If you have a democratic or laissez faire management style, it’s likely that you invite your employees to brainstorm and collaborate on a regular basis. 

This type of teamwork can help new ideas to be born, suggestions made, and creative solutions discovered. Of course, you need to ensure you have the right collaborative set up, the right office furniture to make everything easier, and plenty of space for creative thinking to run free. By doing this, you’re setting the tone for new ideas to be born. 

When done correctly, collaboration can be a huge productivity booster and something which can help with business growth and success. 

There are many ways you can encourage your employees to collaborate, but a good option is to implement focus groups. 

Check out this video which explains how focus groups work. 

A focus group enables your office to be productive whilst still having a collaborative feel. In this case, your employees aren’t going to be discussing new ideas all the time, they’re not going to spend a huge amount of time around the modern boardroom tables coming up with suggestions that could change the direction of the business, but they have an outlet to report ideas and have them communicated to the right people. That is what a focus group can do. 

In many ways, a focus group represents the entire team, reporting back to management on what employee think, feel, and any ideas they’ve come up with. This can be a very effective way to collaborate and therefore give management the tools to make decisions faster and more effectively. 

The problem with collaboration is that if too many people are involved, decisions can be very slow to be made. Too much talking and brainstorming isn’t productive if a final decision can’t be made within a timely manner. The chances of this happening increases when more and more people are involved. However, when you have a focus group, you’re cutting down on the number of people directly involved, but you’re still allowing everyone to have their equal say. 

Collaboration Can be a Huge Morale Booster

An office which encourages collaboration is also an office which encourages everyone to express their opinions and views. Provided employers listen to all suggestions, employees will feel listened to and valued as a result. This has a direct impact on morale and can increase productivity as a result. 

However, there is a right way to collaboration and a wrong way to collaborate. The rules of collaboration mainly centre around listening to everyone, not pushing anyone out of the discussion, and being open and fair. It’s also about managers being open to new ideas and not just brushing them aside because they assume they’re not going to work. 

Teamwork in itself is known to be a far more effective and enjoyable way to work, compared to constant individual work and being isolated as an employee. If you sit at your office desk every day, not speaking to anyone and simply tapping away at your keyboard, you’re quickly going to become bored and a little disillusioned with your job. However, if you’re encouraged to give your input, come up with new ideas and have a real say in the future of the business you work for, the opposite is true - you feel energised and ready for action. 

Different management styles dictate whether or not collaboration is encouraged and within an autocratic management style, there is certainly no room for discussion or ideas. In this case, the manager makes the decisions and tells their employees what is going to happen. However, if you choose to go down the route of a democratic or even a laissez faire management style, collaboration is one of the key factors in determining whether the style works for you and your business or not.