Page 10 - NWC Guide on Team Management_ English

environment as it can be perceived without a for collaborative work such as Asana,
major effort the different state-of-minds, Trello or ClickUp to keep track of tasks,
relationship dynamics, workloads and work deadlines and commitments.
progresses. If employees are working ● As with any other strategy, be patient.
remotely, some of this information is not so Don’t surrender too quickly if results
obvious and it has to be reported or don’t fulfill your expectations. Some
acknowledged somehow. employees might take a little bit longer
to adapt to new working contexts than
Once again, the hybrid working environment
others.
requires effort and attention, especially if we
● Do not hesitate to ask for feedback
aim at strengthening the team, retaining talent
from your team. And again, take it easy
and improving our performance as a company.
if all the comments are negative. Do
not be afraid to implement changes if
needed, but keep in mind that
1.3.2 Practical Application: putting
collaboration is a soft skill that needs
knowledge into action for real-
to be trained, and not everyone is at
world results based on how to
the same starting point.
collaborate with and within my
● Trying to think out of the box? Test the
team
My Dream House activity.
Compared to communication, collaboration
inside a company is less likely to happen
spontaneously, therefore it relies heavily on
the capacity of team leaders to make it work.
Start planning ahead, get to know the
members of your team better, be conscious of
their strengths and weaknesses but also about
the relationships among them, so you avoid
any surprises or drop-outs later.
Some useful tips:

● Whenever possible, split your team in
smaller teams or pairs and distribute
tasks among them. Try to rotate pairs
every so often, so in the end all the
team members have worked together. Activity 3: My dream house
● Avoid by all means having isolated
A team member (let’s call her/him the
workers. If because of the nature of
‘designer’) is given 3-5 minutes to draw the
your sector, this is impossible to do,
blueprints of its dreamhouse on a sheet of
look for an alternative such as
paper. Next, the coordinator of the activity
increasing the number of the non-
opens a collaborative board on Magma, a
work related team activities where
complete and free tool to create cooperative
workers can actually collaborate
online drawings, and invites the rest of the
towards a shared goal.
participants to join in. Once everyone is ready,
● Make sure that everyone knows who is
the designer starts describing its dreamhouse
doing what. During general meetings
and giving instructions to the rest of the team.
ask for updates, concerns, demands…
The goal is that the team works together to
It is also worth considering using apps
replicate the original drawing.
9