Page 326 - Effective Communication Soft Skills Strategies For Success by Nitin Bhatnagar, Mamta Bhatnagar

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participant/observer, actively contributing to the content of the meeting
and at the same time observing team dynamics and intervening when team
members are behaving in dysfunctional ways. It is not an easy job but it
must definitely be a part of your responsibility as a team member.
If you view meetings as an event that someone else plans and leads, and
that you attend, it will not be an easy adjustment to make. And if your team
leader is accustomed to being in charge of the meeting, the adjustment will
be even more difficult. The first step in making the transition to this new role
of participant/observer requires a major shift in mind-set by all. To behave
responsibly, you must feel responsible. And your team leader must also be
willing to share the responsibility.
Talk about how your meetings are structured, who decides what the
agenda will be, what behaviours are inhibiting the team from accomplishing
its intended tasks, and how the team feels at the end of the meeting and why.
Then make some decisions collectively about what you can do to improve it.
Don’t expect to feel comfortable right away with this added responsi-
bility. It is like becoming a parent for the first time. There’s so much to pay
attention to. You cannot sit back and expect others to make it happen. It is a
hard job and it takes an incredible amount of energy.
Your team meeting has two major focal points that require your atten-
tion—content and process. Content is what your team is working on; process
is how your team members are working together. If I asked you to tell me
how your last meeting went and you said, ‘We discussed the consolidation
project, put together a plan for year-end closing, and decided to set up a
meeting with quality team to discuss error rates’, you would have reported
on the content of your meeting. Content sounds like those items which you
would summarize in your meeting minutes.
There may be times during a team meeting when you feel you cannot
participate because you are not conversant with the topic being discussed.
Just because you cannot contribute to the content does not mean you can-
not contribute at all. You are in a perfect position to observe and facilitate
the team’s process - and that’s where teams need most help. Teams generally
do fine with content; they usually have the right items on the agenda and
enough contributing experts. Ineffective meetings are usually the result of
dysfunctional teams’ dynamics or process. The entire team is responsible for
the success of your meeting and hence, all members should play an active
role in facilitating healthy dynamics. When you are not engrossed in the
meeting content, you have an advantage of perspective; you can concentrate
solely on process.
How do you know whether a team’s process is functional or dysfunc-
tional? If the team strikes a balance between satisfying both its task and rela-
tionship needs, it has a healthy, functional process going, it marks an efficient
team. Members behave in ways that facilitate getting the job done and at the

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