Team Meetings: Harnessing The Power of Collective Genius!

"No action, activity or process is more central to a healthy organisation than the meeting" Patrick Lencioni.

With Alistair Kerr

Team meetings have been beaten up and blamed for all sorts of workplace productivity and engagement problems. From the comic satire of Dilbert and other funny memes to the more serious and analytical research discussed in TED talks, it seems like everyone hates meetings. I don't hate meetings. I only hate BAD meetings. BAD meetings make me feel like I’m being slowly and cruelly tortured as the minutes slip by. I like GOOD meetings. GOOD meetings are a joy to attend and contribute to and l leave feeling motivated and positively fired up to get on with the job! 

Like it or not Meetings are important in the world of work. Meetings (if done well) create a unique opportunity for us to apply our individual intelligence and idiosyncratic life experiences into a powerful and unreplaceable group intelligence to solve problems and innovate our products and services ahead of the competition. In the future world of work high performance team meetings that channel our unique individual and collective genius will be one of our only competitive advantages over artificial intelligence and the automation of our jobs. Thus the despised meeting may well turn out to be our saving grace!

In the future world of work, high performance team meetings that channel our collective genius could be our only competitive advantage over artificial intelligence.

But how do we prevent BAD meetings and ensure every meeting is a GOOD meeting? This is a question we have been researching for a number of years now as part of the High Performance Teams in Education Project and we are increasingly confident that we have a solution to offer when it comes to team meetings.

Making Team Meetings Matter

“The hard truth is, bad meetings almost always lead to bad decisions, which is the best recipe for mediocrity.” Patrick Lencioni

Team Meeting Anatomy: 4 Parts Context, 1 Part Process

Of all the different organisations we have worked with over the years schools are by far the most meeting centric - with a range of different meetings held across and down the organisation. Having worked with over to 200 schools on meeting strategy, we have begun to see patterns in the key elements of effective team meetings. We have used these patterns to create a recipe for High Performance Team Meetings. The recipe consists of 4 parts context, 1 part process. Let’s look at the four context factors first:

1.           Purpose and Membership

The key question to ask before setting any meeting is: Is your meeting strategy based on (1) a whole-of-organisation scope or (2) team-specific/ project specific scope? Answering this question will help to define topics on the agenda as well as who should be in the room. Having clarity of purpose and only essential members present at the outset assists in overcoming the common meeting risks of role ambiguity, competing agendas and scope creep.

2.           Reporting Structures and Responsibilities

Once purpose and membership are defined the key question becomes: Are reporting structures and responsibilities aligned to governance or management functions? Most team meetings are part of management functions however working parties and project groups may sit more within a governance function. Thus clarifying these core structural reporting issues allows us to manage common risks of boundary crossing and diffusion of responsibility.

3.           Up-To-Date Lead Indicators and Targets

To ensure that meetings are productive the key question is: Do all staff know the group level lead indicators of success, as well as their individual targets AND is all the reporting data up to date and distributed? Having clarity on key metrics helps to avoid the key risks of collecting data for data’s sake with no link back to strategy, and ensures that the level of complexity of discussion is appropriate to the data presented.

4.           Appropriate Activity Cycles

When we think about schools specifically, one of the unique challenges they face are that there are many different types of meetings that are usually quite necessary. There are specific meetings needed for teaching and non-teaching staff and also meetings needed for leadership teams and project teams working on various aspects of school improvement and curriculum. Given this complexity the key question is: How does your school context influence the meeting cycle in terms of frequency and length?

The 60 Minute Window...

From our experience, schools adopt a wide range of different approaches. However, 60-minutes is often deemed the ideal length for a team meeting in terms of both attention, concentration and energy levels of participants as well as (in some cases) industrially mandated times allowed for such interactions. Ensuring that meeting cycles fit to local school context will eliminate the common risks associated with over/ under meeting, staff availability, schedule clashes, and mandated work hours.

The HPT Team Meeting: An Hour of Power!

Moving onto the nuts and bolts of what happens inside the meeting once the context is considered, the below team meeting template covers off on the process of a High Performance Team Meeting. Specifically, ground rules, key roles and responsibilities, and agenda items that provide a mixture of briefings, updates, discussions on hot issues and opportunities. As you can see below we pack a lot of interaction and engagement in 60 minutes! Let’s unpack each of the agenda items from a 60-minute HPT Meeting.

Item 1. & Item 2: Welcome & Warm Up

The organisation’s Mission & Values, Meeting Purpose, Moderator, Ground Rules & Warm-Up are critical aspects of a meeting, however they needn’t take a long time to cover. In a mere 5-minutes you can: (1) confirm the school and team-specific mission and values; (2) appoint a meeting moderator and confirm agendas and outcomes; (3) do a one-word barometer to gauge readiness and mood; and (4) complete a quick icebreaker to get to know team members better.

Item 3. Team Member Updates

Once the warm-up processes are completed we move straight into individual updates from each team member. These updates are in the form of ‘exception reporting’ whereby only new or changed information that the team is not already aware of is reported by each individual using a ‘round the room’ format. Information from updates may drive subsequent hot issues discussions as well individual follow-up conversations after the meeting has concluded.

Item 4. Hot Issues

Hot Issues is an important agenda item that ensures a consensus driven approach to selecting and addressing the hot topics staff wish to discuss. In order to make efficient use of time and to focus on issues truly relevant to the wider team (as opposed to those issues raised by staff with the loudest voices) get staff to complete a quick pair and share, then write two or three hot issues (per pair) on the whiteboard. Then allow each person to place 5 x ticks on the whiteboard to vote for the topics they wish to focus on – democracy at its finest.

To complete the process select the issue that garnered the most votes, allow the individual who raised the issue to give a brief outline (1 minute), the group to ask brief questions to clarify understanding of the issue (1 minute), discuss the issue in a solutions focused way (5 minutes), and finally allow the individual who initially raised the issue to address the group with their summary of the discussion and key takeaway (1 minute) – repeat for as many issues as the meeting time allows.

Item 5. Senior Leaders Briefing and Q&A

Putting the Senior Leaders Briefing after Hot Issues enables a flexible approach to the subsequent briefing to address any outstanding hot issues as well as preventing any risk of bias caused by opening the meeting with this item and also avoids repetition of issues if they have already been covered within Hot Issues or other preceding sections.

Item 6. Deep Dive Presentation/ Strategy Discussion

Deep Dive Strategy Discussions are vital to keep the big picture strategy in focus which is just as important as discussing the hot issues of the day. Keeping organisational strategy firmly on the agenda allows staff to “see the forest from the trees,” and work towards longer-term improvement. However unlike ‘Hot Issues’ which are spontaneous, ‘Deep Dives’ need to be planned for as they should focus on the organisation’s most important strategic issues or the “5% questions” – “how do we solve the unsolvable?” OR “how do we do the impossible and change the world?”

The first job of preparing a Deep Dive is to devise a probing question that is worthy of the group’s time and consideration. Too often questions that are raised within meetings are too vague/general or of low strategic importance. These questions don’t meet the standard of question required to conduct a deep dive and are better asked in other forums.

Preparing a Deep Dive is challenging. Because of this we recommend using a template such as the one shown in the example above and working in pairs so that the ‘presenter’ can be coached by their partner to fast-track and quality assure the process. Through preparing a probing question, outlining what is known about the issue, and what is already been tried to resolve it, a Deep Dive focuses the group to move beyond the obvious and greatly improves the relevance to team purpose and scope, the team’s comprehension of the issue and specific needs, the quality of ideas and solutions shared among the team, and the extent to which next steps and new pathways are now evident for the presenter.

With proper preparation, the presentation of even the most complex issues can usually be done within the 7-minute allocation (with pre-reading also appropriate for this item) and the subsequent 7-minute brainstorming session (noting key points on a whiteboard as discussion progresses) can create powerful insights and solutions that can be quite astounding. A great Deep Dive gets the team buzzing with excitement about new possibilities to solve previously impossible problems or change the world in new and better ways!

Item 7. Team Pulse & Communication

As part of promoting wellbeing and support, each team meeting has a brief agenda item towards the conclusion of the meeting to discuss: (1) wellbeing and support based on the results of the HPT Pulse Survey to develop forward strategies to maintain or improve wellbeing at work; and (2) any notable personal news and events that may be sources of celebration or matters of concern where team members can provide any additional support.

Item 8. Wrapping Up with Purpose

Ending the meeting with all staff sharing their barometer and takeaways enables clarity across the team about (1) how effective the meeting has been as well as (2) highlighting any issues or themes that may require further follow- up or clarification. The meeting is finalised by noting the moderator feedback, appointment of key roles and the deep dive topic and presenter scheduled for the next meeting.

Bringing It All Together: Team Meetings & Your Next Steps...

Like it or not Team Meetings are important and if done well create a unique opportunity for us to create a powerful and unreplaceable group intelligence to solve problems, innovate and improve. The HPT Team Meeting recipe we showcased in this article is our current 'best practice' template after working with over 200 schools on their meeting strategies. While the HPT Team Meeting recipe might be a little different to how your meetings currently run, there is a fantastic method in the madness of this approach! Every element of the High Performance Team Meeting Agenda is designed to encourage the positive outcomes of Inclusivity, Support, Proactivity, Strategic Thinking and Accountability.

Take a moment now to think about how you approach team meetings. Do you use some of the roles, items and meeting strategies outlined above? What could you do this week to improve your team meeting experience? Remember that in the future world of work high performance team meetings will be one of our only competitive advantages over artificial intelligence. Thus we all need to make sure that every team meeting is a high performance meeting!

Dr Pete Stebbins PhD

Dr Pete Stebbins, PhD, is a workplace psychologist, executive coach & author of the recently released book: "Level Up! Building The Highest Performance Teams". Pete has many years of research and professional practice behind him and is the director of the High Performance Schools Program working with a large number of schools to maximise staff and student outcomes. 

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• Phillip Carleton on Building Explicit & Consistent School Culture
• Sharon Barker on Building High School Culture From Start Up
• Judi Newman on Right Sizing Your Leadership Across Multiple Teaching Teams To Build A Culture of Feedback
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