Another key value that fills our working life at Conn3cted is ‘we collaborate’. We believe collaboration is the key to achieving the goals of our organisation.
“We learn from and share with each other our skills, challenges and experiences in an open and contributing environment.”
What is collaboration?
Collaboration is the action of two or more individuals working together to produce or achieve a common purpose.
For us, it’s about recognising the different skill sets of our team members.
We also appreciate that individual members have strengths and specialist knowledge in different areas. We welcome the previous career experience they can bring to projects, issues and their daily tasks at work.
Members of our team participating in a daily scrum.
How we collaborate
Collaboration is instrumental in helping Conn3cted achieve our business goals. To collaborate effectively, we needed to understand the different personality types within the team, as well as their communication and behavioural styles.
Therefore, we enlisted the services of Michelle from Peak Performance Leaders to come into our office and provide the team with eDISC training. This involved completing an eDISC profile quiz, an individual debrief and a group session. DISC profiling is a personal assessment tool which measures an individual’s personality, communication and behavioural styles against four reference points:
- Dominance – direct, strong-willed and forceful
- Influence – sociable, talkative and lively
- Steadiness – gentle, accommodating and soft-hearted
- Conscientiousness – private, analytical and logical
eDISC
eDISC is Enhanced DISC profiling, which extends the report by showing the team dynamics, the strengths and development areas of the team. It also illustrates how team members are adjusting behaviours in their existing work environment.
Team members were surprised by the accuracy of their individual reports. At a company level, the group debrief session was hugely beneficial in understanding the different behavioural and communication styles. However, we found the different techniques we were given to help the team work more effectively together to be the most invaluable.
Other ways in which we collaborate as a team include:
Daily stand-ups
As part of our Scrum methodology/framework, we have daily huddles in our project groups. Also known as a daily scrum, we have 10-minute meetings for the development team to discuss how each person is tracking with their particular tasks.
Impromptu huddles
A more spontaneous version of a stand-up, we meet to discuss issues that arise and collaborate to decide on our best course of action.
Team chat
Microsoft Teams is a group chat software program that we use, which facilitates communication through chat, online meetings and calls. It’s also a great way to quickly get an answer on something without leaving the comfort of your desk!
Knowledge base wiki
Atlassian’s Confluence is our team collaboration software, which encourages team members to share knowledge on projects, different skill areas and documentation.
Encourage social activities
We believe socialising with co-workers outside the office is an effective way to open channels of communication and create a better understanding between team members. Sharing common interests or getting to know each person’s individual challenges outside of work helps us see team members as more real, relatable and as a result, more human.