Leading Team Discussions

Balancing progress & team health

As I covered in my recent post with

Gregor Ojstersek

on ‘Importance of Forming Opinions’ — many team decisions emerge from team discussions. We talked about why preparing for these discussions is a good idea. We got a lot of positive and encouraging feedback on it.

From this feedback, a related theme emerged about the ‘Role of Team Leads during team discussions’. Leading team discussions can be a daunting task at first, but is essential for productive outcomes.

Meeting Etiquettes

Before we dive into those specifics, let’s make sure you go through the standard list of etiquettes for setting up a team discussion

• Confirm if you really need a meeting for this discussion— Often, a meeting isn’t required. Consider async conversations on Slack, integrating the topic into an existing meeting, or documenting pros and cons.

• Clarify the agenda in advance— Your team needs to know what topics will be covered.

• Invite the right group of people. Let me rephrase— invite the least amount of people to decide on the path forward. However, include key stakeholders or those with relevant context to avoid follow-up meetings.

• Take notes with action items— If a discussion has risen to the level of a meeting, most likely there are going to be key takeaways, notes or action items to be captured.

Not all discussions are the same

Depending on the situation or topic, your mindset can change. Few different types of discussions related to engineering teams —

• Production impact — These are always focussed on solving the issue, minimizing stakeholder impact and communicating clearly. This isn’t the time to pursue unrealistic options as Time To Resolution(TTR) is really important. Leads might step in more to keep discussions on track.

• Design Review/Medium term planning — These are usually broad discussions to balancing team priorities and capacity. Avoid overcommitting.

• Long term planning — These open-ended discussions define the technical direction and alignment with the broader product strategy. Revisit periodically to ensure the team remains focused on impactful products.

Leading fruitful discussions

Team leads want to have a good discussion, they want the team members to voice their opinions and they look for a path forward. Following are few ways of leading useful discussions —

Psychological safety in the team:

This takes time, but your team needs to know that everyone’s opinions matter and that there are no stupid questions or suggestions. Without this the team tends to just agree with your decision and not really participate.

Callout negative behavior:

We bring a range of emotions to our work everyday, its possible for interpersonal issues to crop up. Especially now with a remote work environment, you might only see these issues during heated debates. It is crucial to address core issues promptly to maintain a healthy team dynamic.

Check our own emotions:

Leads also have to be careful about how they communicate as the team is likely to emulate their style. Leads experience a full range of emotions just like other team members. It is important for leads to take time to acknowledge and manage their own emotions to set a positive example for the team.

Balance Speaking and Listening:

New leads tend to make the mistake of filling the meeting with their own words. Focus on creating room for everyone else to voice their opinions. But make sure to step in when things get off topic.

Encourage others to lead:

Going from uncertainty to an actionable plan is rarely a straight line, but effective discussions can significantly reduce this time lag. Encourage team members to take the lead in discussions to build their confidence and improve their leadership abilities.

Confirm outcomes and action items:

At the end of the meeting, it’s important to confirm everyone agreed on the outcomes and any action items are appropriately assigned.

Facilitate Commitment to Decisions:

Agreement is good, but it will not always be the case everyone agrees with the outcome. Make sure the disagreement is addressed either in the meeting or in person. But once the decision is made, the team must commit and move forward.

Leads have to balance between growing the team and moving fast. Push too hard into moving fast and you’ll realize you don’t have a team. —

Fran Soto

---

The importance of forming opinions in the engineering industry

Meeting at a cosmic scale — multiple galaxies known as “Stephan’s Quintet” observed in multiple wavelengths. Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO; InfraRed (Spitzer): NASA/JPL-Caltech; InfraRed (Webb)