Ever wonder why some teams collaborate better than others? Ever want to be one of those 
teams? John Heywood once said that 'Two heads are better than one', but are any two heads better than one? How can you get better at collaborating and bringing the best heads together?
We will explore the 7 traits that make up great collaborators.
We all want to be great collaborators, work well with other teams and brainstorm the next big (or small) idea. While each member of any team should be help responsible for bringing new ideas to the table, the ability to collaborate can go along way.
So, let me ask you this, when was the last time you sought out collaboration? Either on your team, company wide or from another department?
(If you have a great example of collaboration already, please comment and share)
If no time comes to mind, or it was awhile ago, don't worry because below we are going to cover 7 traits that you can start to implement today.
Collaboration is important for implementing consistency.
Where does your consistency come from? From project to project or customer interaction to customer interaction, how are you ensuring that your leads, customers, and employees are receiving (and providing) a consistent experience. Collaboration is great for two key reasons:
- Aligning your internal team on a common goal, purpose etc.
- Helping your leads, customers, users (etc.) connect the dots between ideas
To get to consistency, you need to start with collaboration. The act of collaborating though is not the 
place to start. You want to start with YOU.
Inspiring collaboration means you, yourself need to be a good collaborator. But what does it take to be a good collaborator?
7 traits that make up a good collaborator.
What are the traits that make up a good collaborator?
- Listens to Understand
- Builds Relationships/Breaks Down Walls
- Mutual Respect
- Curiousity
- Appreitative
- Goal Oriented
- Communication
To be a good collaborator you need to inspire trust with those you are collaborating with and achieve a mutually helpful environment to accomplish your goal.
The first pillar to achieve success with collaboration is to listen to understand not to respond only. Have you ever had someone ask you a question and once you start speaking they tune out? Not fun or helpful.
To effectively collaborate you need to listen to understand what the other person (or people) are saying. By doing so you can start to build relationships and break down the walls between teams, with-in a team or external vs. internal.
These first two traits will start to build the third trait, mutual respect. This is an important one, it allows you to really move within the relationship and start to achieve some true benefits of Collaboration.
The first three are very focused on how to attract buy-in from the ones you are trying to collaborate with. The following are what you should focus on when thinking about or during collaborative tasks.
Curiosity may have killed the cat BUT in terms of collaboration it will drive the conversations forward. What are you trying to solve? What are the bigger questions? Who brings what to the table? Along with respect comes appreciation and being aware you are using someone elses time.
The last two while great as traits for collaboration are always in general best practices with working on a team and having success. Focus on achieving goals that help push forward the bigger team or company goals and be as communicative as possible with what is occurring.
Takeaways.
Collaboration can help in many different ways on your team, two of the key results are:
- Driving Efficiency
- Providing Consistency
To get started on collaboration, implement some of these traits and remember it all starts with YOU.
Interested in how HubSpot can help you with collaboration? Check out Team Projects, here.
