Team Meetings

Time management is what makes teams run efficiently. In order to create and sustain a time management plan, organized regular meetings are essential. Learning to plan and facilitate a meeting is essential to having a powerful energized discussion. Facilitation at a meeting is the difference between wasting your time and accomplishing the goal. Team meetings have specific purposes to fulfill. They fulfill social and communication needs including communicating data and results, recognition of being part of a successful team, involvement in decision-making, goal setting, problem-solving, work and improvements in work delegation, mutual support and enhancement of the self esteem of the participants to promote creativity.

Planning a Team or Faculty Advisor Meetings

Meetings should be planned efficiently. There are specific guidelines to planning effective meetings.

1. Decide on the purpose of the meeting.

2. Establish topics and objectives to be placed on the agenda.

1. Determine participants.
2. Do you need to involve staff or faculty in the meeting to facilitate organizing the task? If you need to involve faculty in a meeting, check their availability before sending out a time.

3. Plan logistics.

1. What time are you going to meet? Looking at team members' schedules when is the appropriate time to bring everyone together. Some teams have a fixed weekly time that they meet with their team and when they meet with their faculty advisor.

4. Plan with the team what evaluation criteria your team will use to assess if the meeting is successful.

5. Arrange for the meeting place, if necessary.

6. Find the resources needed by the team for the week (can elicit the help of other team members).

7. Prepare the appropriate agenda and distribute 24 hours before the meeting asking team members for additions and suggestions.

8. Set weekly meeting schedules.

9. Effectively communicate all plans via e-mail to faculty advisor, team members, and team coordinator.

Guidelines for an Effective Meeting

Preparing and Beginning the Meeting

1. Bring copies of the amended agenda to the meeting.
2. Set the tone of the meeting with your opening remarks.
3. Spends five or ten minutes socializing or checking in with each other to elicit team members’ expectations.
4. Define and get agreement on agenda.
5. If you do not have a team member who is the time keeper, the recorder can be the timekeeper and help keep the team to its agreed time frame.
6. The recorder records the minutes.
7. Guide the process along towards some form of resolution.
8. Ensure that the ground rules are observed.
9. Make sure each team member has an opportunity to contribute.

Maintaining Productivity Throughout the Meeting

1. Keep to the agenda.
2. Ensure balanced representation. If a person has not spoken for sometime during the meeting, ask them for their opinion about what the team is talking about. Establish the fifteen minute rule, that all team members will participate in an meeting in the first fifteen minutes of the meeting. Obtain agreement from all team members to move the facilitation process along.
3. Support goal clarity and goal acceptance.
4. Maintain the team through enforcement of ground rules, using active listening skills.

1. Summarize and explain how the ground rule effects the performance of the team.
2. Have each team member think about how the rule can be improved to increase the effectiveness of the team.
3. Ask open-ended questions, suggest ways to organize and communicate, and check for consensus.
   
   

5. Facilitate communication by actively listening, supporting, differing, participating, reflecting, providing visual reinforcement, and encouraging full expression of views.
6. Make sure all team members understand decisions by asking clarifying questions to test comprehension, summarize by restating the content, and seek and give information. React to what team members say by disagreeing, supporting verbal and nonverbal expression, and involving other team members by inviting discussion and expecting an expression of their opinion.
7. Initiate new ideas through dialogue and creativity. Support productive dialogue within the team by building on other team member's ideas. Manage decision making by facilitating the raising of major issues, the identification, and thorough examination of information and alternative. Remember to influence decisions so that they are based on task-relevant knowledge and skill rather than external status and personal dominance. Make sure the entire team takes responsibility for tough decisions. The tough decisions you will encounter in meetings are varied. Examples are how can you schedule more time to work on the project after an equipment failure or how do you deal with one member who is not carrying their equal share of the work and is imposing on the other members because they are over extended. Encourage initiative and leadership by team members who have appropriate skills to do specific tasks.
8. Facilitate the development of appropriate norms for the team.
9. Legitimize individual differences vs. conformity to "Party line"
10. Encourage collaboration vs. withholding information.
11. Coach effectively by neutrally promoting a team process of self-assessment and improvement.
12. Encourage task disagreement vs. norms that suppress conflict. When conflicts or frustrations arise from inside or outside pressures on the team, use productive conflict resolution skills to handle the pressures.
13. Focus team energy on the common task.
14. Support reporting activities by recording ideas and results, and support the communication of these ideas and results to the appropriate people.
15. Use your influence by being positive and compliment your team members during discussions.
16. Brainstorm and bring pressing issues out into the open. Discuss them fully, make time for unexpected pressing issues on the next agenda or get agreement on extending the meeting time to resolve pressing issues.

    Effectively Bringing the Meeting to a Close

17. Actively listen by using summarizing the discussion and any decisions made at the meeting.
18. Update the time management plan and summarize the activities for the next week.
19. List and allocate action items. Delegate tasks and record the estimated times and the team members doing the tasks.
20. Survey team members to evaluate the meeting’s content and process. Ask clarifying questions.
1. How productive was the meeting?
2. How well did the team communicate?
3. Review team norms and goals at the end of every meeting.
21. Ask if all team members are comfortable with their ability to use their knowledge and skill to do the tasks they are performing.
22. Set next meeting time. Acknowledge the reporting activities for the team, i.e. write and e-mail weekly team progress report to team.
23. Communicate with the faculty advisor and teaching assistant assigned to your team and set up the meetings so the advisor and teaching assistant can attend if they wish.
24. Review the team's time management plan and make any adjustments needed for the team member's schedules until the next meeting.

    How often should you hold a team meeting?

    You should hold a meeting for one hour at least once a week with your team members. All meetings should have an agenda, which is e-mailed to all participants by the team leader of your team 24 hours in advance. A team meeting is used to coordinate work, set goals, plan work, review progress, time management, problem-solving, brainstorming, and discussion of team process. Meetings are structured to promote creative participation by all members and to support self-management of tasks. The first weekly team meeting covering team formation and formulating action plans, must include the following:

    • Setting Goals
    • Time management plan that includes how to develop the project.
    • A system for brainstorming ideas, including how you will present your ideas and make decisions.
    • Utilizing decision-making procedures.
    • Identifying, defining, and setting the quality requirements for the team.
    • Developing an action plan for reviewing the task assignment process.
    • Decide on type of short informal meetings, to maintain communication between the weekly, formalized meetings.