Post Meeting Evaluation Forms

These are questionnaires created with an intention to improvise the activity conducted in the meeting. The evaluation forms give immediate response on how fruitful the members thought about this activity. This feedback is given anonymously, so the members need not worry about hurting anyone’s feelings because mostly this feedback is meant to be genuine. The evaluations can be targeted to analyze specific issues like leadership, listening, nonverbal interactions, member participation, and climate. I think it is similar to the feedback form that we fill in every semester after the class is over with an intention to help the instructor incorporate or bypass few assignments or teaching styles that were appreciated or condemned by the class. These questions on the evaluation form are like

1.     How would you rate the group’s final decision?

a.     Excellent

b.     Good

c.      OK

d.     Adequate

e.     Poor

2.     What are the weaknesses?

3.     What changes can be made to the group's decision making process?

4.     What were the highlights of the meeting?

5.     Any suggestions to improvise this activity in the next meeting?

Observer's Feedback

The observer’s feedback can help small groups overcome their shortfalls and perform to the best of their abilities.

1.     So the observer’s feedback should not be generalized such as “well done,” but should be specifically targeted to encourage the group member to continue the good work.

2.     The observer should focus on behaviors of the group members that can be changed.

3.     The observer should not micromanage the group process by fiddling in each and every minute aspect of the group, but broadly select few aspects of the group that can be important to work on.

4.     The observer should not get into an argument or dispute with the group, but stay out of the group and quietly access their performance.

5.     The observer should remember his role as a evaluator rather than a friend, participant or boss.

6.     The observer should accentuate the positive aspects of the group to applaud and encourage their good contribution towards the team work

7.     The observer should provide specific suggestions for improvement.

8.     The observer should mention his notes highlighted in precise manner to not making it boring or sound complicated.

9.     The observer should not hold back in complimenting great work of the group publicly but criticize the group in private.

1. The observer should maintain positive relationship with the group and vice versa, so that both the parties benefit by working with each other.

Consultant Observer

Group members cannot make good observers because they are involved in participation. So it is difficult to multitask as an observer during participation. Moreover if a participant is observing there are high chances that he can miss out on critical insights that can be crucial in devising a plan to optimize the prevailing abilities of the group.

On the contrary, a consultant can observe the nitty gritties in a group keenly because his focus is on observation as a third party. The consultant can help with tips on improvising the existing skills of the group. The consultant’s advice is useful in growth and development of the small group. The consultant’s evaluation of the group can help enhance the performance of the group in terms of critical thinking, communication, higher order thinking skills, and solutions to redundant problems. In fact to make the best possible use of these evaluations, the group can allocate specific times to periodically analyze their shortfalls and strengths.

Computer Mediated Virtual Terms

With the advent of globalization multinational companies have their teams based in different countries all working towards one goal. The interaction of culturally diverse teams based out of every location brings in intercultural communication in small groups. They have to follow certain norms such as ethical boundaries in communication for formal purpose, respect each other and find ways to work hand in hand with everyone. In fact these groups execute projects from various parts of the world successfully with communication based on Computer Mediated Virtual Teams. Thus multinational, multicultural, distributed teams present both opportunities and challenges for organizations. Although demographic dissimilarity and differences in country of birth can decrease the level of trust among group members, reducing their feelings of confidence in each other’s abilities, diminishing their relational openness, and challenging their substantive and mutually influential information exchange. Krebs and colleagues (2006) found that distributed teams who meet via computer-mediated communication maintain higher levels of trust, confidence and productivity than those teams that meet face to face.