Team Writing

Chapter 1: Planning Your Collaboration

Case study: The audit report team – A case study of misaligned expectations

Exercise 1.1: Analysis of the audit report team, Original scenario

Effective teams maximize productive conflict and minimize unproductive conflict

An alternate reality: the audit report team redux

Exercise 1.2: Analysis of the alternate reality

Effective planning for a written document involves three main components

1. Agree upon goals and deliverables

2. Identify and merge competing goals, values, and expectations

For Discussion: Competing goals, values, and expectations on the audit report team

3. Create processes and timelines that allow for substantive revision

Different stages of the project involve different types of collaboration

For Discussion: Collaboration types on the audit report team

Effective project management holds the different stages of collaboration together

Teams need to select from different families of tools

Exercise 1.3: Tools and Processes on the audit report team

Virtual teams have unique challenges

Summary

Exercise 1.4: Identifying competing priorities

Chapter 2: What Makes a Good Team?

Successful teams have high collective intelligence

Exercise 2.1: Reflect on your previous team experiences

Diverse teams have high potential, but require extra effort

Collective intelligence increases with equal participation

Equal speaking time

Equal information-sharing

For Discussion: Identifying unique perspectives on your team

Proportionate contributions

For Discussion: Participation on the audit report team

Successful teams have high psychological safety

Create psychological safety on your team

Practice active listening

Avoid complaining; set a positive tone

Create judgment-free zones where even mistakes are appreciated

Treat mistakes as learning opportunities

Seek out difference

Communicate about things that have nothing to do with work

Exercise 2.2: Psychological safety on the audit report team

Exercise 2.3: Creating psychological safety on Victoria’s team

Use positive, future-focused statements

Exercise 2.4: Positive, future-focused statements

Successful and psychologically safe teams are data-driven

Summary

Exercise 2.5: Analyzing your conflict management style

Chapter 3: Project Management

Exercise 3.1: Reflect on project management of a previous project

Projects can be managed to have more or less iteration of the phases

Exercise 3.2: Evaluating project management styles

Exercise 3.3: Selecting a project management style for your project

The project manager’s role at each project phase

The initiation phase

Define the project scope in a scope statement

Exercise 3.4: Draft a project scope statement

Understand the team in a team charter

Planning phases: Create and update the task schedule

Implementation phases

Monitor progress with regular check-ins

For Discussion: Sharing obstacles

Troubleshoot obstacles and team problems with early intervention

Notify stakeholders of obstacles by asking for advice

Assessment phases

Review the work and plan the next phase

Review team processes with informal surveys

Review team processes with organic data from the project

Callout: Accessing Document Revision Histories

Case Study: Is the problem individual contribution or something else?

Exercise 3.5: Collecting team data

The closing phase

Summary

Chapter 4: Getting Started with a Team Charter

A team charter records norms, processes, and roles

Sample team charter

Different kinds of teams have different kinds of charters

Prepare for the team charter

Exercise 4.1: Preparing for the team charter

Meet to develop a team culture

Balance individual strengths and weaknesses

Balance commitment levels

Build consensus around revision norms

Exercise 4.2: Building consensus around revision norms

Build consensus around communication norms

Exercise 4.3: Analyzing media

Build consensus around timeliness norms

Exercise 4.4: Merging timeliness norms

Develop troubleshooting guidelines

Responding to violations of the team charter

Summary

Chapter 5: Getting Started with the Task Schedule

Identify Major Tasks

Exercise 5.1: Define tasks

Define project roles

Options for defining unique project roles

For Discussion: Expert vs. novice review

Determine criteria for each project role

For Discussion: Experience vs. Motivation to Learn

Exercise 5.2: Define project roles

Define roles by interest

Define roles by tool sets

Assign roles 

Practice strategies for breaking stereotypical thinking

Systematically consider each criterion separately

Callout: What if one person is most qualified for multiple roles?

Assign consulting or back-up roles

Consider rotating roles

For Discussion: Assigning roles

Plan milestone and meeting dates

Plan meeting inputs and outputs in advance

Schedule and assign individual tasks

Balance the workload

Troubleshoot project dependencies

Adopt appropriate tools for maintaining task schedules

Exercise 5.3: Draft a task schedule

Summary

For Discussion: Comparing task schedules

Chapter 6: Writing and Revising Together

Agree upon where you are going: Define criteria up front

Finding and analyzing model texts

Exercise 6.1: Finding and analyzing model texts

Analyzing your audience(s)

Exercise 6.2: Analyzing your audiences

Planning for accessibility

Use straw drafts to jumpstart your collaboration

Exercise 6.3: Straw draft

For Discussion: Straw drafts

Decide upon composing tools and processes

1. The ability to avoid competing versions of the document

2. Formatting capabilities

3. Integration with special tools

4. Internet access issues

Exercise 6.4: Deciding upon composing tools and processes

Decide upon revision processes and tools

The feedback method

The direct-revision method

Choosing a method

For Discussion: Deciding upon review and revision tools and processes

Make substantive suggestions grounded in shared criteria

Review project criteria

Focus on global changes in the early stage of a draft

Focus on language and formatting changes in later stages

Exercise 6.5: Practicing positive, future-focused feedback

Assign a team member to do a final edit for consistency and accessibility

Summary

Chapter 7: Running Team Meetings

Determine the purpose and structure of the meeting

For Discussion: Structuring meetings

Prepare for the meeting

Prepare and circulate an agenda

Require homework and pre-reads

Conduct straw polls or surveys prior to the meeting

Exercise 7.1: Plan a meeting

Structure conversations to increase equal participation

Establish no interruption rules

Use criticism-free periods to generate ideas

Establish turn-taking rules to equalize discussion

Be systematic about making decisions

Use polling tools

Use screens to focus attention

For Discussion: Structured conversations

Have good group etiquette during the meeting

Use additional strategies for virtual meetings

For Discussion: Virtual meetings

Follow up after the meeting

Update the task schedule

Distribute meeting minutes

Callout: Action items in meeting minutes vs. Task schedules: What’s the difference?

Exercise 7.2: Analyzing meeting minutes

Summary

Exercise 7.3: Troubleshooting problematic team meetings

Chapter 8: Troubleshooting Team Problems

Decide who to involve

Pick the medium

For Discussion: Selecting meeting

Phrase the communication to focus on solutions

Callout: Address problems early

For recurring problems, work to discover root causes

For Discussion: Role-playing root cause analysis

Troubleshoot problems with showing up and turning in work

Problem: A teammate misses a meeting

Problem: A teammate turns in poor-quality work

Problem: Your initial efforts are unsuccessful

Troubleshooting problems with personal interactions

Problem: My team doesn’t trust me to do good work

Problem: My team isn’t listening to me

Problem: Other team members are not committed to a high-quality product

Problem: My teammates do and say things I find disturbing or demeaning

Problem: My teammates are not open to revisions to their work

Summary

Exercise 8.2: Troubleshooting

Appendix: Sample Meeting Minutes