Team Building
The other day, Kevin commented:
I think it would also be effective to mandate (ok, encourage) conversations, too — engagement that has no accountability other than to get off of one's butt and chat someone and something up.
Sometimes I find myself doing this, as well. I let the group run at the mouth at the beginning of my staff meetings. It is Monday morning and everyone is relaxed and still fresh with the memories and aches from their weekend activities. It takes a few minutes to get that built-up energy out and move onto business, but it does have to move on.
At the same time, some of us go en mass to the HUB for lunch on Fridays. Strictly voluntary, but it provides an opportunity for team building.
What’s my point? My point is that a standing meeting is not justified solely by its team building value. The purpose of a meeting is to make a decision. If there is no decision to be made, do not hold a meeting. If you want team building, do team building.
You don’t have to take my word for it. Here is the word of a professional:
To those who consider meetings to be a time of team bonding, [says Glenn Parker, team building consultant and author of Meeting Excellence: 33 Tools to Lead Meetings that Get Results], "If you want to have teambuilding have teambuilding, but let's call it that." If there's a lack of bonding there's a better way of addressing it… — Eight Steps to More Effective Meetings
So… What do you think? Do you use standing meetings for team building? How do you decide when to hold a meeting? How do you do team building?
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posted by Mark (the Brush Valley Brewer) @ 9:37 AM 3 Comments
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3 Comments:
I agree. I would also add that there are more efficient ways to do many of the things we do in standing meetings.
For example, our group has moved our agenda items and individual round-robin reports to a wiki. You can easily see what items need to be discussed, and/or can be moved offline to a smaller group before going into a meeting and wasting time on it.
Additionally, some items may be left to polling/survey tools or blogging/discussion tools rather than letting a few vocal people monopolize the precious time of everyone.
I believe that being aware of and making thoughtful decisions about decision making and team making is the crux of the matter. If you are worried/concerned about both, you are probably going to be ok as is your team. If you are fixated on one, it won't be long before the group is off balance and starved for the other.
And the context for my comment was steeped more in getting out and connecting with new people, people you barely know or don't know at all. Read something on newswire or the CDT that piques your interest? Make a cold call and take someone out to lunch to learn more. Something else I've been trying is to finish a meeting (goal oriented of course) early and just chat the other people up about general issues or other issues that might be on their minds. It expands what I know about them and makes me a better colleague in the end, IMO.
Mark -- I, too, think meetings are not a great way to do team building. We have regularly scheduled informal lunches (please stop by sometime) and do things like out of work gettogethers. About once a year, we have a retreat which is a meeting, but a meeting to talk about the past year (we usually do it late in the fall semester) and the future of the group.
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