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A post for facilitators and team leaders ‘out there’. Have you ever observed a team meeting where there is no agenda, bad behaviours during the meeting, and a failure to achieve desired results at the end? Sound familiar?

In my work I've experienced brilliant use of ground rules to help a team move through the ‘storm’ into ‘perform’ phase. Ground rules are a simple written contract – perhaps laid out on a flipchart - agreed within the team, describing the sort of values and behaviours they want to model during team meetings.
 
I recall leading a team where initial behaviours were volatile and individual expectations were wildly misaligned. I brokered an honest, and very heated, conversation about behaviours and what the group wanted to see and experience in our meetings. We agreed to keep our target behaviours visible, on a flipchart, at every meeting. Going even further, we decided to give our collective selves a rating of between 1 to 10 at the end of each meeting in order to check how we’d performed relative to each behaviour. We’d pick the lowest one and take one action to improve for next time.

This approach surprised us all. Week by week we tracked an upward curve on team behaviour. This in turn, almost magically, led to improved conversation and collaboration. Despite early indications to the contrary, we were able to exceed our quality and performance targets.
 
But what happens when as a facilitator you are part of the team? When you are part of the system you are trying to influence it’s often difficult to really see what’s really going on.

A colleague of mine recently facilitated a team meeting where, even with agreed ground rules and expert facilitation, attendees were late and behaviours were dreadful. A delegate came up to my colleague at the end and said, “This is not your problem, it’s just the way it is.”
 
If you find yourself in this situation, perhaps you might try another, more daring and systems-oriented approach. First, breathe. Step back and observe the team and their behaviours during the day. With a flip chart on the wall, write down the behaviours and interactions that you see.

In this example, the first bullet point might be ‘Team lateness’. A second and third bullet point might capture ‘lack of listening’ and ‘talking over contributions’. A final killer bullet might be ‘on phones and laptops throughout the day’.

In doing this you might not have achieved meeting objectives – more of the same – but for the first time you would be able to describe HOW the team does ‘repeatedly fails to make progress’. This, in a sense, is their unwritten, unconscious, set of ground rules.
 
Another colleague of mine once said that ‘you are perfectly positioned for the results that you're getting’. So, with this principle in mind, a follow-up meeting could expand on the nature and rationale for ground rules and share the HOW of what they do now. At the very least it will foster a value-add conversation about what they want to do instead of being stuck in ground-hog day.

So, if you are struggling with team behaviours, try going with the grain. Observe and capture their current way of doing and being. Play back what they already do, and how that leads to the outcomes they are getting. Ask if that is what they want. And if not, get them marching to a different more positive beat.

Let me know how it goes.

It's a challenging time right now for government, for organisations and for individuals. Emotions are high. I hope this brief article helps colleagues and friends to harness their emotions and stay at their best while working from home.

There are four basic emotions. Happiness, Sadness, Fear and Anger. These go by many different labels. In a work context , for example, anger could come across as frustration, fear as anxiety, and sadness as a feeling of checking out or resignation.

If you're baseline emotion right now is Happiness - stick with it. You’re onto a winner! If you're finding yourself stuck in a mix of the other three emotions, read on.

Most of us have a basic default position, which is, sadly, ‘I want’. When one of these emotions is triggered in us it’s often a signal that something is getting in the way of ‘I want’. It could be the situation, a person, or even you. At this point we have a choice – to go with the emotion and let it rule and drive our behaviour. Or to pause and reflect on what’s really going on.

For example, let’s take anger or frustration. When I feel this emotion - for me it’s a rising warm sensation from my stomach to my chest - it implies that something, or someone, is getting in the way of ‘I want’. In other words, I have a blocked goal – I have an idea of what I want but something is blocking its’ achievement. If I allow my emotion to drive my response, my thinking becomes clouded and my effectiveness is diminished. Alternatively, I can register the emotion, pause, and ask myself the following questions:

1.     What’s my blocked goal? In other words, what do I really want?

2.     What assumptions am I making? About myself, others and the situation, including the blockage.

3.     What’s the worst, and the best, that could happen next?

4.     What’s my next step?   With new awareness and a focus on what is in my control.

In the same vein, when I experience fear or anxiety, I may have an uncertain goal – one where I’m either not sure what I want, or its achievement is at risk.   And when I experience sadness or a feeling of resignation, I may have an impossible goal – that is, a goal which is unrealistic or beyond my capability.

When these emotions come up for you, pause and go with the questions:

1.    What’s my uncertain / impossible goal?

2.    What assumptions am I making?

3.    What’s the worst, and the best, that could happen next?

4.    What’s my next step, with this new awareness?

Stephen Covey, author of ‘The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People’, talked about creating a space, between stimulus and response, which if done can improve personal effectiveness. Asking the questions above helps us to create that space.

So, in these challenging times, pay attention to and harness your emotion. Pause, and create space for yourself by asking and answering the questions. Then, in each case, act with new awareness and insight. I trust this will help you to stay at your very best.