How collaborative is your team?

Our reader poll today asks: How collaborative is your team?

• Extremely: Everything we do is a team effort: 15%
• Very: We generally help one another out and put team before self: 36%
• Somewhat: We’ll collaborate on important tasks but that’s it: 21%
• Not very: It takes a crisis and a strong push to drive collaboration: 15%
• Not at all: It’s every person for themselves: 14%

Where’s the collaboration? It’s a bit unnerving to see that 50% of you are on teams that are “somewhat” or less than that in terms of being collaborative. If you’re leading one of these teams, ask yourself what the barriers are to collaboration. Is it trust? Are incentives not aligned? Are there personalities that simply clash? Whatever the source of the lack of collaboration, attack it vigorously. Your team is the biggest impediment to its own success in these situations. If you’re not the team leader but you’re a team member, surface these issues to your leader. You have a responsibility to help fix them and in doing so, you’ll be doing something to make your own work life more satisfying. Collaboration is the very definition of a team. If it’s not happening, there’s no more important business challenge for you to tackle. Right now.

– Mike Figliuolo at thoughtLEADERS, LLC

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These results were originally a SmartPulse poll in SmartBrief on Leadership which tracks feedback from more than 240,000 business leaders. Get smarter on leadership and sign up for the SmartBrief on Leadership e-newsletter.