Your team should have clearing meetings

Clearing meetings are all about team building, clearing the air and let team members speak their mind. It is a tool to increase self-organization within your team and to strengthen the relationship between the team members and the team lead.

I first learned about clearing meetings when I read Notes to a Software Team Leader by Roy Oshrove. In this very insightful book Oshrove talks about the different phases teams can live through: from the survival phase, to the learning phase and eventually the self-organizing phase. The underlying goal of the clearing meeting is enabling the team to move to the last stage.

What is a clearing meeting?

A clearing meeting is a 30 minute weekly meeting with your expertise team (or “chapter”, if you use the Spotify terminology). I say expertise team because it is important that all the members have the same lead, which is probably not the case in a result/scrum team (or “squad”).

The meeting is led by the team lead. A secretary is assigned at the beginning of the meeting and takes notes. Go over last weeks action points briefly and discuss their outcomes to make sure that action points are being tackled.

After that all attendees should answer the following question:

“What has not been working for you this past week?”

Nothing is out of scope and all attendees are obligated to answer this question. There is always something which could’ve gone better. In most cases you’ll probably have some discussion regarding the topic, which is fine. Right after that you ask:

“What are you going to do about it?”

It is really important to use commitment language here. So no “We should look into fixing the build” but “I will sit with John on how to fix the build by next Tuesday”. The idea is to train the team to come up with their own action points and follow up on them before the meeting starts. Handling and fixing your own challenges when they appear is an important part of self-organization.

After everybody shared their negative experiences of last week and all action points are discussed, the team lead asks all attendees:

“What has been working for you the past week?”

Again, everyone has to answer this one. Sharing positive experiences will end the meeting on a positive note and all attendees will leave the room motivated and satisfied instead of irritated and indifferent.

The team lead will close the meeting and the meeting minutes are shared within a day. It is important that the meeting minutes are confidential, concise and rapidly communicated so that the team can take action as soon as possible.

Why should we do these meetings?

Oshrove’s book talks about several possible goals:

• To introduce important issues everyone should know about.
• To give everyone the chance to air issues that bother them.
• To create more trust within the team. The team will learn that it is healthy and okay to share frustrations with the rest of the team.
• Increase self-organization. The team will learn to identify things that are not going the way they’re supposed to and act on it.

While this list is focused on the efficiency and effectiveness of the team I discovered an extra value in these meetings. During the clearing meetings my team and I had for about a year I discovered that the team started to compliment each other on the work done.

In Jurgen Appelo’s #workout and recently published The 6 Rules for Rewards he reveals what motivates employees the most and three out of six points are related to the clearing meetings my team and I were having:

Reward publicly, not privately
By discussing these matters in group, appreciation is made known for the whole team.

Reward behavior, not outcome
Frequently, someone thanks a team member on their behavior, support or assistance. This might take some encouragement from the team lead.

Reward peers, not subordinates
Team members are giving constructive criticism and compliments to other members.

Isn’t that what retrospectives are for?

Of course the clearing meeting, as well as the retrospective, is aiming for continuous improvement. However, there are a couple of big differences between clearing meetings and sprint retrospectives.

First of all the scope of the meeting is different. A sprint retrospective is solely focused on the project at hand while nothing is out of scope in the clearing meeting. As a matter of fact I tried focusing on project unrelated issues to eliminate the overlap completely.

The goal is also different. A clearing meeting is focused on team building and morale. With a high morale, team members are performing better and they are more productive and innovative. The goal of a retrospective is of course also to increase productivity and velocity but this is approached from a team perspective. It fosters the team performance. The clearing meeting fosters personal performance, which is inherent to a better performance within the team.

Finally, retrospectives are held by the scrum team. Clearing meetings are held by the expertise team. Talking about issues with fellow backend developers or fellow product owners is different than in a multidisciplinary group. It is in our nature to find pleasure in being around individuals who share the same passion, mind set, opinions or mentality, regardless of the type of relationship. It is okay to embrace that once in a while. Other than that, expertise peers can share knowledge and experiences about true tech-stuff which is hard to share with laymen.

So at least in my opinion, clearing meetings are a valuable addition to the meeting cycle with your team and it serves a different purpose than the meetings you have in your scrum team. The one does not exclude the other.

I am curious about your experiences and thoughts on this topic. Please let me know below or let me know on Twitter.