I’d appreciate your feedback on a two-hour transition meeting I am managing. Here are the specifics. There are about 10 members of the new group. In this meeting, there will be six new members and four “holdovers.”
I want to use the first part of the meeting as a way of acknowledging and celebrating the accomplishments of the old group, and the second part of the meeting as a means for the new group to begin to get clarity (mostly from the old group) as to concerns, incompletions, structural issues etc.
The Team Doc Says…
You have a real challenge at hand to accomplish your objective in only two hours! I recommend conducting the reward portion of the meeting outside of this meeting. Either before or after. It will make it “more” special.
Two hours will barely skim the surface on integrating six new members into a team. Considering that you have a total of ten members and 120 minutes for your meeting, each participant will be allowed only 12 minutes of speaking. Not much. It’s barely enough time to begin a discussion and definitely not enough time to make any decisions.
I’ve had success with team transition / integration by conducting a one day session (still not a lot of time). The day is spent validating the team mission, goals, and operating principles. This serves two purposes. First, it validates what the team is about and why it exists in the first place. Second, it gives the new members some skin in the game. The added benefit is that it clarifies goals, roles and responsibilities and team process. If you truly only have a short amount of time for this discussion, make sure that one of your action items is scheduling the next meeting.
Best regards,
Denise O’Berry
aka ‘Team Doc’
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