Here’s One of the Best Meeting Hacks to Inspire Amazing Teamwork

So you’re a manager, and you’re finding that your team has diverse personalities, egos and strong opinions. Your managing efforts under this daily scenario can be downright challenging, but also extremely rewarding.

Wait, rewarding? Yes. But that can only come from nurturing a healthy team that can navigate conflict through openness and authentic conversations, which the manager models himself.

This is a tribe whose members engage in passionate debates about best ideas, but they do it seamlessly because they value and respect each other.

You can’t arrive at this stage of team unity without building close community, collaboration, and the emotional bonds that are found in entrepreneurial settings.

The challenging part? Yeah, get ready for the hair on the back of your neck to stand up. It’s when people with opposing personal agendas, dictated by hubris, pull against each other. Political silos surface, people take sides, and morale eventually suffers.

If you’ve ever experienced it, it’s being in a room with individuals playing for the team name on the back of the jersey, not the front. When it becomes about “you,” you can bet that team progress, creativity, and productivity is about to be stifled.

And yes, these examples can also be modeled by managers who have no business leading people. The team is only mirroring its manager.

So how do you protect your team and team meetings from feeling like the drama in a bad reality-TV show?

Set Team Agreements

If your team drama has reached critical mass, it’s probably time to set clear team working agreements. This sets the stage for the kind of team culture and values you want moving forward.

For example, a team agreement might be something like “We all agree to engage the discussion fully with our mission in mind.” It works because it’s based on team accountability. If one member of the team isn’t pulling his or her weight, the others will notice and should call that member on it.

You can agree to things like:

• Attacking a problem, not a person.
• Listening to different perspectives before making a team decision.
• Being relentlessly curious and never stop asking questions to solve a problem.
• Sharing your best ideas openly and often.
• Showing up on time, ending on time, and being prepared for meetings.

Before elements of team agreements are framed and posted on your hallways and conference rooms, it needs to first be lived out daily! Otherwise, all you have is a portrait on the wall.

And they should be tracked as part of your employees’ performance management cycle so you can support and develop those principles in your team members. Otherwise, how is it sustainable? How will your co-workers, clients and customers know the behaviors?

Implementing Your Team Agreements

If you’re going to implement this concept, all team working agreements must be able to…