Use this meeting agenda to eliminate silos between your teams

Collaboration meetings eliminate silos between teams and improve cross-functional communication to move the needle organization-wide.

How do you conduct a productive team meeting?

The focus of a collaboration meeting is essential to making this time productive. This conversation is about breaking down barriers across departments. Identifying how to support each other is the name of the game. It’s imperative to use active listening to understand each department’s needs.

1. Leadership challenges

Each person identifies their biggest leadership challenges. Don’t make suggestions or question what is shared, in order to encourage honesty and openness. Look for commonalities and patterns across teams. Keep a solution-focused, respectful tone and follow up on the challenges to see what can be addressed.

Facilitator: “What are the biggest leadership challenges you face?”

Contributor: “Not having a solid growth and development plan for my department.”

2. What’s working well

Set expectations for specific examples of what is working well. Have each leader focus on their department primarily, though larger organizational themes are also valuable. Look for commonalities and patterns across teams. Identify where something working well can benefit another department, and remember to celebrate success.

Facilitator: “List 1 to 3 things that are specifically working well for you and your department.”

Contributor: “1. Cohesion of the team and their willingness to get the job done. 2. Resource investment.”

3. What can be improved

Set expectations for specific examples of what can be improved. Have each leader focus on their department primarily, though larger organizational themes are also valuable. Look for commonalities and patterns across teams. This is especially important here, as limited resources need to be focused on improving areas of greatest likely impact.

Facilitator: “List 1 to 3 things that can be improved for you and your department.”

Contributor: “1. Streamlined processes and improved policies. 2. Better reporting systems so we can get data faster.”

4. Top department needs

Set a positive, solution-focused tone set on identifying ways to support others. Have each leader identify and rank what they need from other departments to be more productive. Assign at least one high need action item to each leader that supports a different department.

Facilitator: “Identify what you need from each department to help you be more productive.”

Contributor: “From HR, we need a much faster onboarding program and way to teach our people how to start well.”

Before you complete any meeting, be sure to review and assign the action items and understand who is directly responsible for each one. A best practice is to conduct a collaboration at least quarterly. But don’t wait until the next meeting to follow-up on action items and make sure what is discussed and decided is implemented.

Learn how to eliminate silos between teams. At no cost, ETW will guide your team through a collaboration meeting to improve the communication within your leadership team. Book your session now.