Team meetings can be both productive and counter productive as most people find. If they are well structured with a purpose and goal then a lot can be achieved (most of the time).
For explorartory meetings, it’s probably okay to have some time set aside for some free and open discussions. Once a goal has been agreed upon, it’s probably a good idea to focus on it more and steer the discussion to try and deliver on the goal. Having open ended discussions with no set goals sometimes is discouraging and sometimes a waste of time.
To the point, I wanted to discuss some things not to say and do in a meeting which might cause a collapse in communications, these are just some things that I have noticed in the last few months worth of meetings and are based on my own experiences,
- Don’t assume you know everything, there will always be someone smarter than you. There’s nothing wrong with being an expert in your own area, but there are times where you just need to trust others to deliver.
- Don’t pick on other team members for (possibly) not delivering, this is hugely demoralising. It’s better to ask why, and if possible does that team member or members need help to deliver.
- In real life, does anyone really use waterfall methods to deliver a project?
- Don’t try and do micro-management if you are clearly middle or even senior management, but at least describe tasks in the same language as the stakeholder and developer so that things don’t get lost in translation.
- Do have a plan if the series of meetings are to last a few months if there are long term goals to be achieved. If it’s not a plan, then at least have a list of todo, work in progress and done tasks.
- Don’t assign tasks without deadlines (realistic ones).
- Don’t assume you are on the same page in discussions unless you are confident that everyone at the meeting has common language and understands what is being discussed. People come and go, so you just have to be aware.
Most if not all of the above list of things is common sense, there isn’t anything too special that you need to do to succeed at communicating.
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See Also
- waterfall or agile methods for delivering a project
- using continuous integration systems in a team
- the joys of working with a team across multiple institutions