Have you ever stopped to think that you may be, unintentionally, creating silos in your team?
It’s natural to think, “of course I’m not creating silos”. But the honest truth is that we sometimes do this unwittingly and unintentionally. We do it through several subtle behaviours. We make decisions that seem rational, logical and efficient that have unintended consequences.
Here are some common ways I’ve noticed over the years.
- Focus on departmental goals
You over emphasise departmental goals. You push your team to excel in their functional areas, like sales, operations, or marketing. This fosters departmental excellence, but it can inadvertently deprioritise cross-functional collaboration. Team members may focus solely on their own team metrics, neglecting how their work impacts their peers and the broader organisation.
- Information sharing
In chasing efficiency, you restrict communication channels. The need for speed limits the flow of information that directly adds value to effort of the team as a whole, so some people feel left out of the loop. Direct communication between team members across departments become curbed, leading to misunderstanding, misalignment and lost opportunities for increased collaboration.
Messaging that feels inconsistent to team members. Team members perceive different priorities or objectives. Each team member interprets organisational goals differently and pulls in slightly different directions strategically.
- Individual performance vs. shared goals
In striving to motivate individual performance, you overly reward individual performance over collective success. Incentives and recognition that are focused on individuals rather than overall team outcomes naturally drive individuals to focus on their priorities and success and can breed disinterest in supporting peers to succeed.
- Insufficient encouragement of collaboration
Assuming that cross-functional relationships are a given among seasoned leaders. Failing to actively encourage and model collaboration between departments as an operating principle, unintentionally leads to siloed activity and lost opportunities for cross-functional problem solving.
- Underestimating team dynamics
Underestimating the emotional and psychological dynamics of the team. Not all relationships in your team will be felt to be equal. Frustrations and mistrust among team members can arise if individuals feel undervalued or perceive inequalities in how resources or your attention is allocated.
These and other unconscious and often unintentional behaviours gradually undermine the cohesion of the team and ultimately its engine of performance. If you stop to reflect you may be unintentionally creating the very situation you are hoping to avoid.