The meeting that tells you how healthy a team is

If you want to know how a team is really doing, skip the dashboard and sit in on its weekly check-in. Watch who speaks, who stays quiet, and what happens when someone says something is behind.

Signs of a healthy team

• Problems are raised early, in plain words, without long justifications.
• People ask each other for help in the meeting instead of after it.
• The most senior person in the room talks the least.
• Decisions are written down, with a name and a date next to each one.

Signs of trouble

Everything is “on track” until the week it suddenly is not. Updates are long and defensive. The same issue appears on the agenda three weeks in a row with no owner. These are not problems of discipline. They are problems of trust.

The most important thing in communication is hearing what isn’t said.

Peter Drucker

What a leader can change

Thank people for bad news. Ask “what do you need?” before “why is this late?”. Close every meeting by reading back the decisions and owners. Small habits, repeated every week, are what make a team safe enough to be honest.