It’s a vicious cycle. On an annual basis, senior leaders at many large corporations often go off on retreats to strategize and determine the upcoming year’s initiatives. Meanwhile, back at the Hall of [Corporate] Justice, a series of meetings cascade those decisions back to employees. Goals come out of those initiatives. Armed with their assignments, employees work to achieve the goals.
Wash. Rinse. Repeat the following year.
On The Flip Side, what if employees were involved in this process from the beginning – before senior leaders determine those initiatives? Involving employees from the beginning can have a number of benefits including an uptick in leadership trust, engagement, innovation, productivity and the bottom line. Here are a few ways to encourage collaboration:
- Create ownership. Involve employees in the beginning. Socialize programs, projects and initiatives with employees before you launch them. Often times, as part of office politics, managers spend a lot of energy socializing programs in the design phase with senior leaders. Employees often are left out of the input phase before a program launches. They find out about it upon rollout. Ask employees for ideas and input up front. Involving employees in program or initiative design up front not only creates a sense of ownership and buy-in, but it also helps organizations manage change more effectively.
- It’s how you ask. Ask open-ended questions to generate input, concerns and ideas from employees. Yes or no questions is not an effective way to encourage employees to share what’s on their minds. Let employees know you’re open to having tough conversations. You want real, honest opinions.
- Try digital collaboration. Tools like Yammer or SharePoint foster collaboration, but leaders have to model this behavior and participate often. These tools are great for asking questions, “working out loud,” brainstorming and sparking conversations.
- Tell stories. Promote examples of collaboration through storytelling. Through your regular communications channels, share stories of how people from different departments came together to help solve problems or think of new ideas by working together or exchanging best practices.
It takes practice to weave collaboration into the work environment. It doesn’t happen overnight. But the more employees see that leadership is seriously looking to hear their ideas or concerns – and make changes as a result – the more frequently it will happen.