CH 3: Team Communication and Difficult Conversations

behaviors help drive acquired diversity

(1) making sure everyone is heard (2) making it safe to let team members express novel ideas (3) giving team members decision-making authority (4) sharing credit (5) giving useful feedback (6) putting feedback into action

effective evaluation

(a) the process should be primarily positive and goal-driven and rarely punitive (b) the process should involve clear expectations (c) all team members should participate

Principles of Difficult Conversations

- Embrace difficult conversations - Assume the best in others - Adopt a learning stance - Stay calm/overcome noise - Find common ground - Disagree diplomatically - Avoid exaggeration and either/or approaches

Steps in Difficult Conversations

1. Start well. 2. Listen to their story. 3. Tell your story. 4. Create a shared story.

Teams go through four natural stages to reach high performance.

1.Forming 2.Storming 3.Norming 4.Performing

Get to know each other

30 minutes to an hour getting to know one another in a social but professional manner helps build the trust the team needs to effectively coordinate its efforts

Making your meetings "safe"

As a meeting leader, encourage debate but defuse any comments that are perceived as non collegial it requires that you initially foster disassociation but end with association Research has shown that teams that have more dissent during meetings reach higher-quality decisions By opening discussion to all available information and options, teams tend to adopt the best options more often and become more committed to the decisions

Stay Flexible and Open

As you start gathering information and drafting initial findings and conclusions, you may recognize that earlier decisions about purpose, direction, major points, and roles aren't strong or practical Instead of staying silent and forging ahead with the writing project, groups should constantly reevaluate whether they need to modify their original plans.

Managing Difficult Conversations

Common types of difficult conversations for entry-level business professionals include receiving a bad performance review, having ideas rejected, critiquing a colleague, giving feedback to a boss, correcting someone, approaching rule breakers about their behavior, talking to a slacker on a group project, and dealing with office politics After working with corporate clients for nearly three decades, one research team concluded that the most influential people are those who can effectively handle difficult conversations

Start Right Away

Developing ideas well near a deadline is rarely successful. This is even more problematic when many members of a team have competing views about the direction of a writing project close to a deadline

Get to Know One Another

Effective virtual teams find ways to establish virtual watercoolers, where teammates regularly and spontaneously interact

Find Common Ground

Emotionally, it lessens the perceived distance between you, and it may even lead to bonding Rationally, it helps you analyze the issues at hand in a way that will likely lead to mutually acceptable solutions. You can find common ground in a number of areas, including facts, conclusions, feelings, goals, and values

Work Together at the Planning Stage

For all strong writing, planning is the most important stage—it's the stage where you carefully think about audiences and their needs, develop compelling ideas that are well-reasoned, and think about how to frame your message for the most impact As the group plans together, it should develop clear and specific purposes and goals, clarify and define the basic problems and issues together, prioritize finding certain pieces of information, identify subject-matter experts, and delegate roles for researching and writing you should spend a significant amount of time together (at least one to two hours for student team writing projects) before delegating independent work. When team members work independently during the planning stage, they often waste time and energy working with different purposes, goals, and expectations.

Build Consensus and a Plan of Action

For important decisions, the group should attempt to build consensus around a decision-making approach that prioritizes factors such as timelines, financial resources, and so on. You may find it difficult to build consensus on the bigger issues. Start by building consensus on smaller ones

Planning for Meetings

For routine meetings, you should spend 30 to 60 minutes preparing important and nonroutine meetings, you may need to spend at least several hours or days planning.

Effective teams meet often

Frequent meetings are necessary to establish shared perceptions of roles, goals, and accountabilities meetings force team members to meet deadlines. Teams that do not meet often may never reach the performing stage

Avoid Exaggeration and Either/Or Approaches

If you find yourself using superlatives such as always, never, most, or worst, you might be exaggerating either/or approach to most business communication is ineffective. For difficult conversations, it usually translates into a right-versus-wrong approach. Approaching a difficult conversation with an I'm right, you're wrong approach inevitably dooms the conversation

Adopt a Learning Stance and Commit to Hearing Everyone's Story

In emotionally charged, high-stakes conversations, approaching the conversation with a learner mind-set will often lead to productive outcomes. You can do this by avoiding the message-delivery stance

Discuss How You Will Edit the Document Together

Make sure all team members discuss and agree about the technologies you'll use as you draft your document Discuss how your team will use comments and track changes within the document. Also, be clear about rules for overwriting one another's work. you should first revise with a focus on the strength of your ideas and how well these ideas match the needs of your audience. Then, you should focus on how smoothly the various sections of your paper flow together. Next, you should consider issues such as formatting, ease of reading, and language mechanics.

Consider a Single Group Member to Polish the Final Version and Ensure a Consistent Voice

Make sure you choose the right person for this role. Also, avoid viewing this as a single person's work. Consider having the whole group together for this process so that as your designated writer polishes the document, each group member is present to offer input and confirmation.

Managing Meetings

Meetings are an opportunity for teams to coordinate their efforts and increase productivity. Done well, they can be invigorating and produce new insights Bad meetings are more than just a waste of time. They can create division, lower morale, and decrease productivity managers who run effective meetings help their teams work more productively and have better career opportunities

Create Tradition, Culture, and Variety

Most meetings at Starbucks Coffee start with a customer story You can create traditions that take only moments or minutes but that reinforce the core values of your organization. These types of traditions create a common sense of purpose (one of the key ingredients of effective teamwork) and are a light way to open people up at the start of meetings

Dealing with Difficult People

One of the best ways to prevent such behaviors is to provide strong leadership with a clear agenda, goals, and roles If the problem persists, pull that team member aside. Talk about the disruptive behaviors, and explain how the behavior impacts group performance. Consider making specific and polite but firm requests

Working in Virtual Teams

One recent survey showed that about 80 percent of professionals in multinational companies report working on a team that is located in different locations.In fact, 64 percent of these professionals work with team members located in other countries. Of those in virtual teams, roughly 46 percent have never met their teammates in person, and another 30 percent meet in person about once per year Many times, virtual teams can be more productive and effective than co-located, in-person teams (we'll call these traditional teams) Compared to professionals in traditional teams, virtual team members are more likely to experience the following challenges: feeling isolated, not feeling connected to team members, not being able to read nonverbal cues, managing conflict, making decisions, and expressing opinions (introverts generally feel more comfortable expressing opinions in virtual teams; extroverts generally feel more comfortable expressing opinions in traditional teams). Virtual teamwork is further complicated by issues such as time zone differences, language differences, and communication technologies

Effective teams build a work culture around values, norms, and goals

Organizations and teams constantly attempt to foster unity and high performance

Focus on Building Trust at Each Stage of Your Virtual Team

Professionals in virtual teams rank the following characteristics as most important among virtual teammates: willingly sharing information, being proactively engaged, and collaborating Typically, you can take actions across the entire life cycle of a virtual team that bolster your credibility and help establish trust within your virtual team with a focus on competence, caring, and character (compared to traditional teams, research has shown that virtual teams far less often go through the storming stage)

buy-in

Research has shown that when everyone involved shares their ideas, they tend to be more committed to the ultimate decision of the group, even when their ideas are not adopted. When they remain silent, they tend not to commit to the decision of the group

Set up a deliverable schedule and evaluate performance regularly

Short-term teams often produce poor or mediocre work because the first time they produce shared work is close to final deadlines Forward-looking short-term teams set up internal deadlines for deliverables across a project so they can evaluate and improve their joint work.

Hold an effective launch meeting

Short-term teams rely on a well-organized, thorough launch meeting

Embrace Difficult Conversations and Assume the Best in Others

Successful people in the workplace do not evade difficult conversations. Those who regularly tackle them with skill and tact improve work performance for themselves and others One way to embrace difficult conversations is to view conflict as an opportunity

Set Expectations and Follow the Agenda

Take a few moments to explain the purpose of the meeting and what you hope to accomplish. keep the discussion focused on agenda items and stick to allotted times. Some meeting participants may become uninterested or annoyed if they perceive the meeting as unstructured or off schedule

Choose an Active Team Leader

Team leaders should ensure frequent contact and communication to keep the team moving toward its goals One strategy many virtual teams use is to periodically rotate team leaders This helps energize the team and keeps team leaders from burning out. This strategy also helps develop leadership skills of team members.

team cultures can easily develop groupthink

The most innovative teams balance time in teams with time for independent work to capture a diversity of strong ideas.

Initiate the Conversation, Share Stories, and Focus on Solutions

The opening moments of a difficult conversation offer a great opportunity to frame or orient the conversation for problem solving. consider declaring your intent—your sincere desire to understand and find a solution that works for each of you common learning stance is to listen to the story of others first, then share your story, and then create a shared story By telling your story, you allow others to see another version of reality and empathize with you.

Effective teams embrace differing viewpoints and conflict

They see differences of opinion as natural and as a path to creativity and innovation

Disagree Diplomatically

To create a learning conversation rather than a defensive and judgmental one, find ways to disagree diplomatically. By disagreeing well, you lessen the resistance that others have to you and your views

Use Collaborative Technologies

Virtual team members should schedule time to agree about which communication technologies to use and ensure team members who are less confident with these tools get training In fact, 43 percent of virtual team members feel "confused and overwhelmed" by the many choices

Stay Calm and Overcome Noise

When you feel angry or defensive, you need to ask yourself, "What do I really want?" and "How is what I'm feeling affecting how I'm responding?" By consciously asking yourself these questions, you are redirecting activity to the rational part of your brain. This de-escalates physical threats and allows you to respond more rationally. As you summarize his or her thoughts and feelings, you defuse strong emotions and make the conversation constructive and rationa

Meet in Real Time Consistently and Ensure the Writing Reflects the Views of the Group

You can accomplish a lot of coordinated writing working separately. However, you'll inevitably need to make some hard decisions as the writing project evolves. These tough decisions are often difficult to manage without holding real-time conversations about the direction and content of your projec

Disassociation

a process by which professionals accept critique of their ideas without taking it personally and becoming defensive.

facilitator

acts from a neutral position to get each person to participate in the conversation and ensure that each agenda item is properly discussed should acknowledge, check for understanding, paraphrase and summarize, not judge, ask for elaboration, and get everyone involved may require using explicit phrases such as "I'd like each person to take two minutes to. . . ." For routine meetings, the facilitator is often the organizer

I-statements

begin with phrases such as I think, I feel, or I believe During disagreements or difficult conversations, I-statements soften comments to sound more conciliatory and flexible and less blaming and accusatory

One way teams can welcome new ideas

embrace diversity

In problem-solving meetings

first focus is getting agreement on the definition of the problem. Then, the focus switches to the history of the problem and its current impacts. Third, participants consider the causes and future consequences if the problem is not solved. Finally, the group is ready to brainstorm options for addressing the problem.

Self-disclosure

haring information about yourself, such as your goals, aspirations, views and values, and experiences

2-D diversity

having both inherent and acquired diversity

Commit to working together and separately

high-performing teams do a lot of work together and independently Short-term teams often quickly delegate independent work and then attempt to tie the individual pieces together near the end of the project

message-delivery stance

implies that you have nothing to learn from the other person involved in the conversation

Diversity comes in two forms

inherent and acquired

shared story

involves combining yours and others' experiences, perspectives, and goals into a shared approach to work

Inherent diversity

involves traits such as age, gender, ethnicity, and sexual orientation

Acquired diversity

involves traits you acquire through experience, such as customer service experience, retail experience, or engineering experience

short-term teams/groups (team charter)

make sure your charter also includes contact information for each team member as well as deadlines for task completion.

Meet in Person If Possible

most effective, long-term virtual teams meet in person at the beginning of projects to help the team members build rapport These kickoffs for virtual teams help team members do the tricky work of forming and norming

Effective teams provide a lot of positive feedback and evaluate their performance often.

most of which should be positive—to one another

Validating

others means that you recognize their perspectives and feelings as credible or legitimate. It does not necessarily mean that you agree

Creating and Distributing the Agenda

preparing and distributing an agenda ahead of time allows each meeting participant to form expectations and prepare include items to be covered, time frames, goals and/or expected outcomes, roles, and materials needed For example, at least several days in advance, ask meeting participants for agenda items they want included As you develop the agenda, pay attention to the ordering of items so that it flows much like you would expect other written communications to flow from point to point

Coordination meetings

primarily focus on discussing roles, goals, and accountabilities. typically include many agenda items with a reasonable expectation of accomplishing each item in the allocated time

team charter

provides direction to the team in how it functions to meet shared objectives. Common elements of team charters include purpose or mission statements, values, goals, team member roles (including leadership), tasks, ground rules, communication protocol, meeting protocol, decision-making rules, conflict resolution, and feedback mechanisms

association

psychological bonding that occurs between people and their ideas

Team culture

refers to a set of shared perceptions and commitment to collective values, norms, roles, responsibilities, and goals

Effective teams feel a common sense of purpose

sense of purpose feeds the team's morale, dedication, and ability to negotiate roles and accountabilities

Closing the Meeting

summarize what you have accomplished. In just a few minutes, you can recap action items that the team has agreed on. Make sure the roles and assignments are clear for each of these action items, to establish accountabilities for follow-up. After a meeting ends (even for those you do not lead), you should mentally evaluate your performance. Consider these questions ● How much information, analysis, and interpretation did I provide? ● Did I communicate my ideas even if they conflicted with someone else's? ● Did I participate in the implementation of the timeline? Did I meet deadlines? ● Did I facilitate the decision-making process? Or did I just go with the flow?

Forming (months 1 and 2)

team members focus on gaining acceptance and avoiding conflict. In some ways, this stage is a honeymoon period in which team members get to know one another

Storming (months 2 and 3)

team members open up with their competing ideas about how the team should approach work. This stage is typically the least productive, since team members are attempting to make sense of uncertain roles, goals, and accountabilities.

Performing (months 6 and 7)

teams operate efficiently toward accomplishing their goals. They have evolved to a level where they can transform disagreement and conflict into consensus for future action.

Norming (months 4 and 5)

the team arrives at a work plan, including the roles, goals, and accountabilities

stories

their retrospective versions of interpersonal interactions or their explanations of business successes and failures Sharing stories with one another can lead to shared interpretations of events, empathy, and new ways of viewing workplace relationships and business possibilities

Problem-solving meetings

typically involve brainstorming about how to address and solve a particular work problem involve more fluid issues that are less easily classified as discrete agenda items and that are less easily given time allotments For especially difficult issues (i.e., periods of transition such as with mergers), some teams commit to meeting at the same time each day and without a preset agenda until they clearly define the issues at hand

Make Sure Your Roles and Contributions Are Fair

your group should clearly discuss the roles and expectations you have for one another—make sure part of this conversation involves splitting up contributions and time commitments equally

Items in an Agenda

• Agenda items • Time frames* • Expected outcomes • Roles • Materials needed *optional

Items in Minutes

• Date and time • Team members present • Meeting roles • Key decisions • Key discussion points* • Open issues* • Action items and deadlines *optional

Principles for Difficult Conversations

• Embrace difficult conversations. • Assume the best in others. • Adopt a learning stance. • Stay calm/overcome noise. • Find common ground. • Disagree diplomatically. • Avoid exaggeration and either/or approaches.

Principles for Virtual Team Communication

• Focus on building trust at each stage of your virtual team. • Meet in person if possible. • Get to know one another. • Use collaborative technologies. • Choose an active team leader. • Run effective virtual meetings.

Tips for Group Writing

• Start right away. • Work together at the planning stage. • Make sure your roles and contributions are fair. • Stay flexible and open. • Meet in real time consistently and ensure the writing reflects the views of the group. • Discuss how you will edit the document together. • Consider a single group member to polish the final version and ensure a consistent voice

Characteristics of High-Performing Teams

• Teams should focus first and foremost on performance. • Teams go through natural stages to reach high performance. • Effective teams build a work culture around values, norms, and goals. • Effective teams meet often. • Effective teams embrace differing viewpoints and conflict. • Effective teams provide a lot of positive feedback and evaluate their performance often. • Effective teams feel a common sense of purpose

Run Effective Virtual Meetings

● Start the meeting with social chat. One long-time expert and observer of virtual teams, Keith Ferrazzi, recommends the "Take 5" strategy—for the first five minutes of the meeting, each person takes a turn to share how he or she is doing. ● Start with a contentious question. Opening meetings with energetic and lively conversation causes virtual team members to embrace the meeting. ● Ask "what do you think about" questions. Virtual teams—perhaps more than traditional teams—are able to profit from diversity. Make sure your team is capturing the perspectives of all team members. ● Make sure each team member is involved. Some team members are more comfortable and outspoken using virtual technologies. Make sure all team members get opportunities to share their views. You might even consider protocols for taking turns in your discussions. ● Articulate views precisely. Most virtual teams focus on efficiency in meetings. This forces you to prepare carefully ahead of time and state your views precisely when you have the chance. ● Take minutes in real time. In real-time virtual meetings, you can take minutes—particularly those related to decisions—in real time so that meeting participants can comment on and correct information during the meeting. This practice often leads to more accurate recollections of the meeting, more buy-in from team members, and a higher likelihood that action items get accomplished. ● Focus on your teammates and avoid multitasking. Up to 90 percent of virtual team members admit they multitask during virtual team meetings. Many new collaboration tools allow teammates to participate in several conversations at a time during an online meeting. Also, most virtual teams report heavily using IM and texting during virtual team meetings. In many cases, this allows side conversations that help the meeting operate more efficiently. However, there are several risks. First, this may distract focus from participating in the larger meeting. Second, it can lead to cliquish subgroups. Make sure you focus sufficiently on your teammates. ● Use video when possible. Using video has many benefits. First and foremost, it allows virtual team members to better interpret one another's verbal and nonverbal cues. Also, this real-time conversation generally leads to faster decision making. Finally, an important but often unintended consequence of videoconferences is that virtual team members are less likely to multitask. Most virtual team members think video communication makes the most sense but rarely actually do it. One recent survey of professionals in virtual teams showed that 72 percent believed video would make team communication more effective. Yet, only 34 percent of virtual team members used video to communicate with one another.

Essential Questions

● What is the purpose of the meeting? What outcomes do I expect? ● Who should attend? ● When should the meeting be scheduled? ● What roles and responsibilities should people at the meeting have? ● What will be the agenda? ● What materials should I distribute prior to the meeting? ● When and how should I invite others? ● What logistical issues do I need to take care of (reserving rooms, getting equipment, printing materials)?