5 Ways to get More Collaboration and Kill Confrontation

Let me start with a few irritating rhetorical questions that I will then answer.

Have you ever needed something from someone and it just never comes? Of course you have. 

Have you ever confronted that person to find them defensive, forgetful, and in denial about their responsibility for the work? Yep.

Have you ever had a due date arrive to have someone tell you that they would have done something, but you failed to give them what they needed and claimed to ask for? Too often.

This kind of thing makes people grumpy, causes friction in a team, and can lead to someone getting fired when the frustration level comes to a boil. Beyond the obvious issues, there is a more subtle and more dangerous result of this kind of nonsense. This kind of person often leaves others around them unsure about their own role in the failure. “Was it really my fault that they it didn’t get done?” “Did I forget to do that, or did they fail to ask for help?” It creates a kind of haze and confusion in your workflow, and even worse, in your team.

In my other job, where I deal with lots of unpaid volunteers, I’ve had to learn how to deal with this kind of thing while trying to keep the organization emotionally healthy. There are a few simple steps one can take to remove the haze, bring clarity, and, perhaps most important, bring accountability to team members. Here they are:

1. Write down anything and everything that someone asks you to do for them.

The brief conversations you have with a team member can either be a waste of time, or the means by which projects get done faster and more efficiently. Just write down what people ask you to do and make sure that you do it in a timely manner.

You might actually be the one who is causing the problem. You think, if they really needed this or that from me to get it done, why didn’t they remind me? Simple, you provided them with an excuse NOT to do some thing that they already didn’t want to do. Don’t be their excuse!

2. Write down anything and everything that you ask anyone else to do.

If you don’t keep track of the specific tasks that you’ve delegated to other people you are doomed to failure.

So you’re a Ninja of self-management right? You do what you say you will do, but others . . . not really. They don’t write it down, forget, and so on. How can you get them to be like you? You can’t, but you can start tracking what they’ve agreed to do for you That keeps people on their toes (a simple principle from productivity “Yoda” David Allen—read the book!).

Back to me and my volunteers. I don’t want to make anyone uncomfortable, but I’m relying on people to do what they said they’d do. When they know that I track our “agreements” they expect me to come looking for their work. They are also more likely to simply say, “nope, I failed to do it,” and apologize instead of making some stress-creating excuse or pointing a finger at me or someone else. It makes for less confrontation, and more honest discussion! It just does.

3. Keep talking.

People generally don’t rush to hang with the person they know they have failed to deliver their work to. Don’t let it go too long without checking in on all those agreements you wrote down.

4. Have honest talks about what’s holding them up.

A lot of times a person has some static in their heads about a task that they can’t quite identify. When you start talking about it with them it will often surface (i.e. they need some info they don’t have, or something from you, or they just don’t get what your looking for). These problems are usually easy to solve once they are identified, but they are often identified way too late. Talk about what’s happening and talk early.

5. Be thankful when someone does what they should have done.

But that’s what we pay them for! Count your blessings. A person who actually does what they are paid to do is a treasure. Don’t just feel thankful, express it to them. Most people are extremely under-appreciated. Be that person! Be the person that makes people feel good about their contribution to something larger.

Remember, you will become what you celebrate. Modeling best practices is essential. Praising them is even better. Celebrate people who deliver and you will create more people who deliver. Plus, people who are made to feel confident will tend to become increasingly more competent. They just do, and that makes everything more awesome. Creativity, productivity, collaboration—all of these flow more freely in environments where people are appreciated.

Where does Ta’Go Pro fit into this?

Everywhere. Instead of just writing something down for myself, a team member can use Ta’Go Pro to delegate a simple task to me and vise versa. Now there is no question that we both know who is responsible for what.

Instead of just talking, we can update the whole team with a status, or a question, or a mock-up or whatever. It makes project-specific communication simple. What’s that mean? Instead of tracking endless emails about some project, use Ta’Go Pro to communicate regarding specific projects.

You can even use Ta’Go Pro to give a virtual “you’re awesome” when a person checks a task off as “done”.

In other words, Ta’Go Pro will solve all the world’s problems and make everything awesome!