How do you encourage people to collaborate on your projects?

Collaboration is About Trust and Relationships

What if the lack of collaboration on your team isn't about tools or methods, but about something much deeper?

Are you on a project and struggling to get people to collaborate and make things happen?

Are people not committing to their tasks, or not helping their colleagues?

This is a recurring situation we see in many projects we run inside organizations and communities, and the consequences usually include: someone trying to act like a hero and taking on other people's responsibilities, the project getting abandoned, and rising stress and conflict between people and teams.

Anyone who sets out to lead change goes through, or will go through, this situation, both in projects and in day-to-day operations.

Faced with this, I notice leaders tend to reach for quick, fragile fixes, like rolling out collaborative methods and tools, or putting a watchdog in place to monitor people and set up controls to report on them.

Every organization has its own context that shapes this problem, but regardless of company, size, culture, scenario or system, all collaboration comes down to TRUST AND RELATIONSHIPS, and that's not about methods, tools or processes, it's about people.

A good project manager, above all, needs to be a good leader carrying one simple mantra: "No one does anything alone."

I wrote this post to help you put leadership practices in place that start building collaboration on your projects. If you apply even one practical action, you'll already notice a shift in behavior and a better climate. I'm sure it won't make things worse.

TRUST

Start investing time to create a climate of TRUST on the team.

Trust is essential for getting collaboration and having people help one another. Trust comes first, leadership and the project come after. With that in mind, here are some practical actions for building a climate of trust:

👂 Listen and pay attention to people

In a world where most people want to talk, start genuinely listening.

Show that you're truly listening, through gestures, questions and actions.

I learned a practice from a systems development manager that makes a real difference in how the other person feels when they come talk to you.

Whenever I approached him in his office, he made a point of pushing his keyboard away, pushing his chair back and turning it to face me, as if to say: "I've stopped what I was doing and I'm listening to you." That's powerful, because it shows the other person that their time is valued. It has nothing to do with title or authority, just do it.

If you're holding your phone, lock it and set it aside, show that your attention is on the person. Reading an email? Stop reading, turn off the screen and show your attention.

It's not easy, but it changes the game in your RELATIONSHIP with the other person. They'll automatically be far more willing to listen to you and help, when the roles are reversed.

People notice this clearly.

🫴 Share information and knowledge

Be the first to share the information and resources you have, share knowledge, teach and guide others.

Notice that people need to believe what you're saying, and one way to earn that is by sharing your knowledge.

What can you share right now?

• The vision behind the work: when someone knows the "why" behind what they're doing, they're more likely to collaborate.
• The status of things: let people know where you stand and what's left to reach the goal.
• Show their contribution: share links, photos, videos of the work they're building. Give them space to show and talk about their contributions.
• Share material with the group (like this post) that you found interesting and that could help them.

None of this costs anything! Just your action!

🫂 Show that you care about others

When others notice that you intend to put their interests ahead of your own, they won't hesitate to trust you. On top of that, if they believe you take their interests seriously, that you genuinely show up for them, they're more likely to take your interests seriously too.

How do you show this?

• The first and most important point was already mentioned, listen to people.
• Listen to what they have to say to understand what's going on.
• Pay attention to their ideas and concerns.
• Show your values.
• Say what you actually want (with no hidden agenda)
• Show that you're willing to help
• Help them solve problems (instead of just chasing deadlines).

Just start putting it into practice. The order goes like this: you start doing and encouraging it, people watch you the whole time, and they copy what they see.

Leave a comment if any of these actions worked for you.

RELATIONSHIPS

Building relationships is the core element of collaboration.

If you apply even one action, you'll already notice a shift in how people behave and a meaningful improvement in the overall climate. Read through and try putting it into practice.

Make relationships easier

Encourage face-to-face moments 👥

Promote in-person meetups: even if the work model is remote or hybrid, it's essential to carve out moments for in-person meetings to strengthen relationships.

The feeling is that a person doesn't quite exist for someone else until they've actually seen them. Nothing replaces in-person meetings, the immediate exchange, the handshake and the easy conversation. Personal interaction genuinely builds relationships.

For online meetings, ask people to turn their cameras on: it sounds trivial, but people seeing each other and picking up on expressions makes a real difference in the relationship. What we're after is the exchange, and seeing a letter, a photo or an image instead of the person doesn't bring us closer. One of the challenges is getting people to turn their cameras on, many don't like it, but encourage it, the difference shows.

Run your project with shared goals and collaborative roles 🧩

The mantra is: "No one does anything alone," and in a world where we have to do more with less, competitive strategies (local goals) always lose out to collaborative ones.

This is the practice I personally like best for building relationships and collaboration on projects, because it starts bringing people together around a shared goal, where each part contributes to the whole.

It's not uncommon to see projects run by isolated areas of the organization, where the leader doesn't involve people from other areas affected by that project. It's also not unusual to hear from vendors that their team's work is "done," as if one piece didn't need to connect with another.

💪 Structure projects to reward joint effort:

Look at the objective, the deliverables, the people affected, and list by name who needs to collaborate for it to work.

Structure the project so that each person (or area) contributes a piece of it.

Here's an example of a structure for a multidisciplinary project:

• Marketing handles reviewing text and website content;
• Facilities handles painting the storefront;
• Tax handles registering the new business unit;
• Legal validates the operating policies;
• IT builds the system for control and provides the equipment;
• HR trains the team.

Notice that each one is responsible for a piece, and it's the sum of those pieces that makes the project succeed. No single piece guarantees success on its own, that's the shared goal, and it's what ties the collective effort together.

Once you structure a project this way, you gain a kind of superpower: the narrative that the project comes before any individual person or their area.

That shift changes the game in how you lead a project, especially when you don't have direct authority over the team.

Now you'll bring everyone together, at least once a week, everyone in the room together (in person, online or a mix). Don't give up this meeting, it does far more to build relationships and a sense of belonging than to check on task progress, which will happen naturally anyway.

You'll run into people who resist showing up. Don't give up the meeting, explain that even if actions haven't been completed, you're counting on that person to contribute certain information and stay on top of what's happening with that shared goal.

If most people can't make it, reschedule right away.

Organize the meeting, prepare for it and run it.

While running it, encourage people to ask each other for help, encourage everyone to speak or share how their work progressed that week. Ideally everyone speaks, even if it's just a quick update.

Once the meeting wraps up, relationships and commitment get renewed.

Wrapping up with actions

Every time I'm brought in for a project considered problematic, the first thing I start investigating is the quality of relationships. That's where most of the answers to the current situation usually are.

These tips work for cross-departmental teams, cross-company collaborations, or within the same structure.

I'm confident that if you start putting these actions into practice, collaboration on your projects or day-to-day work will improve a lot. Imagine a more engaged team and projects flowing better? That's exactly what you'll get.

It's not easy, no! Otherwise everyone would do it, but it's possible, and it costs nothing.

Some of these practices come naturally to me day to day, others, I admit, I slip on fairly often, but I'm always trying to put them into practice.

If you're already practicing this, share your results!

You can also check out this post on actions beyond the project itself.

Share this article with people you can help.

Take care,

Leandro