How to Effectively Collaborate With Your Team

Its dawn of a new work week. Rick is stuck in traffic in Toronto. Preet is at the Vancouver office. Olivia is working remotely in Halifax. In the next few hours, these three teammates must come together and create a presentation for the San Francisco merger by the end of the week. Each member is apart of their own territory only seeing each other at corporate events or being called into each other’s respective offices. They must use all their resources to make an effective and catching presentation. Each member is responsible for their part in the presentation.

Every person in work teams faces deadlines and working with remote teammates in any company. Poor communication is among the biggest challenges project teams face every day. Fulfilling your company’s objectives as a team can be challenging, however, if you leverage collaboration tools you can easily fulfill any goal or deadline.

What’s the secret to collaboration?

To begin, one of the key concerns when it comes to collaboration is that individual team members in group projects are using different tools which can create delays at the start and throughout a project. A successful digital workplace is one that unifies these tools putting them in one place where employees can easily access the information they need, all within the context of their project. Without a way to bring collaboration tools, multiple platforms, and applications together can overwhelm businesses and their employees.

The first step for effective team collaboration is a clearly defined and outlined project scope. Distinguish a project leader that will take responsibility for managing the entire project from start to finish. From this, include deadlines, assigned tasks, and a central point of collaboration where all teammates can add their ideas and share work. This can be easily done with a clearly written outline that shows what is and isn’t needed for a project. This ensures that all your team members are on the same page and following guidelines for your specific project.

Secondly, assign a specific task to each member. Each member needs to know what falls within his or her responsibility. By directly assigning tasks and goals to individual team members, you ensure that everyone understands their part and feels a sense of accountability for the project. If you skip this vital step, not only will your team members feel detached from the project, but you’ll risk disputes, missed goals, and fall behind the deadline. The project manager should distinguish each member’s responsibilities, accountabilities, and deadlines.

In this case for Rick, Preet, and Olivia; technology has changed traditional team collaboration. In the past teams would be together in the office. Now in 2020 teams can communicate across the world with access to the internet. When an issue arises and a conversation needs to happen immediately, you can use video conferencing, and instant messaging where the whole team is present to assist with any problem.

Now you know the first steps to collaborate, but how do you it securely? Tauria offers encrypted messaging, scheduling, and file sharing with all your colleagues. If you have any sensitive content, you need to share with your team you can safely do that with Tauria’s zero-knowledge encryption. Tauria’s encryption prevents us from accessing your data or messages, meaning it’ll never be sold off or mined for personal information. Having a secure platform to store and pass files makes any team or business feel confident anything won’t be opened or hacked since all documents are encrypted. Also, all calendar events and deadlines remain secure in the calendar for your team only on Tauria. It’s a safe platform for teams worldwide to connect and protect their projects.

To conclude, in today’s fast-paced and dynamic workplace, team collaboration has become more important than ever. At the same time, it’s never been more difficult to encourage teamwork. Thankfully, there’s also never been a better time for taking advantage of secure technology to enhance teamwork. Not only are there tools to improve communication, project management, and knowledge sharing, there’s also software to help with scheduling and cloud storage which improves team productivity. This with a clearly defined scope and team assignments should see your team through any storm.

Originally published at https://blog.zebu.io on February 19, 2020.