“I enjoyed the conversation and I thought it was very productive.”
“I felt uncomfortable sharing my thoughts. I also felt some of the ideas shared were superfluous and did not make sense. ”
“It was a fun interaction. Everyone had a good time.”
“I felt we wasted a lot of time on unnecessary chitchat.”
“I tried to share some ideas but as usual no one was listening. A couple of the people in the team hogged the time as always and I didn’t get time to share my inputs.”
These are the observations of a team from one of my favorite exercises to build awareness of self and others in a team.
The exercise involves a guided visualization. I get the team to close their eyes and recall a recent team meeting and revisit their experience of it.
It is always interesting for me and the team members to see that everyone has different experiences even though everyone is in the same meeting.
What is even more interesting is that most people are completely unaware of the effect they have on others in the team.
These different experiences are just a glimpse of how we all process the world so differently from each other.
So the next time you are in a team meeting ask yourself:
- How are you experiencing the meeting? What are your predominant thoughts and feelings?
- How are you experiencing the other members of the team?
- How do you think others experience you?
- How are the other team members experiencing the meeting?