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

• The ability to avoid competing versions of the document
• Formatting capabilities
• Integration with special tools
• 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