MODULE 2 > Forming Teams

2.7e Ground Rules for Lectures

Communicating Good Time Management Practices

Ground Rules For Skillful Conversation(Senge, et al., Fifth Discipline Fieldbook, 1994)

Goal: Create an environment that promotes collaboration and allows students to learn to pay attention to the development of skillful conversation.

1. Tell the truth.
2. Bring relevant information immediately to the team.
3. Limit time each person speaks including outside advisors.
4. Positive Criticism: Have rules on how to safely challenge and check each other's work product.
5. How are violations of ground rules going to be handled?
6. Do not avoid conflict. If you have a difference of opinion communicate the differences to others.
7. Plan team time to develop collaboration, using brainstorming for problem solving, and the use of skillful conversation to develop trust and shared meaning.
8. Develop rules that promote trust
9. Learn to listen to yourself as well as to others when actively listening to each other.
10. Develop a silence in yourself so you can hear beneath the words to their true meaning
11. Understand each other mind sets and how to integrate differences into a strength used by the team.
12. Commit to producing dialogues that utilize your creativity to further the performance of the team
13. Before beginning a team meeting, check in with one another giving each person a minute to say what she or he is thinking, feeling, or has noticed since your last meeting. Leave time on the agenda for this habit to develop.
14. Before speaking always know the purpose of your intentions.
15. Only challenge each other in meaningful ways by building shared meaning
16. Before ending a discussion, have the team summarize agreements and disagreements before decisions are made.