Shanghai Offsite Meeting

Work has been hectic these days, and thus I wrote less frequently. There is so much I want to write about…… Anyway, glad that I have time for this post.

I facilitated a one-day offsite meeting last Friday in Shanghai. The purpose was mainly to enhance the teamwork. I felt good about it as I found them exchanging quite openly their view. In fact, I was most concerned before the meeting whether they would voice their tough but true view on various team issues. Without this, the meeting cannot be effective. I worked late for a few days before the event in finding ways to make sure they will speak up. (It was a tough week last week since I got to conduct training workshops in the day time.) Well, it seemed to me that they did.

Anyway, I can only be really happy with the effectiveness after I receive the participants’ feedback next week.

On the other hand, I felt good about the experience because I learnt quite a lot from it. First, I am glad that I ran an anonymous survey before the event. I collected their view on what works well and not well in the team. When I led them to speak up their thought during the meeting, I gave them each a copy of the survey result. With that, the participants feel safer to speak up as they knew that some shared their own view. Some say that team issues are like ‘elephant in the room’ – most know that the issues exist but no one talk about it.

I used a website (www.surveymonkey.com) to conduct the anonymous survey. It is free of charge for basic functions, which are good enough for my survey. It is much better to collect the response by an independent website than by simple emails. First, the respondents will know that their identities cannot be tracked i.e. real anonymous. Second, such survey website will analyse the result for you. Imagine if you have 70 respondents, you probably have to spend 30 mins just to cut and paste the responses into one summary sheet! Overall, I do recommend you to use it in case you have to do something similar.

Will share more of my learning later.

最近工作愈加繁忙，写博客的时间也少了，真的有很多想写... ...无论如何，高兴我有时间写现在这篇文章。

我上周五在上海为银行的一个部门主办了他们为期一天的年度会议，其目的主要是加强团队协作。我是挺满意我能够让该部门的成员在会上踊跃发言，其实， 在会前我是非常担心他们会否愿意说出他们对于自己团队的真正想法，尤其我知道这些想法可以不太’悦耳’，但如果没有这些意见，这个会议是不会成功的。为此 我在会前的数天花了很多时间寻找有效的办法！（上周我白天还要上课，挺艰难的一周！）有幸的是看上去他们最后也说出他们的想法。但是，待下周我收到他们的 反馈时，我才可以真的高兴。

另一方面，这经验让我开心的是我学到新的东西。首先，我很高兴我会前尝试做了一个匿名问券调查。我收集他们对团队的意见 – 有什么现在做得好的，还有什么要改善的。当我在会上要求他们发表意见时，我分派给每人一份调查总结，这让他们知道有其他人部分的想法是与自己一样的，使他 们比较安心发言。

做这个匿名调查，我用了一个网站（ www.surveymonkey.com ）的服务。它的基本功能是免费的，并已经足够我问券技术上的需要。比起电子邮件，独立的网站更适合用作进行该等问券调查。首先，受访者会知道，他们的身份 不能被跟踪。其次，这类网站能帮你分析调查，试想一下，如果你有70个受访者中，你可能要花费30分钟只是剪切并粘贴到一个答复汇总表！总的来说，我建议 大家用这类网站进行类似的问券调查。

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