Why making meetings effective makes teaming ineffective

The Problem

When working with leaders of Extra-Dependent Teams, I often witness them using effective team meeting techniques which lead to ineffective teaming.

One of the common techniques used is the "update". Updating is promoted as an effective thing to do in a team meeting. After all, it helps everyone know where everyone else is with regards to the team objective. Taking it in turns to update the rest of the team also creates interaction as everyone gets a chance to speak. Finally, I've witnessed leaders prompt their teams to ask for help from each other - another technique to create interaction, vulnerability and trust.

Yet when I asked one team leader if anyone had asked for help, he said, "never". Another team leader was frustrated with how little people listened to each other's updates. And when I observe these meetings I see everyone's body language saying, "I've got this - don't ask me anything!" It all wreaks of proving rather than improving and an underlying competitiveness which does the team no good.

So what's going on in an Extra-Dependent Team that means effective meeting techniques create ineffective teaming?

1. An update works for teams that depend on each other. Inter-Dependent Teams depend on each other (the clue is in the name), so an update is important because the progress of one person affects everyone else in the team. But in an Extra-Dependent Team, members depend on people outside the team, not each other, to do their work, because they share similar skills, do similar work and have similar roles. So an update on their individual work lacks the meaning, importance and dependency needed to make it interesting. That's why people look bored!
2. Updating in an Extra-Dependent Team encourages comparison between team members. This is because of the similarity of roles, skills and work. The comparison is uncomfortable and leads to defensive behaviours
3. Defensive updates "prove" effectiveness rather than "improve" effectiveness - so the team doesn't get any better. Team meetings become an arena where updates are compared against each other, generating invulnerability. Don't imagine this is blatant - it's much more subtle than that. But it means people don't ask for help, nor ask questions.
4. Not asking for help, or asking questions reinforces the invulnerability of team members and reduces the likelihood of interaction, discussion and generating improvements in effectiveness.

Effective meeting technique therefore makes teaming ineffective from the start of the meeting, because the update creates conditions of comparison, defensiveness, invulnerability, sufficiency. It stops the team improving it's effectiveness!

Some solutions

Here are a few proven techniques that I've encouraged leaders to use instead of the update, because it leads to much greater interaction, interest, development and improved effectiveness:

1. Ask everyone to share one thing that they have learned about their work since the last meeting - this ensures the focus is straightaway on improving, rather than proving.
2. Ask everyone to share one thing they have been proud of achieving in their work, and why. This helps open up vulnerability - but focusing on the positives. Learning remains at the core - members who share big successes, share techniques, approaches and shortcuts that other team members can benefit from.
3. Ask everyone to share a challenge they currently have that they don't know the answer to. This question can take a whole meeting! But it provides great richness. Firstly, it shows everyone can learn. Secondly it brings multiple brains to the same problem, collaborating together. Thirdly it prompts new thinking about problems likely to affect everyone in the team. So everyone is helping everyone else to become more effective.

When you think about it, it's not rocket science. But sometimes it takes someone to tell you that your team is different.

So it's not you being an ineffective leader. Nor is it your team that is being ineffective. It is your team meeting technique which is ineffective - for this team.

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