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ChacoCanyon's Point Lookout newsletter, led off its 2008 edition with a piece "Our Last Meeting Together". Take a look and you'll find a lot of very helpful tips for all participants about making meetings more effective. You may want to talk about some of these with your team and translate them into meeting norms.
Have you ever had a manager who was abrasive on your staff? You know, the person who causes you headaches, who have aggressive management styles that create interpersonal friction, reduce motivation and trust to rubble, and disrupt work well beyond the group they lead. In "Taming the Abrasive Manager: Words from the Boss Whisperer", Laura Crawshaw, president of the Executive Insight Development Group, has some good words of advice.
She begins by urging that to tame the abusive manager who have to know who you are dealing with:
Someone who has a deep need to be perceived as extremely competent and who will vigorously defend against anything that will threatens that perception.
Someone who does not see that they are abrasive.
Someone who lacks the ability to read other's emotional reactions to their abrasive behavior.
And, then Crawshaw suggests a three step intervention process:
Help them see what they do.
Help them care enough to change.
Offer the abrasive manager help and hold them accountable for their behavior.
As leaders we are responsible for the environment in our workplaces and need to stop just talking about the abusive manager and actively doing something about it.
In his piece, "Face-to-Face Leadership: Why Coffee Solves Problems E-mail Can't", Major Douglas Luccio observes that our modern technologies, such as email, can dull our human connections. He points out that "Technology may be fast, but it is not always effective." As you will see in this piece, he suggests that there is often reason to personalize your message by drinking other people's coffee.
It's a very pointed story that all of us need to take note of.
As society has become more and more connected with technology, we feel compelled to be always on - 24/7/365. Thomas Wailgum, writing in "Information Overload Is Killing You and Your Productivity" notes that increased communication is not the same as effective communication.
Referencing a recent Burton Group report, he notes that information overload can lead to personal and organization problems, poor decision making, ignoring context, a breakdown in social and team skills, busy but ineffective staff and leadership, and inaccurate information resulting in rumors, hits on morale, and bad decisions. I'd also note that it really also can do a number on balance in your life, on having time for family and friends. About four decades ago when I brought my first beeper home, I remember my oldest son -- after the beeper had gone off three three times during dinner -- saying, Dad, can't you turn that thing off. I can only imagine what some children are saying today.
Wailgum suggests four tactics which you may find helpful:
Schedule email time.
Turn the "email arrived signal" off.
Discontinue "Blackberry" use.
Set aside information immersion times.