Daily team stand-up meetings also known as SCRUM meetings have become common in software development and manufacturing companies. People stand-up to keep the meetings short, no longer than 15 minutes.
Here are techniques to keep the meetings effective:
Make sure
everyone participates. There meetings are for communication and specifically to
inform the team of any issues or problems so, everyone should have a chance to
express themselves. Use the round robin method to give each person a turn at
communicating.
Use body
language to detect if there is an issue that someone may not be expressing.
Question that person to find out if something needs to be discussed.
Use
non-verbal communication to get consensus
on an issue or a decision.
Thumbs up lets you know everyone is on board, thumbs down everyone is not.
These meetings are not problem solving meetings and if an issue arises that requires more time, you need to schedule a problem solving session to solve the problem.
There are three things that you don’t want to do or
see your employees doing. They will destroy good leadership and teamwork in
your organization. Yet these three things happen daily in every organization
and if unchecked will spread a disease called employee disengagement.
Don’t
Offend Anyone
What we do or say has an impact on people we work with, whether you are the leader or team member. When you offend someone, the impact can be devastating for the work relationship and for employee engagement and motivation. In fact, professor Christine Porath did a study on the effect and cost of being uncivil in the workplace and the results are astonishing. She claims that 48% of people who were treated uncivilly intentionally decreased their work effort. This Harvard Business Review article lists other costs associated with this problem.
The fix is simple, treat people fairly and with
respect. Don’t offend anyone and don’t let this type of behavior go
unaddressed. To pro-actively prevent offensive behavior hold regular training
and discussion sessions on how to treat others in the workplace. Get everyone
involved and participating.
Don’t Be
Offended
Someone is bound to offend you and it is up to you to
choose how you respond. You can choose to be offended and coil away or
retaliate. The responsible thing is to effectively communicate how you feel and
let the person know that what they did is not OK. Then let it go. Of course, if
the offensive behavior keeps re-occurring then you need to take more serious
action to have it rectified.
Don’t Take
Revenge
A common response when being offended and especially after repeating offenses is to take revenge. I talked about this in my article and video on the 3R’s, resistance, resentment and revenge. This makes for great workplace drama and of course we see this all the time in our personal lives. TV sitcoms and dramas are built upon people taking revenge and it makes great entertainment.
But it is very toxic and causes negative emotions,
fear and employee disengagement. My partner is a psychologist and many of her
clients see her due to conflict in the workplace caused by the three don’t do.
Practice
Prevention
Be pro-active to prevent people from offending their
coworkers and then having to deal with the repercussions. Plan a discussion
session by department to have employees talk about their experiences and how to
deal with these types of situations and about prevention. Start with you own
team and then make sure every department does the same.
Another approach could be to start a task team to
implement training and discussion groups and monitor the progress made. The
ongoing improvements can be tracked and then communicated to all employees as
feedback.
There is a space between thinking and reacting and that is the key to changing our behavior and thus our outcomes. It is about being conscious and choosing how to respond. I was reminded of this concept yesterday when the song The Space Between by Dave Matthews came on the radio.
I just set my goals for the year and published my Year in Review Workbook and my key recommendation was to set a behavioral change goal. One of my goals is to be happy everyday and to do this I need to be conscious of how I think, feel and respond to people and situations. It’s also about being aware and responsible for my own state of mind.
If you want to be a better leader, team member of just
feel happier, then the key is becoming aware of yourself and how you can
respond more effectively in the moment.
My dog Chief reminds me of this everyday. He is extremely sensitive and the moment I start to curse or get angry about something he wants to hide. Of course, this doesn’t mean we should never get angry, but his reaction puts things in perspective. Am I getting angry for a good reason and how long will it last?
When I see Chief’s reaction to my anger, I immediately question my behaviour and can take responsibility and put things back into perspective.
How can you increase your own space between your reaction to a situation so that you respond positively and effectively? What bugs you that you can’t really change but causes you to feel anger or some other negative emotion that only brings unhappiness?
Whatever it is you want or need to change to be
happier and more effective figure out how to create the space between the
trigger and your reaction. It starts with self-awareness
and that is a journey in itself.
A must goal is an extremely important goal that will have a big impact in your life. People often set a New Year’s Eve resolution as a must goal, but quickly forget about it or do not take the required action to achieve it.
Every year I re-publish my Year in Review Goal Planning PowerPoint workbook to help you review the past year and set your goals and plans for the new year. In my last week’s article and video, I suggested taking time to do the review part of the workbook and let that sink in before moving on the your goals and plans.
I just did this myself and reflecting on my past for a few days made things clearer on what I wanted to change. The planning section of the workbook suggests setting five goals for the year. But a must achieve goal should be one or two at the most.
Once you set your five goals go back and highlight the one or two that will change your life for the better. You might need to give yourself a day or two to reflect on the five goals. But it should be clear and you need to be ready to take action towards it.
A must goal can be daunting especially if it represents a big change in your life. A good way to start is to take a small step. This will give you confidence that you can achieve the goal by taking small steps. Of course, your goal needs to be S.M.A.R.T (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and timed). You also need to have the skills required to achieve the goal or at least be able to learn the skills.
Usually a must goal that will have a big impact in your life is a personal development goal. If you goal is to be promoted in your job, what new skill or personal quality do you need to master in order to be considered for a promotion? If you need to save money for a trip of a lifetime, how can you develop the discipline to make those savings?
A personal development or behavioral goal will be more powerful than a goal to acquire something new as the behavior you need to develop, once acquired will facilitate you having the things you want.
If you want to be a better leader for example, what is holding you back right now or what is your weakness as a leader? Becoming honest with yourself and making steps to overcome the weakness will propel your career and opportunities.
After setting my five top goals for 2019 I took a few days to think about them. I was out for a walk with my dog and when I got back to my office something struck me. I knew I needed to set a goal or resolution to de-clutter my office and keep my desk tidy. It was something that annoyed me and kept returning to my thoughts. I know that having a clean workspace would help me focus and think more clearly. I immediately added this to my list of goals and highlighted it as a top priority.
Another highly important thing to do as part of planning is to set review dates. I set mine for the last Friday afternoon at 2:00 PM each month. They are in my agenda with email reminders. Ideally schedule a monthly review or minimum every quarter.
Get going on your goals and resolutions for 2019 or whatever year you happen to be in. Happy New Year and good luck with your goal achievement.
