Two Questions to Transform your Team Meetings
In my previous blog, I wrote about the importance of including a wide range of voices and lived experiences in decision-making conversations, as a way to build more resilient organisations.
But once you’ve brought a set of people together, how do you form a cohesive team? And, how can you ensure that everyone gets to contribute fully to the conversation?
I often find that teams are in a hurry to get to the 'decision-making'; what they see as the substance of the conversation. But, by rushing through, they can sometimes skip a foundational step - building trust.
When I’m brought in as a facilitator for these meetings, I invite teams to recognise that this configuration of people has never sat before in this moment, at this time, to discuss this specific topic. This team is uniquely placed to do something incredible together.
I then ask two very simple questions:
In order to do your best work together:
What do you need from everyone else?
What can you commit to?
The answers to these questions help form community agreements (also known as team or group agreements).
The intention of developing agreements is to deepen relationships between team members, and to create an equitable and inclusive environment where they can successfully collaborate together (see the National Equity Project). Notice the questions invite team members to reflect on both what they are asking of others and what they are offering to the group. The interaction is genuinely two way.
Community agreements work best when they are:
Concrete e.g. when we say “respect confidentiality”, try and be specific e.g. “don’t share personal stories outside of this group”;
Realistic e.g. identify agreements that are possible to uphold throughout all meetings, and use language that everyone understands;
Genuinely agreed e.g. the role of the facilitator is to check in with each person in the room to confirm that they are in agreement with the proposed community agreements.
Examples of community agreements might include (1) start and end meetings on time (2) take breaks when you need to (3) stay present (don’t check email) (4) assume positive intent (5) step up and step back (acknowledge your positional power).
(See Seeds for Change for more information on the purpose of group agreements and how to formulate them.)
By collaborating on these agreements, the team has actively created its first work product together. As a facilitator, I revisit the agreements at the beginning of every meeting, to see if anyone wants to add to the list, or uplift a specific agreement for the purpose of that day’s conversation.
If we encounter a sticky moment in a discussion where some team members are struggling to see the perspectives of others, I - or any team member - can refer back to the agreements and call in a specific quality that the team had collectively agreed to adhere to, as a way to help us get unstuck. For example, if the team has an agreement of "explore the possibilities" then a member of the team could ask "what's possible with this idea?" as a way to move the conversation forward.
Do you make agreements with your team? What’s an agreement that helps build trust, relationships and inclusion? Are there any agreements to avoid? Let me know in the comments section.