9

Performing teams and productive meetings

What you will learn in this chapter

• Assemble, brief and manage effective teams – inputs
• Review team effectiveness and behaviour – processes
• Get better team solutions and decisions – outputs
• Manage productive meetings

Teams and meetings, meetings and teams. These two items account for well over 60 per cent of our at-work activity. So getting these things right is critical. Yet, this is an area that frequently goes wrong – indeed, even CEOs admit that only 40 per cent of their meetings achieve their objectives.¹ Probably everyone has experienced meetings that seemed pointless, where everyone was on their laptops, or teams with minimal contributions and maximum conflicts. This chapter discusses how to make teams tighter and meetings merrier and more meaningful.

When to have teams

Teams should happen when there is something that needs to be discussed and decided by a group of people from different areas of the business on a regular basis. This can be because of leadership and governance issues, such as executive or management boards, or because of project issues, such as designing a new product. Teams can also be useful for improving existing business processes, such as transitioning from paper to digital. Now that sharing resources is becoming the norm, and technology makes working across boundaries easier than ever before, teams have become a normal way of working.

Team composition

When choosing teams, it’s a very good idea to have different skills and experiences. Try to avoid picking ‘placeholders’ – people who are there just because they are representing a department. Have the fewest team members necessary for any task. As well as capabilities, consider behaviours. Meredith Belbin did some work on team diagnostics which is widely used. He said that different people serve different roles on teams by virtue of their behaviour in a group and approach to problem-solving. Belbin’s team roles are: Resource-investigator, Co-ordinator, Shaper, Monitor-evaluator, Team worker, Implementer, Completer-finisher, Specialist and Plant (creative).²

Team charters and briefings

Once you’ve assembled your team, it is a good idea to get everyone face-to-face for ‘KICK-OFF’.

At the kick-off, you should:

• brief the team on why they are there and what they are expected to do;
• cover off your objectives, time frame, and how you will gauge the outputs;
• allow team members to contribute to build a simple charter as to their expectations and the behaviours they would like to see.

You may also wish to ask them to rate themselves with the Belbin model, and then come back to it four or five meetings later and ask the group to comment on how everyone has rated themselves. On your first meeting, pull together as a group your objectives, behaviours and ways of working in a simple team charter document – this is often called more formally a Terms of Reference, or TOR, but Team Charter sounds friendlier.

It is a good idea to combine this with some sort of ice-breaker, especially if the team don’t know each other. Good ice-breaker questions include: who I am, why I’m here and one thing you don’t know about me. Or, ask each member to share three things about themselves – two are false; one is true – and ask everyone to guess which is true. The final thing to review as part of your briefing are the resources you think you will need, the time commitment and frequency of meetings, as well as the work required between meetings. Be honest about how much time will be required to work on team matters between meetings, and make sure everyone has the support of their line manager. Finally, you may wish to talk about how you will communicate as a team, both with each other and with the wider group.

Technology and teams: virtual teams

Virtual teams have existed for a decade and are now common. Conference and video calls allow team members to communicate across time zones, countries and sites. Technologies like intranets and Google documents allow team members to share things easily. Here are some tips to help them be effective:

• If possible, get people face to face first. Meeting once a year in person boosts relationships and effectiveness. This is particularly true with multi-cultural or global teams. For many cultures, such as the Chinese, face-to-face relationship building is very important.
• Don’t skip on the team norms and ways of working. Go through that, even if it is harder to do remotely. If possible do it during your first face-to-face session.
• Remember that many people will not speak English as their native language. Speak loudly, clearly and use simple words not metaphors or idioms.
• Eliminate multi-tasking. It is distracting if people are typing into keyboards during a conference call. If they are not needed for certain sections of the meeting, let them leave.
• Muting those not speaking eliminates unnecessary feedback noise. Not everyone needs to hear the cars whizzing past you on the motorway.
• Respect time zones. The middle of the day in Europe is often good, as it is early morning in the Americas and mid evening in Asia. But you may have to break sessions into two – one for Europe and Asia and one for Europe and America.
• Share presentations in advance. Keep them short. Expect them to be read.
• Use intranet sites sparingly. In my experience, sites become far too populated with unnecessary stuff, or not used.
• Try meeting more frequently for less time. Encourage people to touch base informally between meetings if you do allow too much time to lapse.
• Make sure the leader reviews team progress, motivation, and encourages everyone to participate. The leader should note those who are silent and encourage them to contribute.

Team effectiveness, behaviour and conflict

Reviewing team behaviour is very important. Good leadership will maintain clarity of purpose, allow people to participate, and balance the task focus with constructive behaviour and conflict resolutions. You also need to track progress and know how to change course or even disband.

Give the team time to bond. One description for this is around forming, storming, norming and performing (see below). Teams take time to gel. On average it will take three to six months of working together to form patterns.

The progression is:

• forming;
• storming;
• norming;
• Performing.

The features of each phase are explained below.

Forming (Stage 1)

High dependence on leader for guidance and direction. Little agreement on team aims other than received from leader. Individual roles and responsibilities are unclear. Leader must be prepared to answer questions about the team’s purpose, objectives and external relationships. Processes are often ignored. Members test tolerance of system and leader. Leader directs (similar to Situational Leadership® ‘Telling’ mode).

Storming (Stage 2)

Decisions don’t come easily. Team members vie for position as they attempt to establish themselves in relation to other team members and the leader, who might receive challenges from team members. Clarity of purpose increases but plenty of uncertainties persist. Cliques and factions form and there may be power struggles. The team needs to be focused on its goals to avoid becoming distracted by relationships and emotional issues. Compromises may be required to enable progress. Leader coaches (similar to Situational Leadership® ‘Selling’ mode).

Norming (Stage 3)

Agreement and consensus is largely formed by the team, who respond well to facilitation by leader. Roles and responsibilities are clear and accepted. Big decisions are made by group agreement. Smaller decisions may be delegated to individuals or small teams within group. Commitment and unity is strong. The team may engage in fun and social activities. The team discusses and develops its processes and working style. There is general respect for the leader and some of leadership is shared more by the team. Leader facilitates and enables (similar to the Situational Leadership^® ‘Participating’ mode).

Performing (Stage 4)

The team is more strategically aware; the team knows clearly why it is doing what it is doing. It has a shared vision and is not reliant on the leader. There is a focus on over-achieving goals. The team has a high degree of autonomy. Disagreements occur but now they are resolved positively, while necessary changes to processes and structure can be made by the team. It attends to relationship, style and process issues along the way. Team members look after each other. The team requires delegated tasks and projects from the leader. Team members might ask for assistance from the leader with personal and interpersonal development. The leader delegates and oversees (similar to the Situational Leadership® ‘Delegating’ mode).

There are many ways of guiding the team towards the ‘Performing’ level. One is to ensure that after every team meeting you evaluate your progress. What went well? What went less well? How could you improve? By getting that as a standard part of the team meeting, you will continually encourage awareness. Try having each peer commit to the team what they will add. This will help focus people on their contributions and make them more aware – and everyone else as well – of what they have contracted to bring to the party. It discourages skiving.

Dealing with conflict

Inevitably, teams will come into conflict. This is not always bad. Sometimes, conflict can lead to a better solution – but only if you have an agreed method of conflict resolution. The other aspect of behaviour worth watching is signs of conflict, or indeed of withdrawal, which is a passive form of conflict. If you are the team leader, it’s important that you look for the signs: if there is conflict, is it task-based – that is, are people disagreeing on the task at hand? Or is it personality based – are people not getting along? Is the conflict limited to the team or does it involve other line managers or departments?

Once you have identified the source of the conflict, address it openly but in a non-threatening way. If it is task-based, then getting together and using the 80/20 rule – i.e. let’s focus on the 80 per cent that is common rather than the 20 per cent that isn’t – may be the way forward. Or it may be that you look for a compromise that is win–win, and allows each approach to maintain what’s important whilst compromising on something less important. If the conflict involves a lack of support for the team member from their line manager, discuss with the line manager. It may be that they are simply unwilling to ‘share’ their people with you. If this is the case, try ensuring you stress the benefits that will accrue to them from participating, or allow them to help shape the team’s outputs. Equally, with individuals who have ceased to contribute, make them aware of the impact of their behaviour and try to understand the cause. It could be they really aren’t right for the team. If so, then ask them to suggest a replacement.

If the conflict is between individuals, then it’s best to ask them to meet up in a neutral setting. Perhaps you would like to speak with each person individually and get their perspective before bringing them together. It’s important when you do bring people together that you make them aware of the impact their behaviour is having on the rest of the team. Most people when asked supportively will put personal differences behind them. Try to encourage both of them by saying that they add value and complement each other. If this doesn’t work, you may need to move one of the members, or risk the team becoming dysfunctional.

The dysfunctional team

There are many different ways of evaluating team performance. If you are leading a team where little gets done, you may wish to call a third party to help you. Methods such as the Ashton Team Performance will look at various questions answered by each individual member around inputs, process and outputs, and will rate them against a benchmark. It can be very useful – but only if you have a good leader.

If you are leading a dysfunctional team, unfortunately you are the problem! Ask why it isn’t working, and what you need to do to address this. If it is reminding individuals to improve their behaviour, then do so. If it’s about increasing trust or outputs, then agree steps to improve this. If you need to be clearer in decisions then do so. Then ask for feedback after each meeting. If you are a member of a dysfunctional team, try talking with other colleagues. As difficult as it is, you may wish to confront the leader and ask to be better led. If you don’t you will likely continue to struggle along, wasting time and being dissatisfied.

Team outputs: better decisions and solutions

Ensuring that you encourage different ways of looking at a problem will often get a better result. One of the popular methods of doing this is called Six Thinking Hats, devised by Edward de Bono. It’s a good way of checking out whether you are thoroughly engaging the different ways of looking at a decision. The ‘hats’ are coloured:

• white – data and information;
• red – feelings and intuition;
• yellow – taking a positive view;
• black – exercising caution;
• green – creative thinking;
• blue – process control.

Monitoring progress: only diamonds are forever

Due to the constant change in organisations, teams will need to adapt, and they have a finite lifespan. Make sure you check progress against your original outputs and if you need to refresh them, do so. In the end, if you are done you are done. Don’t be afraid to disband the team and form new ones as your circumstances change.

Make sure you learn from the experience of working together, asking everyone to critique constructively.

If you have achieved your goals, celebrate your success. Being part of high-performing teams is one of the best feelings of belonging to an organisation and you are right to encourage everyone to recognise it. Nominate yourselves for awards.

Productive meetings

Meetings. As few as possible. Asda famously had meetings standing up to keep them short. Meetings are necessary only when they are necessary. So ask yourself: Will a phone call do? If I need the meeting, who really needs to be there? What is it about? What is the expected outcome?

Once you know you need a meeting, have a good process. This is simple:

1. Have an agenda and a timetable – and stick to it! Invite input on the agenda.
2. Clarify the objectives. What do you want to cover? What would you like the meeting to achieve? It’s amazing how often this isn’t clear.
3. If papers are submitted, make sure people have read them beforehand. Avoid items that are only for information sharing. Focus on items that require discussion and decision. If the items are controversial, make sure you have spoken to key people before the meeting, rather than spring it on them at the meeting.
4. Allocate enough time for each item. If you are over-ambitious, you will over-run, and leave people feeling unproductive and dissatisfied.
5. Moderate discussion – have a chair. Even if the chair rotates, someone always needs to lead the meeting and ensure the objective and outcomes are met.
6. Always take minutes and appoint the minute writer before the meeting. Minutes should cover agreed action, timetables and who is responsible.
7. If it’s a regular meeting, review the actions of the previous meeting at the next meeting. If they aren’t happening, you have an issue.
8. Always practise ‘cabinet responsibility’ – agree or disagree at the meeting but commit to agreement outside of it.
9. Agree and clarify the main communication points before you all leave.
10. After each meeting, ask what went well and what didn’t. Aim to improve.

Top tips, pitfalls and takeaways

Top tips

• Be aware of different personality types and how they act within teams.
• Power brainstorming sessions can be extremely powerful.

Top pitfalls

• With a team, failing to get support of a team member’s line manager, so that they cannot contribute fully and have conflicting priorities.
• As a leader, failing to address team conflicts and letting these hijack team performance.

Top takeaways

• Meetings are often wasteful. Look for ways other than meetings to get things done.
• When meetings are necessary, make sure you have a clear purpose for the meeting, an agenda, and the right people there.

¹ HBR Blog Network, Anthony J. Tjan, 14 Nov. 2012.

² www.belbin.com