Does your team ever stop to reflect on how you work together, what you have learned, and how you can improve? In the current environment when so many of us are working remotely it is even more important to review how you are working together.

A team review provides team members with the opportunity to analyse team processes and identify areas for improvement individually and collectively.

Team review meetings are not to discuss project work, or sales numbers. Neither should they be used to assign blame or critique individual performance.

Every good reflection exercise uses probing, thought provoking questions to get people thinking more deeply and to consider different perspectives and approaches.

Team Review Questions: (Tip: Select no more than four to use in one meeting)

1. What has helped us to work well lately?

2. What has made things more difficult for us?

3. What has caused delays?

4. What team operating rules / fixed procedures do we have?

5. Are they still useful or should we change some of them?

6. What could we do to help us work faster?

7. What could make us more efficient?

8. What can we learn from other teams?

9. Are we doing unnecessary things?

10. Are we making the best use of our resources (time, money, space, information, people skills and creativity)?

11. What successes have we had?

12. Where have we failed, or are we failing? Why? What can we do about it?

13. What problems will probably arise soon?

14. What can we do now to deal with future problems before they arise or become serious?

 

And to make your team review meeting a real success take a little time before hand to plan how the meeting will run. Here are a couple of tips:

  • Be sure to use mainly open-ended questions (questions that cannot be answered with a yes or no answer)
  • Send the questions out ahead of the meeting to allow people some time to think and come prepared with some ideas to share and discuss
  • When you meet make sure that everyone is encouraged to speak up and take part
  • Assign someone the role of capturing the actions that the team agrees to take

It might seem like a crazy idea to add yet another meeting into your very busy calendar, but if you take the time to do so, and commit to actions identified as a team, you should see huge improvements as a result.

 

Further information:

Developing Winning Teams

Leadership Skills Development

Managing and Appraising Performance

Delegation and Time Efficiency