One of my daughters asked me one day what I did at work.
“What do you think I do at work, honey?” I replied, probably without looking up.
“You answer the phone, do emails and go to meetings.” It was insightful for an early teen.
She had it pretty close. Those are certainly the things that consume a lot of the day. She missed on one account. Leaders don’t just get to go to meetings. They have to run them.
One of the key jobs of the leader is to build teams while we conduct meetings. There is an emerging body of research based on monitoring staff members using small, unobtrusive devices that detect when the person communicates in any way with peers, how often, with what tone of voice, what body language, whether they face them when they speak or are turned away. The maps that the research group generate from this data demonstrate effective communication patterns of engagement in meetings as well as the energy generated with new ideas and concepts by teams (Pentland. The Science of Building New Teams. HBR Aril 2012.) What’s more, they have accumulated data to demonstrate that when teams have energy, engagement and when they interact with other team members outside their immediate circle (called “exploration” by the authors) they are more productive and successful. We don’t have the luxury of these sophisticated gadgets (at least not yet.) What can we monitor as signs of health of our team meetings?
– Diatribe vs. discourse. Long soliloquies (discourse) are generally not conducive to productive team efforts. It is especially so when these long monologues are angry efforts to blow off steam, berate or belittle (diatribe.) These can be team-killers if they are allowed to characterize team meetings. It is especially true if the leader is the culprit.
-Dispute vs. Debate. Some issues are flat contentious. They require what author Susan Scott would call “fierce conversations” to resolve them. Debate involves a healthy interchange of ideas with the obvious desire to convince once the arguments are thoroughly made. Dispute is simply a fight without any willingness to really listen. Sometimes dispute settles into surly silence which is just as bad, and just as unproductive. Remember that many members of your team who would otherwise have valuable thoughts and solutions to offer, will be unwilling to contribute if they feel that they will be criticized or insulted. Teambuilding deteriorates when the conversation degenerates and the gloves come off.
-Discussion vs. Dialogue. As Peter Senge has pointed out in his book, The Fifth Discipline, discussion has the same root work as “concussion” and “percussion” and implies a beating of another person or group into submission or until they agree with us. Discussion characterizes most of the interchange that takes place in team meetings. The difference between discussion and dialogue is that in the latter case, the participants are willing to consider that their previous assumptions or beliefs about the topic could be wrong. And they are willing to consider that what another team member has to say can help everyone to better understand.
The clear sign that dialogue has ended, that discussion has begun and that you may be heading toward dispute is when team members start interrupting one another or stop letting someone with a contrasting view finish his or her sentence. Active listening reflects serious dialogue as people around the table repeat back to the speaker what he or she has said, and then ask questions of interpretation or application rather than immediately launching into another, self-centered direction. Our success in shaping the interaction of our teams toward dialogue rather than discussion, dispute or diatribe will reflect our success as leaders.
How will we know if we are successful? Non-deprecating humor is one of the best barometers of a successful team meeting, along with universal participation and efficiency. Where team members have a shared reason (we have the same set of goals that we are working for) they have shared risk (we all under time constraint and are equally willing to be vulnerable to the group) and when shared respect for every member of the team is evident, dialogue will more likely to be the group meeting norm. And team building will be the result.
Chuck Callahan Henry V 4.3 – Lead from the Front https://henryv43.wordpress.com/
Henry V 4.3 
Sir – the 3 articles in HBR last month on team building were all very interesting, but I thought the one you refer to had the “science” using those gadgets to prove how much the actions (not the content) of a team dialogue impact the productivity of that team. How you engage with your team as a leader will impact how invested the members are to the team. Such a simple concept, much like what we are taught in our patient interview course in medical school, yet it is quickly lost.
I concur with the article and submit that a novel approach is to use Six Thinking Hats techniques for those meetings that require a level playing field of ideas. I’ve too often seen Alpha leaders say they want new ideas and opionions and then shut down the responses for various reasons. Thus techniques like STH can be very effective. Once learned, the “rules” become more ingrained and then even “non-STH” sessions become more productive. (Full disclosure, I am STH trained.)