No matter how good you think your team works, when new issues arise begin with a team meeting. You may believe that your team is the best team ever, but new situations, problems, and events bring out different sides of us so it's best to start with a team meeting. What should happen at that meeting?
Relay the facts of the matter
The meeting should begin with relaying the facts of the matter. Once the facts are relayed, there should be an opportunity for people to add missing facts, make corrections to the facts relayed, ask questions, and ask questions.
Share your feelings
Without opinion, people should have the opportunity to share their feelings about the situation. I remember meetings like this at school when difficult news was shared. When people had the chance to share their feelings, it was very helpful for me since the range of feelings include many I would not have thought about. That share broadened my awareness as well as my empathy for the team.
Discuss the overall vision
With the facts and feelings in mind, what do we hope to support, create, maintain, or mitigate in this situation. What is our end vision with all of this in mind. In situations of struggle, the greatest obstruction to good teamwork may be that people's end visions are different. So it is important for teams to come to consensus with ultimate goals and vision in mind--goals and vision for their work toghether as a team, and perhaps goals and visions for themselves as individuals. For example as part of a working team at school, we all agreed to working to help every child reach mastery with math standards, but on my own, I was working to make the lessons more relevant, meaningful, and timely. My colleagues didn't have to share in my personal vision since they were not teaching most of the math or creating the lessons--that arena belonged mostly to me, but we all were committed to mastery of the standards and that informed our collective vision related to scheduling, time-on-task for math, and whole team efforts.
Identify your strengths
Identify what each member of the team can contribute to the situation. In most teams, people bring a diversity of strengths and talents to the teamwork. Understanding what people are able and willing to contribute demonstrates the capacity as well as the challenge for the team. For example, once everyone's strengths are identified, there may be leftover needs that no one can fulfill. When this happens the team has to look for additional team support.
Create the goal attainment process
Once you've identified the facts of the situation, people's feelings, collective and individual vision, and strengths, it's time to create a process that will help you attain the vision you've created. Essentially, what will you do? This effort answers the following questions:
- What schedule will we adhere to?
- What will our communication look like with regard to the information shared, regularity, and format of the information?
- When, how, and how often will we analyze and revise our efforts?
- What do we do if unexpected problems occur--how will we handle those on our own or as a team?