Training Strengthens Teamwork and Collaboration in the Workplace

Work teams have been around a long time. But teamwork in today’s organizations looks very different. It’s more fluid and less siloed.

These changing structures enable organizations to be more adaptable … but they make it more important than ever that each team member collaborates well right out of the gate. Research points to gaps in soft skills training in higher education and shows the effectiveness of corporate teamwork training to bridge this deficit.

A new kind of work team

Solving today’s complex problems often means pulling together individuals with specific expertise to collaborate … on one customer’s new inventory control system, on a patient’s unique healthcare treatment, on the building systems of a new construction project.

Decades-old research tells us that there’s power in the collective intelligence of teamwork.

And while training has always been helpful in getting team members comfortable with the skills needed for effective collaboration, in the past our teams were more static (a department with a fixed leader) and they weren’t as geographically distanced.

We’ve all been part of teams that don’t work well together.

It’s soft skills, such as communication, emotional intelligence and humility that are key to building the rapport needed for teamwork. And education systems and universities often overlook these highly valued workplace competencies, according to educationaltechnologyjournal.

Team training has been shown to effectively improve the specific competencies needed for workplace collaboration, according to the newest psychological research. But there’s more than one kind of training for teams.

Could your team benefit from teamwork training? Check out Effective Teamwork Strategies, a new virtual instructor-led course.

Four kinds of team training

The American Psychological Association breaks training for workplace teams into four categories: team building, leadership training, debriefing and team training.

1. Team building is designed to improve relationships, clarify roles and improve problem solving … all with the hope of building trust and learning how to set challenging, yet specific goals together. These activities give team members a chance to spend time together and have fun, but do not replace team training.
2. Leadership training aims at building the team leader’s knowledge, skills and abilities. A team lead who knows how to foster trust and accountability or resolve conflict can step in to assist when needed, and serves as a role model for interactions.
3. Team debriefings help improve future performance by reviewing past performance and noting what worked and what didn’t.
4. Team training is designed to improve specific personal competencies that affect how we interact with one another. The most effective team training should include lecture, demonstration and role playing, according to an apa.org study. It should also foster psychological safety. It is usually administered to an entire team, aimed at enhancing the performance of the team as a unit. Most of the competencies identified by various sources fall into two fundamental categories: Emotional intelligence and strong communication skills. Let’s take a look at some specifics:
   • Emotional awareness – Do the individuals on the team notice, understand and respect each other’s feelings? Emotional awareness is key to building the rapport needed for teamwork.
   • Communication – How well do team members convey information? Do they encourage input from every team member? Do they give and receive feedback well?
   • Listening – Team members need to understand each others’ ideas. Listening well means asking questions to clarify and demonstrating your understanding using the right words and non-verbal cues.
   • Conflict management – Disagreement and discussion is inevitable. When every member is able to respectfully speak up and debate ideas without anyone taking it personally or feeling their input isn’t valued, the team is better able to find creative solutions.
   • Reliability – The ability to manage time and workload is particularly important on a team, where taking care of responsibilities impacts colleagues’ and the project’s timeline. Having strong organizational skills is important for every team member.
   • Problem solving – When team members all know how to accurately break down problems and assess viable solutions and they can more easily solve challenges.
   • Persuasion and Influencing skills – Winning support with people you don’t work with regularly is important when working as a part of an adaptive team. It’s also a challenge when you’re not the boss and those you’re teamed with have perspectives different from yours.
   • Open-mindedness – Team members who show respect for one another’s ideas have stronger relationships and the team can get more done.

Effective teamwork “does not happen by chance and we cannot assume assembling a group of highly skilled individuals will result in an expert team,” cautions an apa.org study. Team training interventions can enhance team outcomes and with today’s more fluid network of teams, are more important than ever for organizations.