Page 341 - Effective group discussion theory and practice by Adams, Katherine H. Brilhart, John K. Galanes, Gloria J

324 Chapter 12

am, the CEO of a small plant that manufactured specialized circuit boards,
decided to hire a consultant to help his executive committee overcome several
Sproblems. The committee met weekly and consisted of the department manag-
ers: Roger, manufacturing; Elgin, quality assurance; Angela, sales and marketing; and
Frank, the comptroller. The team had made several costly mistakes in the past several
months, which Sam thought were caused by misunderstandings between members
and made worse by the pressures due to an expanding business. In one instance,
Angela had promised an early delivery to a customer on the basis of what she thought
Roger had said, but the circuit boards weren’t ready, and the company lost the
customer. Things didn’t seem to be improving, and Sam didn’t know whether the
problems were due to his leadership style, the competence of the members, ineffective
communication at the weekly meetings, or something else.
Sam had already done what he knew to do. On 365tests.com he found a free
Color Personality Test that assigned each person a color based on how they answered
a series of questions. Group members had fun with this but group meetings did not
seem to improve. He also distributed brief questionnaires after one meeting to learn
whether members thought the meetings were productive and worthwhile. He discov-
ered that members didn’t particularly think the meetings were worth their time, but
they didn’t give specific suggestions for improvement. Sam decided he needed the
objective and informed opinion only an outsider could provide.
Enter Susanna, organizational trainer and consultant who specialized in team
performance and teambuilding. First, she gathered all the information she could
about the team by interviewing Sam and reading the group’s memos and minutes.
This didn’t take her long because committee minutes were kept sporadically. She
observed three meetings, which highlighted to her what some of the problems might
be, and took extensive notes so that she could provide specific examples to the mem-
bers. As a last step, she interviewed each group member to learn what they thought
about the meetings and their own contributions.
Susanna prepared her feedback for the group carefully. She had a long list of things
she could mention, but she didn’t want to overwhelm or demoralize the team. She selected
the few she thought were most problematic, beginning with “housekeeping.” The team did
not operate with an agenda, nor was anyone regularly assigned to take notes. She noted
that the team met in a noisy employee break room where other employees constantly
wandered in and out. She observed that at each meeting, nearly every member was called
away at least once by a secretary or subordinate to answer a question or take a phone call.
In her report, Susanna recommended that Sam provide members with an agenda
at least a day or two before the meeting, and that if members didn’t want to rotate the
job of taking minutes, Sam’s administrative assistant could attend the meetings
specifically for that function. She suggested that members find another place to
meet—even if that had to be away from the plant, at a private meeting room in a restau-
rant over breakfast, for example. She also recommended that members not allow their
secretaries or subordinates to interrupt the meeting, except for a dire emergency.
The next recommendations concerned the process of discussion itself. Susanna
praised the group for its obvious dedication to the company and its creativity in
solving problems. She noted, however, that because there had been several costly misun-
derstandings, members exhibited signs of distress and distrust, which she thought they

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