Experts and OIT Staff Share Collaboration Tips

“Communicate, communicate, communicate!” says Tammy Johnson, Team Lead & Program Expert for Medicare Enrollment and Payment Systems.

Just in case she hasn’t made her point, Johnson elaborates, “I firmly believe that communication is the biggest factor in collaboration success. You cannot communicate enough – don’t be afraid to over-communicate!”

Johnson is one of a handful of OIT employees who shared tips on working with teammates across groups and divisions. This competency is crucial because, as collaborative efforts become more integral to OIT operations, employees will benefit from learning how to work together better. Effective collaboration also helps ensure that insights of diverse teammates from different backgrounds are valued and reflected in our work.

The Paradox of Collaboration

Forming teams with specialists in diverse subject matter areas might seem like a no-brainer, but it brings challenges.

“The qualities required for success are the same qualities that undermine success,” Lynda Gratton and Tamara J. Erickson write in a Harvard Business Review article. “Members of complex teams are less likely – absent other influences – to share knowledge freely, to learn from one another, to shift workloads flexibly to break up unexpected bottlenecks, to help one another complete jobs and meet deadlines, and to share resources — in other words, to collaborate.”

That is why it is so important to explicitly address these challenges when forming teams.

While Gratton and Erickson studied 55 large teams in a number of workplaces in order to understand practices that foster successful collaboration, employees at OIT have learned some of those same lessons through their lived experience.

In interviews, some of OIT’s super-collaborators shared lessons that hew quite close to the evidence-based advice in management literature.

For instance, when recalling techniques that have helped him form successful partnerships, IT Specialist/COR Rudy Wysinger identified what Gratton and Erickson call a “gift culture … in which employees experience interactions with leaders and colleagues as something valuable and generously offered, a gift.”

Wysinger’s term for this approach is a “helping mentality.” He says, “You truly want to help the others that you are working with while keeping your ultimate focus on providing a positive service experience for our country.”

Wysinger and colleagues also agreed on other points of advice.  

Pick Up the Phone

The first, as Johnson communicated so thoroughly, is the importance of communication, especially with remote work limiting face-to-face contact.

Information Technology Specialist Regina Shock misses “dropping by peoples’ offices.” She says that, to compensate, she uses the Slack huddle feature for impromptu conversations, or she – gasp! – picks up the telephone.

IT Specialist Winny Hurr is another proponent of the good old-fashioned telephone. “It’s easier to talk through issues over the phone rather than email,” Hurr says.

Wysinger echoes that sentiment. “I feel that I have had the most success talking through issues as opposed to keeping discussions contained solely within e-mails,” he says. “This can often lead to better brainstorming of ideas and increase the level of commitment that you have to the team that you are working with.”

If your colleagues don’t have you convinced, check out a study on high-performing teams led by social psychologist Ron Friedman. He found that high-performing teams average 10 phone calls per day, compared to an average of six. In a Harvard Business Review article, he wrote that phone calls “strengthen relationships and prevent misunderstanding, contributing to more fruitful interactions among teammates.”

Trust and Relationships

As Wysinger and Friedman both suggest, communication is crucial for aligning tasks and ensuring that everybody is working toward the same goal, but it is also important for establishing trusting relationships.

“My best collaborations have come from situations in which I have built a good working relationship with the partner(s) that I am working with," Wysinger notes. “This doesn’t have to be a personal relationship, but at least a professional relationship in which you have established some sort of trust with your project team. This goes a long way to building a high-performance team. It is important to each honor your commitments in the team as that contributes to building trust with your team members.” 

Johnson is also on the trust train. She finds inspiration from the author and motivational speaker Simon Sinek, whose videos are available on YouTube. Johnson embraces the idea – also the title of one of Sinek’s books – that “leaders eat last.”

“This is similar to the saying the captain goes down with the ship,” Johnson explains.

“This concept goes a long way in earning trust and respect from your team. According to one of Sinek’s TED talks, a great leader is ‘someone who makes their employees feel secure, who draws staffers into a circle of trust.’”

Conditions over Causes

For Shock, collaboration is not just about specific projects. It’s a way of going about her day-to-day business.

“One thing I have learned is that it’s better to share information and let people know that things are coming, so that we are collaborating by default,” Shock says. “I love to hear other peoples’ feedback. There is great value in collective thinking.”

As Johnson puts it, “Two heads are better than one, four heads are better than two.” That is only true, she clarifies, if you have the right people in the right roles. That requires a solid understanding of a project’s scope and the tasks involved.

According to Richard Hackman, a pioneering scholar of team dynamics, we should worry less about specific actions and more about the conditions in our workplace when trying to leverage collective intelligence. In fact, he identified five conditions for high-performance teams. He sums them up in the following five questions:

1. Is the group a real team, with clear boundaries, interdependence among members, and at least moderate stability of membership over time?
2. Does the team have a compelling direction, a purpose that is clear, challenging, and consequential--and that focuses on the ends to be achieved rather than the means the team must use in pursuing them?
3. Does the team's structure – its task, composition, and core norms of conduct – enable rather than impede teamwork?
4. Does the team's social system context provide the resources and support that members need to carry out their collective work?
5. Is competent coaching available to help members get over rough spots and take advantage of emerging opportunities?

A Note on Diversity

Hackman’s research has withstood the test of time, though scholars have added nuance to his findings as workplaces change, technology advances, and cultures evolve. One growing area of attention is diversity, equity, and inclusion.

These days, many organizational leaders link diversity with performance. This could be diversity of age, ethnicity, ability, gender, expertise, nationality, or education level, to name a few categories. Gratton and Erickson write, “the challenging tasks facing businesses today almost always require the input and expertise of people with disparate views and backgrounds to create cross-fertilization that sparks insight and innovation.”

They warn, however, that people collaborate most easily with people they perceive to be like them. That is one reason that building a sense of community is important.

Shock noted that “being flexible is a part of collaboration. You have to be attentive of others’ needs.”

Diversity in and of itself is not enough. We must build systems to make sure that all the diverse voices on teams are truly heard. Robin J. Ely, Professor of Business Administration at Harvard, and David A. Thomas, President of Morehouse College, warn that “absent conditions that foster inquiry, egalitarianism, and learning, diversity either is unrelated to or undermines team effectiveness.”

In the same article, they proclaim that, “leaders must acknowledge that increasing demographic diversity does not, by itself, increase effectiveness; what matters is how an organization harnesses diversity, and whether it’s willing to reshape its power structure.”