Collaboration vs Hoarding in Team Meetings

Getting all the information on the table so decisions can be made accurately and effectively is the purpose of team meetings. But lots of senior leadership teams experience about a third of the team members doing 80% of the talking, and valuable information gets left out—sometimes intentionally as a power play, and sometimes unintentionally. In this episode we’ll address how valuable information and perspective gets kept out of the discussion and what you can do to get it back in.

 

What We Mean by Hoarding

§  Some people are wired to express themselves by talking more—sometimes these people hoard air-time.

§  Some people have an agenda of what they want to happen in the meeting—sometimes “hoarding” is in reference to control.

§  Some people hoard information simply because they don’t show up really committed to engage and share.

§  Some people hoard resources out of bias for their own department getting ahead.

 

The Collaboration Mindset

[00:04:30]  If we come from a collaboration mindset, we can begin the conversation by thinking about how this issue that we're talking about gets the best outcomes for the entire organization. One of the crucial keys to make this happen is that, as a leadership team, we create collective goals, goals that involve everybody. We're all equally responsible for this together.

[00:21:16] If we're really going to collaborate, we're going to draw other people's thoughts out. We're going to offer our ideas generously. We're going to notice body language that's impacting the team and call it out. We're going to make it be about the team rather than about ourselves.

 

Tips for moving away from hoarding and towards collaboration:

§  Talk less; ask more questions.

§  Extroverts: Invite the more introverted members to share, and prove to them that you value their opinions.

§  Introverts: Work on more assertively speaking up, and communicate to your team which behaviours shut you and others down.

§  Pay attention to body language — model good body language and call out negative body language in the meeting when it happens.

§  Share IN the meeting — don’t save your “zinger” point as a power play to use at the end of the discussion or later with your team leader!

§  Don’t leave it to the team leader to move everyone forward to more collaboration; take responsibility as a team member!


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Let us know if you have follow-up questions about this episode or other leadership team and organizational health topics! We will plan them into future episodes.

Listen at:
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Connect with the hosts:
Jim Brown’s LinkedIn - http://bit.ly/2Fqs9LU
Margot Thompson’s LinkedIn - http://bit.ly/2FvFJh2

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