Essay: Communication and Collaboration in Professional Settings

This essay examines the critical roles of communication and collaboration in managing a professional business environment. It explores the impact of these elements on service users and individuals working across boundaries, highlighting both positive aspects like improved teamwork and stronger relationships, and negative aspects such as complexities arising from differing cultural values and leadership issues. The essay further emphasizes the importance of collaboration in a team environment, detailing how it fosters flexibility, increases effectiveness, aids in employee learning, and promotes innovation. Finally, it outlines good practices contributing to the effectiveness of multi-agency teams, including resource management, impressive communication, focus on growth and development, and coordination. The conclusion reinforces the significance of communication and collaboration in achieving organizational goals and success.

Communication and Collaboration in
Managing the Professional Environment

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
TASK 1: Critical impact on the well-being of service users working across boundaries. .............1
TASK 2: Importance of collaboration in a team environment........................................................3
TASK 3: Good Practices contributing to the effectiveness of a multi-agency team.......................4
CONCLUSION ...............................................................................................................................6

INTRODUCTION
Communication and collaboration are the critical aspects of a business environment. The
collaboration refers to an area or place in which two or more people come together to create a
group in order to obtain a common goal or objective by sharing their skills and ideas. The
communication is the interaction process among these group members (Botha, Kourie and
Snyman, 2014) This essay will describe the impact of communication and collaboration on
creating and managing a professional business environment. The essay will also describe the
importance of collaboration in a team environment as well as the contribution of good practice in
the effectiveness of a multi-agency team.
TASK 1: Critical impact on the well-being of service users working across
boundaries.
An organisation has many individuals working in various departments of the company.
These individuals have different cultural and social values as well as various perceptions
according to their views and beliefs. It is easy to understand and accept an individual's culture or
values but sometimes the cultural and social differences create critical issues and problems in the
working environment of an organisation (The Benefits and Challenges of Collaborative Multi-
Agency Working, 2008). The individual needs to work in teams and groups which is
collaboration in an organisation for accomplishing an organisational task and achievement of a
common goal or objective. I can analyse from this above concept that every organisation has to
adopt collaboration at various level of a business. This collaboration can help the business
organisation to increase the effectiveness and efficiency in the group tasks which leads to the
achievement of a common goal. But the individuals while working across the boundaries face a
lot of issues and also gets positively affected according to different situations. I observe from the
study that the individual working across the boundaries needs to understand the culture and
values of other employees of the team or group. These differences among the team member can
have various impact on the service users as well as the individuals.
Positive impacts
Helps in improving teamwork.
Helps in building stronger relationships.
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Improving the communication process.
Achievement of objectives and goals.
Effective interaction and sharing of ideas or skills.
Critical impact on well-being of the service users
The cross boundaries working also have many negative or critical effects on the
individuals and service users. I analysed that there are lot of issues that are faced in collaboration
and working across the boundaries (Morton, 2017).
Commonality and Complexity – Researching the collaboration impacts within a business
environment helped me to understand the negative impact of the cross boundary working of
individuals. The services can be affected by the complexity which can arise due to the cross
boundary working of the individuals. The collaboration in a wrong working structure or
environment can develop various complexities as I analysed from the research and study.
Leadership and People culture – The issues among the people is very essential while working
across boundaries. I notice that it requires a flexible team in which all the members can
combine and collaborate in any structure of the business. Lack of leadership skills in the
health and social care sector. The people can face major issues if there is any conflict arises
or the leader cannot effectively manage the group or team.
Politics and Power – I observed from the concept of working across the boundaries that the
services users can get affected due to the improper performance of the individuals. The
collaboration can create a great impact on the performance of the individuals, group work
can be affected the power of the seniors and political elements within a team or group.
TASK 2: Importance of collaboration in a team environment.
Analysing the Collaboration approach within a business organisation I
observed that it is an effective and important concept that can be adopted by an
organisation or workplace in order to achieve the objective and success (Haimes,
2015). The importance of collaboration in a team environment observed by me are
as described below -
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 Helps in creating flexibility – The individuals working in groups are noticed
to be sharing different ideas, skills and lifestyles. Collaboration among these
various individuals helps them to share their ideas and skills with each other
as well as learn new things from one another. This helps in development and
improvement of each and every individual within a collaborated group,
resulting in creating flexibility.
 Increasing effectiveness to achieve a common goal – The second benefit of
the collaboration in a team environment I observed was the increase of
effectiveness in the overall performance of the team. I analysed that an
individual working within his job roles or boundaries utilises more time
while performing a given task whereas working in a collaborated team give
rise to the performance of the individual. The effectiveness and efficiency of
an individual increases by working in a team due to the sharing of ideas or
skills among the team members (Bovee, Thill and Raina, 2016).
 Helping new employees to learn quickly – The team formation helps the
new employees to effectively learn from the existing employees. Working in
a group helps the new recruited employees to understand and learn the skills
to perform the various tasks and functions within a workplace. I observed
that collaboration plays an important role in training the fresh employees
while working in a group in order to achieve a common goal.
 Building innovation and creativity – I observed from the collaboration in the
health and social care sector that working in a group helps in building or
developing innovations and creativity in the entire activities and
performance of the organisation. A team or group includes various
individuals having different skills and knowledge, while working in a team
each of the team member share some innovative and unique idea to
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implement in the working of the whole team. This give rise to innovation
and creativity in the overall performance of the whole team.
TASK 3: Good Practices contributing to the effectiveness of a multi-agency
team.
Good practices within a multi-agency team can increase the effectiveness in the team
performance. The team members develop their skills and knowledge while working in a group,
they share different skills and ideas within the group collaborated. These ideas and skills helped
each and every employee to grow and improve. There are various good practices that contributes
in increasing the effectiveness of a multi-agency team as observed by me which are described
below -
 Effective management of multi-agency resources – The multi-agency team needs to
manage the various resources and elements. The proper management of the multi-agency
resources can help in increasing the effectiveness of the whole team. The management of
these resources helps in proper utilisation of the various resources and leads to
effectiveness of the team work.
 Impressive communication – I observed that the practice of good communication or
interaction among the multi-agency team helps in developing effectiveness in the group
or team work. The impressive communication process helps the overall team to interact
and share information among each other. Therefore, it leads to effectiveness on the group
performance (Dalkir and Beaulieu, 2017).
 Growth and Development – The multi-agency team should focus on the growth and
development of the various team members or individuals in a group. The multi-agency
team should share the ideas, skills and knowledge among themselves in order to develop
the skill or ideas of each and every individual of every team in the multi- agency. The
growth and development of the team members helps in increasing the effectiveness and
efficiency of the teams and improve their performance.
 Coordination – The individuals in the multi-agency team can adopt impressive
coordination practices in the team work in order to manage and organise the work of the
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teams this helps in increasing the effectiveness within the overall team and group
performance.
 Group discussions – A group discussion is a process of sharing ideas and knowledge
among the group or team members. In a group discussion every member contributes his
or idea in front of all the members within the group and the group discuss about an idea
or topic for reaching to an effective conclusion. This practice helps a team or group to
make the best choice and arriving to the most effective solution or decision, which as a
result increase the effectiveness as well as efficiency of the multi-agency team or groups.
CONCLUSION
In the above essay, it is concluded that communication and collaboration are important
elements in managing professional working environment. The essay includes the various impacts
of working across boundaries on the individuals as well as service users such as complexity,
power and politics etc. The essay describes how collaboration is important in increasing the
effectiveness in team work and environment. Furthermore, the essay includes the various good
practices contributing to the effectiveness of multi-agency team.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Botha, A., Kourie, D. and Snyman, R., 2014. Coping with continuous change in the business
environment: Knowledge management and knowledge management technology. Elsevier.
Bovee, C.L., Thill, J.V. and Raina, R.L., 2016. Business communication today. Pearson
Education India.
Dalkir, K. and Beaulieu, M., 2017. Knowledge management in theory and practice. MIT press.
Haimes, Y.Y., 2015. Risk modeling, assessment, and management. John Wiley & Sons.
Morton, P.G., Fontaine, D., Hudak, C.M. and Gallo, B.M., 2017. Critical care nursing: a holistic
approach. Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.
Online
The Benefits and Challenges of Collaborative Multi-Agency Working, 2008. [Online] Available
through:<https://uk.sagepub.com/sites/default/files/upm-binaries/25241_02_Cheminais_
Ch_02.pdf>
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