Two lists for success in your Team Meetings

Ensuring the success of a team meeting can be difficult. Different personalities, different viewpoints, and different agendas all exist and all have their value to a team. But to bring them together to work to effective outcomes is a challenge. Use the checklists here to ensure your team has successful meetings.

Encourage members of the team to fulfil the roles that are needed. There are two kinds of group roles that are necessary for a team meeting to succeed. Task functions ensure the work requirements are met, while maintenance functions help the group with its internal cohesion and interpersonal feelings.

Task functions:

1. Initiating: Proposing tasks or goals: defining a group problem; suggesting a procedure for solving a problem; suggesting other ideas for consideration
2. Information or opinion seeking: Requesting facts on the problem; seeking relevant information; asking for suggestions and ideas.
3. Information or opinion-giving: Offering facts; providing relevant information; stating a belief; giving suggestions or ideas
4. Clarifying or elaborating: Interpreting or reflecting ideas or suggestions; clearing up confusion; indicating alternatives and issues before the group; giving examples
5. Summarizing: Pulling related ideas together; restating suggestions after the group has discussed them
6. Consensus-testing: Sending up “Trial balloons” to see if the group is nearing a conclusion or agreement has been reached.

Maintenance Functions

1. Encouraging: Being friendly, warm and responsible to others and their contributions; listening; showing regard for others by giving them opportunity or recognition
2. Expressing group feelings: Sensing feeling, mood, relationships within the group; sharing one’s own feelings with other members
3. Harmonizing: Attempting to reconcile disagreements; reducing tension through “pouring oil on troubled waters”; getting people to explore their differences.
4. Compromising: Offering to compromise one’s position, ideas or status; admitting error; disciplining oneself to help maintain the group
5. Gate keeping: Seeing that others have a chance to speak; keeping the discussion a group discussion rather than a one-, two-, or three-way conversation.
6. Setting standards: Expressing standards that will help groups to achieve; applying standards in evaluating group functioning and production.

Choose the roles to suit your team members. They will also be able to see the effectiveness of the system and work to keep your meetings successful.