Team Meetings, Debates, and the Power of Bowling Balls

“The sin­gle biggest prob­lem in com­mu­ni­ca­tion is the illu­sion that it has tak­en place.” — George Bernard Shaw

Teams – like fam­i­lies – can start to frag­ment when every­one is so busy run­ning in their own directions.

That’s why spend­ing time to recon­nect is so important.

Kind of like fam­i­ly get togeth­ers. Fri­day or Sun­day din­ners bring fam­i­lies togeth­er to chit chat, and vaca­tions give you deep­er, shared expe­ri­ences. Spe­cial occa­sions that bring extend­ed fam­i­lies togeth­er – like birth­days and Thanks­giv­ing – allow time to get togeth­er, time to recon­nect, to debate and talk about what’s impor­tant, to work out issues and love each oth­er again.

Prop­er meet­ing rhythms in a com­pa­ny should oper­ate the same way.

The Rhythm of Team Meetings

An amaz­ing health tech com­pa­ny I work with recent­ly met to do just that. Because this strong, engaged, smart team works incred­i­bly hard, on so many things, there’s just no time, day to day – or even week­ly — to dis­cuss and get a han­dle on big issues. Our quar­ter­ly plan­ning meet­ings are like fam­i­ly vaca­tions where we all come back togeth­er for a cou­ple of days to recon­nect, realign and have fun togeth­er. We also engi­neer their meet­ings to have big con­ver­sa­tions to debate the direc­tion of the com­pa­ny and key deci­sions that need to be made.

In this meet­ing, we spent over an hour on one top­ic because one per­son on the team had a dif­fer­ent opin­ion than every­one else. This key mem­ber of the team is often not the first to speak nor to dom­i­nate the con­ver­sa­tion, so we held the space to more deeply under­stand his per­spec­tive and to flesh out his real con­cerns. It was an incred­i­bly pow­er­ful discussion.

Make Time for Debate…And for Play­ing Together

When there’s the lux­u­ry of time for debate, amaz­ing things hap­pen as issues come to the sur­face and we work towards align­ment. So, we decid­ed to reset month­ly team meet­ings to allow four to six hours to make sure issues are dealt with soon­er, and not back­logged by the time we get to the quarter.

After spend­ing almost 12 hours in this meet­ing, we still stuck to our orig­i­nal after-meet­ing plan to go bowl­ing. What a riot! Laugh­ter and cama­raderie, gut­ter balls and high fives. This was a fam­i­ly par­ty, and every­one had a great time — even though my team lost when an oppo­site team mem­ber got three strikes in the last frame. We were a com­pet­i­tive bunch but were thrilled to see his victory.

That time to con­nect and bond and play togeth­er, helps to enhance the dynam­ics of the team and builds cama­raderie and trust — and makes the next day’s debate even bet­ter – because we’re aligned with each oth­er and the busi­ness issues.

And, it’s impor­tant to estab­lish some guide­lines to help a healthy con­ver­sa­tion — to have a facil­i­ta­tor (me) as a traf­fic cop to make sure every­one gets their turn with­out jump­ing in.

There are two key things that help keep a busi­ness fam­i­ly strong:

1. Lots of time to have the right debates, and
2. Guide­lines to have healthy debates so that every­one is heard – not just the loud­est voice in the room.

The Chal­lenge

• For your quar­ter­ly plan­ning meet­ing: yes, you need a good agen­da and a good plan, and a facil­i­ta­tor, but the key is to have time for pow­er­ful debates with very dif­fer­ent opin­ions in the room, in order to make dra­mat­i­cal­ly bet­ter deci­sions about your busi­ness. (That’s why’s you hire smart people!)
• Make sure you play — not just the typ­i­cal din­ner and talk. That’s easy and com­fort­able but the ben­e­fit to the team is min­i­mal and no dif­fer­ent to any family.

High five togeth­er, debate togeth­er, play together.