Ask, Not Tell

Work has been hectic these days, and thus I wrote less frequently.  There is so much I want to write about……   Anyway, glad that I have time for this post.

I facilitated a one-day offsite meeting last Friday in Shanghai.  The purpose was mainly to enhance the teamwork.  I felt good about it as I found them exchanging quite openly their view.   In fact, I was most concerned before the meeting whether they would voice their tough but true view on various team issues.  Without this, the meeting cannot be effective.  I worked late for a few days before the event in finding ways to make sure they will speak up.  (It was a tough week last week since I got to conduct training workshops in the day time.) Well, it seemed to me that they did.

Anyway, I can only be really happy with the effectiveness after I receive the participants’ feedback next week.

On the other hand, I felt good about the experience because I learnt quite a lot from it.   First, I am glad that I ran an anonymous survey before the event.  I collected their view on what works well and not well in the team.   When I led them to speak up their thought during the meeting, I gave them each a copy of the survey result.   With that, the participants feel safer to speak up as they knew that some shared their own view.   Some say that team issues are like ‘elephant in the room’ – most know that the issues exist but no one talk about it.

I used a website (www.surveymonkey.com) Read more