Ground Rules

Initial Team Dialogues

Team questionnaire responses completed by each team member have been merged into a dialogue. The purpose of the dialogue is to help the team reach consensus in areas where the team members have different perspectives and to form a basis for the development of ground rules. A questionnaire has been developed for the course, which reflects the instructor’s vision of what issues should be considered by the team creating its ground rules. The questionnaire covers the following areas of performance:

1. How to organize your team to reach your objectives
2. How to develop your ground rules
3. How to facilitate communication when your team has different opinions on how a task should be accomplished (i.e. how many hours a team member expects to contribute to the task and what kind of effort they are willing to commit to the project).
4. Provides a window into areas where effective action plans need to be developed so that your team can become high performing.
5. Shows the team leader which items need to be incorporated into the next meeting’s agenda so that discussions can take place to effectively communicate different perspectives on how the task should be accomplished allowing the team to come to consensus on logistics and strategy.

The dialogue should be analyzed as follows:

1. Will the team be investing sufficient time in planning the task?
2. Will the team be able to agree upon deadlines within the organization I am providing?
3. Are the team’s priorities clear?
4. Are we overestimating how long the task will take?
5. How are we going to handle conflict?
6. Are we going to have the ability to have a clear direction well in advance?
7. What kind of commitment in time has each team member agreed to?
8. Does each team member’s understand their obligation to each other regarding oral presentations?
9. What plan should be put in place for analyzing data?
10. What kind of action plan will we develop for writing team papers?
11. What kind of action plan should we develop for writing individual papers?
12. After meeting with the faculty advisor and discussing your relationship does it match each individual team member’s expectations?
13. Do the team members agree how they will communicate?
14. Do the team members agree on when weekly meetings will take place, for how long, and has each team member committed to being there?
15. Are all team members’ goals compatible?
16. Are all the team members’ goals compatible?

The dialogue allows consensus to be reached immediately. The dialogue further allows the team leader to recognize areas where team members have different perspectives. These area can be added to a meeting agenda to discuss openly and non-judgmentally, in order to come to consensus on these areas where agreement is necessary. The dialogues also delineate areas where decisions making tools can be used in order to come to consensus. When filling out the questionnaire, each team member frankly states his or her perspective. The team leader can now analyze the results and most probably will find that in many areas your team has already come to consensus and the dialogues become indicators of how each person expects to perform in the team. In the next meeting the team members will be able to describe the key performance indicators that the team already possesses. The dialogue allows the building process to be positive and constructive. The dialogues support frank, open discussion about how team members work individually and their commitment to working collaboratively. The dialogues allow the team to decide how they will agree to work together in areas where they have different views. Remember to acknowledge every team member’s work ethic and perspective before coming to consensus.

In your third team meeting, action plans are created and set into motions. In this meeting, review areas where team members have divergent perspectives and make or review decisions on how the team has decided to work together. To enhance productivity review with the team the following issues:

• How can the team improve planning?
• How will the team organize writing assignments, oral presentation, communication amongst themselves, communication with the faculty advisor, setting deadlines, managing time constraints, showing up for meetings on time, and resolving conflicts?
• Do you have a clearly defined mission statement?
• Have you adequately discussed each member’s skill and knowledge level so that each member can support the other to gain proficiency where needed in order to fulfill their roles with maximum effectiveness? (Some areas needed to be included are time management, laboratory and technical skill level, and writing and oral presentation skill level)
• How can the team members reduce involvement in actions that waste time and devote adequate time to actions that lead directly towards achieving the course’s objectives?
• How can the team members organize communication with each other and outside contacts to make them into a high performing team.

The team leader then seeks agreement on changes in the team members' answers to conform to the goals set by the team. The goals are then organized so that they are specific, measurable, and realistic and include target dates, where appropriate, for their accomplishment. Each team member is given specific goals to be accountable for during the semester. Some specific areas that need to be assigned for monitoring are:

1. Showing up and being on time for meetings.
2. Monitoring action plans for developing an oral presentation, including rehearsal times, analyzing data, planning and revising overheads and rehearsing.
3. Monitoring action plans for writing assignments, both individual and collaborative work.
4. Organizing and communicating with industrial consultant and/or faculty advisor or whomever the instructor indicates.
5. Recording and communicating progress to outside contacts.
6. Making periodic checks with team members regarding their ability to keep their time commitments to the team’s goals by helping adapt the team’s action plans to any changes in the team member’s time commitments.

In a company setting a questionnaire would be created by the team leader. The team leader would quantify the results from the survey by setting the standards that the leader wished to develop the team. If the company has their own web site, the survey can be web based and the merging can be done on the web.

In a corporate situation, you would develop a survey as follows:

• Need enough statements on how the team functions to crosscheck others.
• Make the statements specific to the situation.
• Convene the team to answer the survey at a special meeting.
• Alongside each question or statement have only three responses, thereby gaining a detailed profile of how the team acts.