing, when we work together and collaborate on something we can achieve a lot more than what we can do ourselves. Seek collaboration and teamwork within your business at all times, we swear you won’t regret it.