Mastering the art of working with others is essential for career success. You will likely have multiple jobs and work with diverse professionals throughout your career. As a result, your ability to collaborate with colleagues and coworkers impacts your ability to earn promotions.
Effectively working with others involves open communication and building connections based on similarities. You must build mutual understanding with colleagues and coworkers to overcome differences in language and culture. These methods can help.
Implement these collaboration tips to work with others effectively.
Get to Know Other Cultures
You might have unconscious prejudices against people from other cultures. These prejudices can result in you, your colleagues, or coworkers working in isolation. To combat this issue, you should get to know your teammates on a personal level to support team cohesion and knowledge transfer.
For instance, you might ask others questions about their cultures to learn who they are, what shapes their values and beliefs, and what helped them get to where they are now. You also could ask about aspects of others’ cultures that fascinate you so you learn firsthand information.
Learn Other Languages
Non-native speakers of the language of the country you live in might have difficulty interacting with others who natively speak the language. This difficulty can make collaboration challenging. Therefore, you might learn a teammate’s native language to facilitate conversations with them.
For instance, many libraries and online courses offer free or low-cost language lessons to learn Spanish, German, French, or other commonly used languages. You also could ask a teammate who is a native speaker of the language for help with practicing what you learn.
Encourage Everyone to Contribute During Meetings
Employees from certain cultures are often less likely to voice their ideas, perspectives, and feedback during meetings than those from other cultures. These employees may be especially hesitant to speak if they are new to the team or are in more junior positions. Therefore, you should encourage everyone to contribute during meetings to help create an inclusive, empowering environment.
For instance, you might bring up a relevant topic you recently talked about with a teammate and then ask them to share their insight. You could also ask a knowledgeable teammate about a relevant issue if they would like to add anything to the conversation.
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