Team Toolkit - questions and advice!

This section contains a range of tips and tools to help you in running effective meetings. Click on any of the links below to jump to the section you are interested in.

• Preparing / Agendas
• Running a Meeting/ The Chairperson's Role
• Communication Skills
• Exploring problems
• Generating Ideas
• Reaching Consensus
• Reviewing meetings
• International/culture Issues

Meeting preparation/Agendas
Thorough preparation is important. In particular it is especially useful to compile an explanatory agenda, with each item's purpose/desired outcome, sponsor, and estimated timing, set out in some detail.

Tip:Think about 'Outcomes'
When preparing agenda items, think about what you wish to accomplish by the end of the meeting. For example, instead of writing 'Project XYZ update', draft something like 'All team members will be informed about the current status of X2 and Y3 aspects of project XYZ'.

Click here for an example of a comprehensive agenda.

Tip: Include required preparation
If team members should seek information or consider an issue prior to the meeting, make it explicit. For example - an outcome: 'Decision whether to go with Smith Consulting for aspect Z1 (all function team members to seek views from own team leaders and bring along).'

Running Meetings / The Chairperson's role
The chairperson has two vital jobs - to ensure that the business of the meeting is achieved, and to facilitate effective teamwork by people attending.

Tip: Don't act as the scribe!
If you are the chair, if it is possible - ask someone else to record things on the chart. That way, you can focus on team communication more easily, and it avoids any bias that you might bring to the discussion.

Tip: Contract with the team - 'groundrules'
Discuss good behaviours with the team, such as listening, one person speaks at a time, and so on. Seek views on what they would consider inappropriate, then ask what should be done if they happen! Thus - you have acquired the authority to intervene later on.

Tip: Try not to fill space yourself
If you are the chair, don't fill every space in the conversation!

Tip: Summarising
If you can summarise the key points that have been generated from several differing views, you will help the team to understand, and move to action, decisions, whatever.

Communication skills
Meetings need to generate understanding between people so that they can make things happen more efficiently. They put people together who are working on different parts of a connected job. Effective communication is vital.

Tip: Use body language to restrain dominant team members
Subtly raise your hand, with palm downward, when you need to encourage a team member to wait and listen to others

Watch body language generally
Check that people are listening and understanding. It is not very difficult to spot if they are not - check for puzzled expressions, breaks of eye contact, gently shaking heads, and so on.

Tip: Use "hold on.."
As a chairperson, OR a team member, you should look out for interruptions, poor listening, etc. Say "hold on a second - I'm not sure that Sarah has made her point yet..", or something similar.

Tip: Always try to increase understanding by asking questions
Make sure that team members do not 'move on' after contributions that are misunderstood. Say "can you explain that a bit more?" or something like that.

Tip: Supportive Development - building and criticising ideas
Ideas should build on one another. Each contribution at a meeting should ideally relate to the one before it. When an idea is suggested that does not meet with 100% approval:

• Try to identify what is good about it, and what the problem is.
• If possible, suggest other ideas that will help it improve, or build on it.
• Either develop it or, only after this process, discard it.

Exploring Problems
A meeting can enable a diverse group of people to fully understood the causes of a problem, before jumping to inappropriate conclusions.

'Tip: Use 'Why, why why...'
State clearly what the problem is - what the symptoms are, then ask 'Why is this happening?' Then 'why' again. Then again.

How does this help?
An example - let's say there have been several accidents with a packing line. The first question might ascertain the fact that a piece of equipment on it was being used inapropriately.' Why?' - again may reveal that people were not aware of it. 'Why?' again - people were not fully trained. 'Why?' - we didn't plan this in when we were commisioning the new machine. This technqiue is very powerful in that you can get to the root causes of problems, and take action on them, rather than superficial symptoms, or inappropriate fixes.

This technique is also very useful for a team that is trying to set objectives - particularly trying to establish a clear understanding of busienss purpose.

Generating Ideas
A meeting is one of the best places for people to be creative, and come up with novel solutions to problems. They can experiment with concepts and perceptions, and ideas generated by one person will often spark creative thinking in another.

Tip: Running a brainstorm session

Prepare by writing a title, or better, an objective, at the top of a flipchart sheet. Don't put the word 'brainstorm', it's a tool not a subject.

• Agree an initial time slot for collecting ideas. Remind everyone, and agree on the 'groundrules' (see below!)
• Sometimes with a complex subject, and varied mix of people, it's valuable to ask people to think of ideas individually and note them down before sharing them. Sometimes, you can share straight away.
• Collect all ideas on the chart. The only comments allowed during this should be for clarification of what people mean. Make sure the scribe writes down something for each contribution, summarised if agreeable.
  

Tip: Evaluating a list of ideas
Typically from a brainstorm session you will have a flipchart page, or many pages, full of ideas. There are various methods you can use to narrow it down into one or several usable and agreed ideas:

• Establish evaluation criteria. The collection of ideas should have 'no rules' - but when evaluating, you may something like 'achievable in the coming year' - or something like that.
• Group items into a shortlist - select ideas that have some sort of relation, or are the same thing phrased differently.
• Eliminate agreed, impractical ideas
• Use a 'points' system of some kind - give everyone a set of points to distribute amongst their favourite ideas - see which comes out on top.
• See if there are any ideas which can be combined together to make something new and exciting.
• Remember that the best idea may be obvious, and 'jump out of the page'.

Tip: Collecting and evaluating many ideas

• Another way is to use 'post-it' notes.
• Everyone should write ideas down, each one on a separate post-it note.
• When complete, all of these should be attached to a large plain area of wall, or board.
• The team should then view all of this gallery of ideas, and then attempt to group them into categories.
• The shortlist can then be evaluated using the techniques above. To reach an agreement on the final ideas, look at the section below.

Tip: Use the 'random word' technique
If you really want some 'out of the box' ideas, there are more creative techniques than brainstorming, and this is one. Firstly, chart up the problem, or the objective. Then, ask someone to get a book, or a newspaper, and get someone else to specifiy a page number, column, paragraph and word number. Take the word that's there and put it next to the objective. Ask people to say what comes into their minds when they see the two together. This takes some faith and some determinsation - some team members.

Reaching agreement and/or consensus
The best decisions are made by teams. Yet the process of reaching a decision is often messy and seemingly endless. Reaching consensus is often compromised by the failure to use a few simple techniques.

Tip: Where you need quick agreement
If everyone has their say here, it could waste time. Try this instead: Team members use their hands to signal - a fist means they disagree, raising one finger means they are not sure, or partially in agreement. Five fingers held up means they agree completely. This technique quickly identifies where the problem areas are, and who should speak.

Tip: In a complex or sensitive situation: Hear everyone
The beginning of consensus is achieved by hearing the views of everybody in turn - giving them sufficient airtime, and understanding all of their concerns. Try to establish exactly what is agreed and what is not, then only discuss the latter. Explore to see if compromise between different peoples' concerns is achievable. Usually, one or more members of the team must make a concrete proposal for action. Take all views on this and identify remaining objections.

Reviewing meetings
People at meetings make the same mistakes time after time! Yet by using a simple reviewing process, a team can learn quickly, and eradicate many timewasting errors for the future.

Task review/Actions summary
Look again at the agenda, in particular your meeting aims and outcomes. Have they all been addressed? Note what remains, for quick discussion, or a future meeting. Summarise key actions - the who/what/when.

Process Review - Plus/Delta
Allocate a period at the end of the meeting (ten minutes would be fine) to review how you performed as a team. Ask what were the plus points - what were successful parts? What made them successful - behaviours, techniques, and so on. Record these, and if possible discuss enhancements for the future. Then do the same for the delta points - where did things go wrong - losing time, misunderstandings, and so on.

International / Culture Issues
Meetings do not operate in exactly the same way in different countries. Thus if you have international members in your meetings, it's worth taking care that you are not alienating them.

Slow down, take care with jargon
Many members of the company that are visiting from overseas, or beginning a secondment can understand what you say perfectly, as long as you speak carefully. Avoid slang and local colloquialisms. If in doubt - ask whether they understand a piece of jargon.

Use flipchart with more rigour
Take care to write clearly on the chart. If in doubt, check that all the team members can understand what's written.

Challenge is not always good
Be aware that in some cultures, particularly southern European, people are reluctant to challenge the views of more senior people at meetings. If there are issues that need resolving, use your judgement, and perhaps take some of them outside the meeting environment.