Agile QuickTip: Safety Checks to Kick Off Your Meetings

Safety Checks to Kick Off Your Meetings

We often assume that participants in teams feel comfortable being open, transparent and forthcoming in a way that will make meetings and interactions meaningful and valuable.  But what if this assumption is wrong? How would we know?  How might this affect a meeting, it’s participants and the meeting outcomes?

One simple technique that can be introduced when kicking off any meeting is the Meeting Safety Check.

At the start of a meeting, all you need to do, is ask participants to rate on a scale of zero to five what their level of comfort or safety is, in participating and sharing information during the meeting. You could have people hold up the corresponding number of fingers; or write a number on a post-it. If you’re concerned that team members won’t be honest about in their rating you could do this anonymously to help participants feel more comfortable sharing.

Based on the results of the Safety Check you then have three choices: continue with the meeting as planned, keeping an eye out for the team dynamics; address the safety concerns before the meeting begins; or cancel the meeting altogether until the safety concerns have been addressed. By introducing Safety Checks, not only do we make meeting safety a meeting pre-requisite priority, we also introduce a way to assess and evaluate when safety issues dealt with.  Meeting safety will likely lead to more engaged participants and better meeting outcomes.

I hope that this Agile QuickTip was enjoyable and valuable, and you can see yourself implementing it into your team meetings. Make sure to check our YoutTube channel to catch up on the ones you’ve missed! Don’t forget to head to Thinklouder.com to see our training and coaching offerings, and hit that follow button on Instagram, @GioraMorein, as well as on Twitter.