October 13, 2014

Collaboration: 4 Tips to Increase Effectiveness

I always hated group projects in school. Other people were too unpredictable and I never knew what to expect. But give me a to-do list and my own desk in a quiet room and I’ll get things done.

Unfortunately, life is not a string of solitary tasks, nor is the life of a church.

Even writing these pieces right here on ECF Vital Practices is not typically a solitary exercise for me. I often run ideas by my wife, Denise, and she’ll often read my drafts and make suggestions before I submit them. Nancy Davidge also reads and edits my writing, and occasionally sends me helpful feedback to inform my future writing.

Since my high school days when I dreaded group work, I’ve worked on various team projects, have planned events, and then became managing editor of Trinity News, so I’ve learned a few things that help make collaboration a little more effective and relatively painless:

  1. Establish clear expectations: When I send something to Denise for her feedback, I try to be clear about what I’d like—maybe I just want her to proofread it or maybe I need to know if it needs more specific examples. I do this in my job as well, asking my coworkers to write or review articles and giving them deadlines. 
  2. Allow others to say “no”: I’ve certainly volunteered to help with an event or a project and later found that I didn’t have time to participate as required. I’ve also volunteered for doing things I hated, like preparing food for a group (if you want to torture me, ask me to be in charge of food for a large group). The outcome suffered because of it. Not allowing others to say no if they are, for example, too busy or really not qualified for a task is setting them up for failure. 
  3. Trust each other: When Denise reads my blog entries I know that even if she has lots of criticism, it is in the context of love and confidence in my ability to fix any problems. This is, of course, harder to establish in a church where you often don’t know each other as well, but we do have to trust that we have common goals: To serve and love others. 
  4. Be realistic: Not everything will go as planned. Sometimes people, especially volunteers, won’t do what they have promised to do for a whole host of sometimes legitimate, sometimes not-so-legitimate reasons. It’s OK to have a backup plan and sometimes it’s OK if a project or a ministry just doesn’t pan out.

Collaboration is a messy process because it involves human beings. We can take steps to set ourselves up for collective success, but in end we just have to communicate clearly, trust each other, and accept each other’s imperfections.