Developing Collaboration Part 1: What is collaboration?

Collaboration is an important skill to have, and is something that most of us can work on. From a young age, we are surrounded by parents, peers, teachers and a huge community of people, so being able to work well with people and understand how to function effectively as part of a team is an incredibly important skill to have. This is the first post of a series that will go through what collaboration is and how it is linked to emotional intelligence, so stay tuned!

So, what is collaboration?

The dictionary defines collaboration as two or more people or groups working together towards a common goal. It has become more important in the past few years to be a good team worker as the world has moved largely online due to the pandemic - trying to complete group projects over video call makes it significantly harder which means your collaborative skills need to be that much better to remain an effective team worker.

There are some key principles of collaboration. All team members should work towards a common and well defined goal - you must be aiming for a win-win scenario. Any end goal in which someone in the team does not achieve what they want will introduce competition, and whilst this is important in some aspects of life, when trying to collaborate, it will only be counter-productive.

A huge part of collaboration is also trust - a team that does not trust each other will never be able to achieve full collaboration. This is why emotional intelligence is so key in teamwork; you need to be able to build good working relationships and solve conflict if it arises with your team members. This is an example of positive interdependence, as all the members of your team are reliant on each other and are all responsible for the total efforts of the team

All participants have a value to the team - whether it is a sports team or a group project at school, everyone should have something to contribute to the team. Contrary to popular belief, it does not necessarily have to be equal, as many teams will have a natural or appointed leader who takes on more responsibility and different roles will ask for different skills.

Why is there often such an emphasis on collaboration in school or the workplace?

There are many benefits to collaboration - when solving complex issues, it is good to have a variety of opinions and perspectives as this helps the team come up with creative and innovative solutions. It also allows people with a variety of expertise to work together on a single goal and pool together their knowledge, as a single person would unlikely have the same amount of experience and knowledge as a group of people. It also means a much larger amount of work can be completed in a shorter space of time as the team can work simultaneously. Finally, it allows you to build good working relationships with your peers, whether it is in a workplace or at school, as working together on a common problem or towards a common goal can be a great way to bond and build a rapport quickly.

The next blog post in this series will be an introduction to emotional intelligence, as it is a complex idea that not many people have come across, and then we'll talk about how collaboration has a direct link with emotional intelligence. I hope you now know a bit more about the key principles and benefits of collaboration!