OBJECTIVES
to help your team evaluate its meetings, learn the characteristics of effective meetings, and develop ways to make future meetings more productive.
ABOUT
This module helps teams evaluate at their current meetings and talk about what is working well and what is not productive. Hybrid teams have special issues and conditions to deal with that add extra challenges to their meetings. The steps in the module provide a review of best practices and give members a safe way to present any frustrations they have about aspects of their current team meetings. Then they are provided an opportunity to discuss alternative strategies for improving their meetings and take shared responsibility in improving future meetings.
WHEN TO USE
Use this Module when:
- members complain about the way meetings are run yet take little responsibility for improving them
- meetings focus on putting out fires and checking on task progress and seldom address team development issues
- teams stop having meetings because they have become so dysfunctional
starting up new teams or to get them off to a good start - when reviving established teams who are seeking a better way to conduct their meetings
This module has two components.
1) The Discussion Guide
This discussion guide, which is what the team members complete, contains step-by-step interactive fields, check boxes, and open fill-in spaces. This guide can be completed online using the interactive pdf and then shared or referenced as the team discusses each step. Some steps are designed to be completed together.
The two supporting worksheets that can be used with the module when learning how to use the materials and then repeatedly in the future whenever meeting agendas or followup is needed.
2) Facilitator/User’s Guide
These support materials are available to help guide the leader or facilitator through the steps of the discussion guide. Completed worksheets are also provided as examples to refer to as team members learn to use them
The facilitator may be an outside consultant, the team leader, or one of the team members. However, everyone can help ensure success by reading through some of the tips and suggestions when provided with this guide.
NOTES FROM DR. PATRICK HANDLEY
No one likes wasting time in meetings. But, few members want to take responsibility for meetings; they frequently delegate this to the team leader. That’s a lose-lose arrangement.
If there was ever a team-building topic that gets overused this is it. Your challenge as a leader or facilitator is how to motivate the team to take a fresh look at their meeting structure. Its important to engage members in having an open conversation and giving their input rather than listen to you teach or preach about guidelines for effective meetings. Most have heard it all before, and chances are they simply aren’t practicing what they know. The purpose of this module is to create shared responsibility for having good meetings. That’s a big step!
As mentioned, team meetings are seen as the sole responsibility of leaders. Members may just show up and wait to see what unfolds. Even worse, when meetings drag on or become non-productive members may sit (or login virtually) and be passive and do nothing (not my
They may then complain afterwards about the leader’s poor meeting management. This isn’t good team functioning. Use this module to pull in everyone’s ideas on what could be changed to improve meetings and then delegate as much responsibility to members as possible.
STEPS
In this module team members:
1) rate their team meetings and share their various perspectives. This helps everyone see different experiences. Particularly helpful for hybrid teams who often participate in meetings but rarely talk about how the meetings actually go.
2) explore different setups and arrangements for meetings and how to better include virtual members or accommodate the relatively new hybrid team structure.
3) examine the different types of meetings and clarify when they are having which.
4) discuss best practices and agree on which to do when
LEADER/FACILITATOR TIPS
Acknowledge that on many issues it’s okay for leaders to take responsibility for making certain decisions. Team members may even prefer this. Indecisive leaders can be as frustrating as autocratic or over controlling leaders. The critical issue is that the team is included in the decision regarding who will make the decision.
Members seek clarity on the decision-making process. They want to know who makes the decision and when. Naturally, they want to be included on as many important decisions as possible. All that said, the suggestion here is to have this discussion, particularly before the second step that addresses decision making alternatives.
Another frustration point for members, particularly established teams, is that people have different decision making styles. Just as their personalities are different, their preference for processions options and coming to conclusions is different. When engaging members in the discussion of decision-making style types in Step 3, be sure to validate the best decisions are a combination of knowledge, experience, and timing.
Style enters into decision making, but is secondary even though it can be the most obvious difference. The most frustrating when others use style opposite from yours. An open discussion of this takes the bite out of the difference and can lead teams to enjoy each other’s styes, find humor in and, and also see the advantage at times of certain styles.
COMBINATIONS and PAIRINGS
Help teams rethink their meetings and decision making by combining Module 12, Improving Team Meetings with Module 11, Making Team Decisions. Many meetings are held to make decisions but get derailed because the process has not been clarified. This combination eliminates that problem.
Other meetings are all about solving problems, and these can also get derailed by confusion between the agenda and the problem solving process used. Lots of idea stoppers and negative thinking can surface. Try this threesome, Module 12, Module 11, and Module 1o.