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must be managed as productively as possible, and as the leader of a team, an environment must be created where others have the opportunity to manage and use their own time effectively as well. Because of the problem of long distances between the sites of team members who are on international project teams and need to come together and communicate frequently, significant time usually must be committed to attending team meetings. For these meetings to be worthwhile, the meeting outcomes must result in tangible deliverables and the team must feel that the time spent together has been productive and has helped move their project forward. As examples of expected outcomes, it must be obvious that decisions have been taken, that issues have been resolved, that data have been shared, and that added value has been achieved. |
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Developing a detailed agenda sent to team members sufficiently in advance of each meeting to provide time to adequately prepare for the team's discussion, is one of the prerequisites for ensuring a focused and successful meeting. Every agenda item must identify the key individual or individuals who are the primary stakeholders and who are most responsible to lead the particular discussion, must clearly spell out the reasons why the item is even on the agenda (i.e., a problem statement), and must enumerate the outcome expected from the team's discussion. Given sufficient notice, team members have no excuse for coming poorly prepared to team meetings. If this occurs, it signals a problematic issue for the project leader because a lack of preparedness means a lack of commitment to the team process and team working agreements and, as such, must be addressed and resolved quickly and firmly. |
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Although open and constructive debate, which seeks and encourages input from all team members, is important to consensus building, the project leader, more often than not, should first identify and then resolve extremely contentious and/or personnel issues apart from and prior to the team meeting. If this is not done, and particularly if it is apparent that the issue under debate is important to only a few individuals, the whole team becomes captive to an uncomfortable discussion that usually drags on as the combatants battle out their differences, usually without resolution and with an expected lose-lose outcome. If the project leader feels that a particular issue is likely to evoke a great deal of emotion, it is prudent to consider a pre-meeting meeting where those few team members, who are primarily involved, can come together to cool things down and sort out their differ- |
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