Why collaboration is essential to service excellence
Collaboration is about working together and embracing each other’s unique contribution to deliver amazing results. It therefore goes without saying that collaboration is a key success factor in achieving service excellence.
Making collaborative relationships successful requires leveraging the right partnerships, whether this be internally across employees and teams or externally with stakeholders (such as suppliers) and customers. Collaborative relationships are all about ensuring that organisations have a common understanding, shared goals and can embed leadership and trust in the way they work together.
From the business and technical support staff through to the Executive team there are skills and behaviours that lend to a collaborative environment, an environment that strives for ideas, innovation and success.
At the heart collaboration is a recurrent, looping iterative process that provides knowledge, creates learning and builds consensus. According to a McKinsey report increasing collaboration and communication can raise productivity by up to 25%. The tricky part is how to achieve this in this increasingly virtual world.
The new complexity of teams requires companies to increase their capacity for collaboration, by making long-term investments that build relationships and trust, and smart near-term decisions about how teams are formed and run.
Collaboration, co-operation and communication are closely aligned to bringing a USP to your service experience
So how do you go about collaborating well to really uplift your service from an action to an experience: connection; curiosity; cultivate.
Read on for our top 8 tips:
1. Natural collaborators are connectors who bring the right people together but in equal parts they also have empathy. While we all have an innate ability to feel empathy, some have this more than others so it is a skill that can be built on. Observations, feelings, needs and Requests (OFNR process), aims for empathy, connection and compassion rather than trying to ‘fix the problem’. In the work place this can be used effectively with one another and accelerate teamwork.
2. Collaboration is all about building rapport and trust with others. with open, sincere communication leaders are able to encourage constructive dialogue, building trust to create mutually beneficial relationships that in turn can lead change effectively. With trust you are more likely to achieve understanding, support and commitment.
3. Develop the fundamentals of coaching to help colleagues progress and achieve improved performance. At the heart of coaching lies the principle of unlocking peoples potential through self-directed learning. Does your organisation embrace a coaching culture? Are your managers able to facilitate their teams to be the best in themselves. Take a look at our blog on Difference between coaching and mentoring.
4. Listening is the basis of communication, not just hearing. Listen with intent to truly understand what the other person has to say encourage others to express themselves clearly and openly. For leaders it gives the means by which to obtain all the information necessary to make the right decision. But listening well is incredibly tough, but is a skill that can be learned. Take a look at our blog on Listening Attentively.
5. Curiosity is a great skill for collaboration, where not being frightened of not knowing all the answers. Curiosity goes hand in hand with being prepared to ask open ‘tell me about….’ Questions, and lots of them to seek understanding, information and clarity. The great thing about curiosity is that creates the desire to want to know more and in turn build knowledge – the more we know the more we want to know.
6. Develop a culture for collaborating through something that could become distinct to your own business environment. Some of the most successful companies have time set aside specifically for sharing, learning, practicing gratitude, celebrating milestones and success. This is does not mean adding another meeting to the day but just the simplicity of starting or ending a current meeting, or day with a focus on strengthening relations across team members
7. Cultivating strong networks amongst teams establishing strong relationships with key stakeholders to exchange ideas, sharing knowledge, resources and learning creates a high performance culture.
