Managing the Team I

Once a group has come to consensus regarding rules and worked on controlling their emotions than it is just about the facilitator or leader monitoring the team. As an aside a consensus is different than a majority. Consensus means that the group as a whole agrees to something. The process is something like choosing a restaurant in my family. There is a variety of preferences but what it usually ends up is the middle of road choice for some and a high favorite choice for others. My dad would not care where he ate as long as seafood was available. Mom simply did not care. I loved shrimp, cod, and halibut. My sister loved seafood. If we were on a budget time or money wise than we went to Skippers. If we had more money and time we went to Ivar’s, usually off of Lake Union. In a nutshell, we reached consensus. Now if it was up to a majority dad might have got stuck at an Italian joint. Mom, June and I all loved pizza and spaghetti – dad would eat it out of hunger only. If a majority voted happened to often you could see how dad may not want to eat out anymore or may even pull rank. This is why a majority decision making process usually does not work well in group or team situations. Eventually one or more people will start feeling like they are not being listened to.

Having in place training and rules does not insure by any means that the conflict will be civil. It may on the surface have the appearance of civility: and, individuals or groups within the team may avoid overtly expressing anger or fear. However they may stonewall ideas or pick at every idea another person or group presents. It is these types of behavior a team leader or facilitator must be vigilantly about discerning.

A leader can head off an individual or group fractionalizing is by taking five minutes or so at the beginning of the meeting and review the positives. Each meeting should also involve at least ten minutes of feedback on the topic of what was discussed at the last meeting. The first five minutes would be bringing to light perceptions about the discussion followed by five minutes of evaluating and discussing the observations. When there surfaces areas of conflict than perceptional issues need to be ironed out and so the team is cohesive regarding the definition of the issue and what the next step ought to be. Time may also be taken every so often to cover how effective the team is accomplishing its task. On long standing or permanent teams Wheelan, in his book Creating Effective Teams, recommends doing this every two months or so.

It is important for the team members to be kept to substantive statements. If you ever been in the meeting where people say, “Oh, that is a great idea.” or, “It will never work.” These are not substantive. Two examples of how a substantive statement can begin are, “Here is what I like (or dislike) . . . “or “That is a good idea except . . . “The opening of course is followed by something specific that is issued based rather than personal.

Part two of this topic will be the subject of tomorrow’s post.