What is collaboration in your eyes? Is it working together towards a common aim? Coming up with new ideas? Is it brainstorming?
Collaboration is all of those things, but there is one common misconception that often works hand in hand with this term.
Do you think that collaboration always has to be verbal and loud? When sitting around the modern collaborative office furniture, do you need to shout to be heard? Do you need to create a din to come up with new ideas?
No, collaboration doesn’t always have to be loud and verbal, it can be quiet, it can be done virtually, and it can flexible in many other ways too.
The truth is that the word ‘collaboration’ actually covers a wide range of small subjects. In effect, you’re collaborating with someone when you’re sending emails back and forth about the same subject, and that isn’t particularly loud! Of course, collaboration can be quite noisy, especially when you’re all sat on the meeting room seating, batting ideas back and forth, discussing each one and its merit.
However, at its very core, collaboration is about working together, and that doesn’t always have to be loud. Encouraging collaboration in the workplace simply means knocking down barriers and creating teams. Booths and office partition screens can be used to create zones within the space, but you should think about pushing tables together, creating breakout areas, and allowing people to freely talk about their ideas, whether loudly or in their own quiet way.
What is collaboration to you?