Balanced participation. Describe your chair in each of the four languages at the three levels of abstraction, as was

76 CHAPTER 3 Designers and Design Teams experiment where a group was asked 2 weeks after a meeting to recall specific details of that meeting. In recounting the meeting they ■ Omitted 90 of the specific points that were discussed. ■ Recalled half of what they did remember incorrectly. ■ Remembered comments that were not made. ■ Transformed casual remarks into lengthy orations. ■ Converted implicit meanings into explicit comments. Recording the decisions made is even more important. Often decisions are clear. For example, “Choose to use 5056-T6 aluminum for the brace” or “The potential difference on anode and cathode of the X-ray tube will be 140 keV.” However, if you listen carefully to unstructured meetings, you find that they wander from topic to topic. When one topic gets difficult because some of the parties disagree or more information is needed, the conversation moves to another topic with no resolution of the initial topic. If stuck, decide what to do to get unstuck and record that call for action. For example, “A decision was made to gather more information on material x” or “We will use Belief Maps to help the team work toward agreement.” These decisions lead directly to the most important item in the meeting minutes, the action items—an itemized list of what is to happen next. State each action item as a clear deliverable, assign the responsible party, and determine by when it is to be done. 3.6.3 Team Health Assessment One of the most important activities is assessing the team’s heath. A form for assessing team health is shown in Fig. 3.15. This form includes 17 measures with room for more to be assessed periodically by the team to measure how it is doing. For each measure, the response ranges from strongly agree to strongly disagree, with attention needed to remedy problems in areas where at least one person does not agree with the measure. The team needs to devise remedies for these “problem areas.” Not doing so allows problems to fester and worsen. This assessment should be used periodically and especially when any team members experience one of the following: ■ A loss of enthusiasm ■ A sense of helplessness ■ A lack of purpose or identity ■ Meetings in which the agenda is more important than the outcome ■ Cynicism and mistrust ■ Interpersonal attacks made behind peoples backs ■ Floundering ■ Overbearing or reluctant team members