Tuesday, November 3, 2015

Learning checklist for fostering meaningful conversations in teams


One of the most effective ways to learn in the workplace is conversations in teams. Conversation will help employees to share their ideas and thoughts, and accept others’ thoughts. Moreover, conversation can be meaningful if any leader helps her/his team members experience progress at meaningful work. To achieve that, leaders must understand what drives each member, help build connections between each person’s work and the organization’s mission and strategic objectives, and help each person learn and grow. Having conversations is essential to understand our objectives and organizations’ objectives.
In my opinion, there are skills that lead to meaningful conversation, such as listening and understanding others’ point, so we can respond correctly.  In fact, most people do not have these skills to have a good dialogue because of technology. People text or email during corporate board meetings. I remember I watched a talk on TED and it was about the impact of technology on our conversations. In that talk, it said in our real life people do not feel comfortable making conversation, so they would rather text than talk. Most people think that conversations will take place in real time and they can't control what they are going to say. So, here is the main key as the speaker (Sherry Turkle) mentioned “Texting, emailing, posting: all of these things let us present the self we want to be. We get to edit, and that means we get to delete”. So, sometimes technology effect in negative way!
 
 
 
 
Therefore, we need to learn how to make any conversation strong and meaningful. Group members should share their thoughts, ideas, and feeling for successful group work. The first thing is listening to each other, and that will help to come up with good questions to clarify others’ ideas and emotions and develop the conversation to the next level. Finally, as I said in the beginning the main point which is organizations and leaders should open the opportunity, build trust and create a supportive environment allowing participants to share and solve problems without barriers.
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2 comments:

  1. Mashael, I totally agree that ICT completely influence our communication . I think the people believe that it makes everything easier when they can edit, share everything. But on the other side they lose sometimes their concentration etc.
    Even I use my mobile phone during may meeting but sometimes I think on the end that I missed a lot and that it is also little bit rude, when I don't pay attention to someone else. Because I expect that during my meetings, workshops and lessons is everybody paying attention.... I think the people should learn more about polite and effective use of their cell phones, computers etc.

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  2. Mashael, Thanks for mentioning how technology can negatively impact the productivity and engagement of meetings. Recently I attended a weeklong leadership training with twenty five participants. One of the first things we did as a group was set ground rules for the classroom training, one of which was the use of cell phones was prohibited in the room. There was one participant who couldn't put her phone down. The instructor and other participants were distracted and frustrated with her disruptive behavior. The instructor announced that the discussion would halt until the phone was put away. The offender continued to text as the class and instructor were silent. After about five minutes, she looked up and realized that everyone was staring at her. Needless to say, she left the training and didn't come back.

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