You might have to work with a very diverse team, but no worries, doesn’t mean you can’t maximize all those differences to get the best collaborative result. In terms of collaboration, as long as you can handle it well, the more is the merrier!

As research published on Harvard Business Review found out that there are many inhibitor elements to collaboration, such as: age and educational level. Sadly, researchers also found that as a team’s educational level grows higher, collaboration among them becomes more challenging – until ultimately, as the proportion of experts becomes greater in the team, they tend to disintegrate into unproductive conflict.

So, how can an organization strengthen their ability to perform collaboration?

1. Invest in building & maintaining social relationship across your organization

2. Apply collaborative behavior on team and make sure their best practice is visible to other colleagues from many level of management

3. Use coaching method to reinforce collaborative culture

If you’re an HR or team leader, you play a huge part in building this. For example, HR can train employees in the specific skill required for collaboration, such as how to engage in purposeful conversation. For team leaders, you can live up a culture of appreciation within your team, starting from yourself as the example.