There are many underpinnings that should be part of team performance–from team contracting and team structure to the performance challenge you give to the team as its purpose. However, another vital component to high performance in teams is related to the types of meetings they have. To have high performing teams, they need to be engaged. In a recent FastCompany webinar, Keith Ferrazzi reported that 71% of teams say they do not collaborate, and 74% of team members say that they are incapable of speaking their minds in their team meeting. These data points show that teams are not performing as they should and they may not be teams at all.
In fact, there are many potential teams that could have excellent performance, but they are being held back by one thing: the kinds of meetings they have. Early in the pandemic, I sat in on many virtual team meetings that droned on and on with information sharing. In an effort to support productivity, many mangers fall prey to this temptation. In one team, the members had been meeting daily to give status updates related to their various departments. Frankly there was not that much change in status from day to day, so this approach did not make sense even for those who may be fans of micro-management. In another meager effort to promote accountability, another manager met virtually with the team at the beginning of each day, requiring team members each in turn to share what they planned to do that day. And then at the end of the day, the team members reported in writing about what they did that day. If managers do this, they are getting a lot of activity. But is it activity you want? Or results?
Focusing on activity can get you off track. In a July 17 Inc. article, Matt Mullenweg of WordPress states “When you’re working from home, and all your colleagues are seeing are the results of your work, if you don’t do the work, it’s very obvious.” Consequently, focusing on activity in “team meetings” can be a huge mistake. When individuals and teams are working from the office, activity can make someone look like a high performer, but in the virtual environment, this does not work anymore.
A team will not “team” if their meetings focus around information sharing only. Information sharing is good in that the right hand will know what the left hand is doing, but you won’t get the innovation and improvement you are seeking. How do you take the team meeting to a higher level? There must be time and focus on analysis, process improvement, innovation, or problem solving.
How much of your team agenda time focuses on solving the problem or improving the process or collaborating to help fellow team members get things done?
One team significantly improved their team performance (and the team culture) by changing the team meetings in one notable way: instead of the “round robin report outs” that we see so often, each meeting focused on peers helping peers. When members reported out, they highlighted what they were doing related to the team’s production or goal, but then other members divided into small groups and gave feedback using this easy formula:
• The team members gave a challenge related to the member’s information update (identifying the risks they saw in the plan or activity)
• Then they gave the team member an idea he or she may not have thought of
• Then they offered help
There are a number of things you can do to support higher performance with structured meetings, and the examples above provide just a few. The goal is to focus on outcomes and provide a structure for collaboration. For problem solving teams, it may mean that each agenda focuses on the current step for solving the problem (the team should be using a defined problem-solving methodology). If the team has a strong performance challenge with defined outcomes related to production or design or innovation, then meetings may revolve around “bullet proofing” progress and removing obstacles.
For more ideas and help with improving team performance, contact us at [email protected], [email protected] or https://www.linkedin.com/in/transformingorganizations/.
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