Creating collaborative teams is one of the best approaches to build a successful business. According to research from Slack, “trusting colleagues to do good work is a top collaboration concern.” The research also found that a majority of surveyed employees agree that ease of communication makes for great collaboration. Although collaboration does not guarantee success (it can fail), without it, your organization is at a disadvantage.

To understand how to build collaboration, let’s first discuss the characteristics of an effective team and the differences between collaboration versus cooperation.

In cooperative teams, work is compartmentalized. Tasks are divided and assigned to team members to work on independently. …