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  • Getting Started
  • STEP 1: PREPARE FOR ACTION
    • Executive Driven Survey Overview
    • Timelines and Deliverables
    • Schedule a Meeting with your Consultant or Project Manager
    • Stategic Assessment Session
    • Prepare for Action FAQ
      • Who will be responsible for different aspects of the project?
      • What kind of support can we expect during each phase of the survey process?
      • What are the recommended timelines for various project phases?
      • When should we schedule the questionnaire design call?
      • What kind of access will we have to the online reporting tool?
  • STEP 2: DEVELOP QUESTIONNAIRE
    • Questionnaire Design
      • TalentMap Employee Engagement Questionnaire
      • 5-Point Rating Scale
      • Response Scale From Strongly Disagree to Strongly Agree
      • Length of an Employee Engagement Questionnaire
      • Determining Areas of Importance
      • Employee Net Promoter Score
    • Questionnaire FAQ
      • Can we customize the standard questionnaire?
      • How can we incorporate our specific themes or categories into the survey?
      • Can we add questions about our organization's mission, vision or strategic plans?
      • Which benchmark should we choose?
      • How do I sign off on a survey?
      • What is the difference between engagement and satisfaction?
      • Where should we place demographic questions?
      • Will the survey questions change in the future?
      • When you use the term “we” in the questionnaire, who does this refer to?
      • Can we change the scale so that Strongly Disagree is the last option?
  • STEP 3: PRE-SURVEY COMMUNICATION & SETUP
    • Participant Information File
      • Change Date of Birth and Length of Service to Ranges
    • Email Whitelisting
      • Compass Email Whitelisting (DIY)
    • Survey Communications
      • Comprehensive Guide To Survey Communications
      • Pre-Survey Email Communication Package
      • Promotional Posters
      • Employee Info Sheets
      • Engagement Survey Invitation Email
      • Exit Survey Invitation Email
      • Entry Survey Invitation Email
      • PIN Survey Invitation Email
    • Response Rate Strategies
    • Pre-Survey FAQ
      • Is the survey confidential?
      • How can we effectively communicate the survey to our employees?
      • How long should the survey be open?
      • Can I make changes to my PIF?
      • What methods are available for survey distribution?
      • Should we include new employees in our survey?
      • Should we survey contract or term employees?
      • What languages are available for communications material?
      • How long does it take to program my survey?
      • Are there standard invitations for Pulse surveys?
      • Why am I getting invalid entries in my import log?
  • STEP 4: DEPLOY EMPLOYEE SURVEY
    • Monitor Response Rates
    • Survey Live FAQ
      • How often are survey response rates updated?
      • Can I save my responses and complete the survey later?
      • Can responses be changed once submitted?
      • Can I extend my survey?
      • My survey link is not working what do I do?
      • We had bouncebacks, can you send the survey to them immediately?
      • What reports will our organization have access to?
  • STEP 5: ANALYZE, INTERPRET & REPORT
    • Compass Reports
      • General
        • Filter Data
        • Bulk Export
      • Snapshot
        • Webpage
          • Snapshot Report Overview
          • Sort Data
          • Compare to Overall
          • Compare to Other
          • Hide Benchmark and / or Previous Period
        • Export to PowerPoint
          • Export Response Rate
          • Export Lookup / Lookdown
          • Export Heatmap
          • Export Key Driver Analysis
          • Export AI Comment Summaries
        • Export to Excel
      • Heatmap
        • Heatmap Overview
        • Heatmap Previous Period
      • Comments
        • Comments Overview
        • AI Comment Analysis
          • Ask Comment Questions
          • Comment Summary & Suggestions
          • Search Comments by Meaning
        • Comment Settings
          • Hide Words & Phrases
            • Import Hidden Words or Phrases
          • Comment Dimension Score
          • Sentiment Analysis
          • Minimum Words & Random Sample
          • Auto-Translate
        • Word Cloud
          • Word Cloud Overview
          • Word Cloud Settings
          • Import Stop Words
        • Export to Excel
        • How to Handle and Distribute Verbatim Comments
        • FAQ
          • How should disclosure of employee comments be handled?
          • Who has access to comments in Compass?
          • How is AI data handled?
      • Insights
      • Correlations
      • Prepare Reports for Senior Leadership
      • Reporting FAQ
        • How should I analyze the survey results?
        • What is key driver analysis?
        • What is Pearson correlation?
        • What size group is required to do driver analysis?
        • Why do some scores total over 100%?
        • What is the purpose of the neutral option?
        • What is the minimum participation percentage to achieve statistically valid results?
        • Should we focus on dimensions with low scores?
        • How does report filter confidentiality work?
        • Can I turn off the confidentiality similarity warning message?
        • Can I filter by questions in the survey?
    • Compass Admin
      • Results
        • General
          • Enable Results for Reporting
          • Edit Demographic Report Labels
          • Update a Survey Title
        • Participants
          • Edit Participant Information
          • Remove Participant(s) From an Email Campaign
        • Survey Items
          • Customize Survey Items
          • Convert a Survey Item into a Demographic Filter
        • Benchmarks
        • Previous Period
        • Snapshot Customization
        • Dashboard Editor
        • Assign Access
      • Users
        • Permissions
        • Add a User
        • Log In with Microsoft Account
        • Assign Restricted User to a Report
  • STEP 6: DISCUSS, CLARIFY & PLAN
    • TalentMap Reports
      • Scouting Report
      • HR Preview
      • Executive Presentation
      • Additional Presentations
      • TalentMap Report FAQ
        • What’s the difference between a preview and a final executive presentation?
        • High satisfaction vs low engagement (or vis versa)?
    • Post-Survey Consulting Services
    • Focus Groups
      • Conduct a Focus Group
      • Focus Group Invitation Email - Template
    • Management Resources
      • Improve Diversity & Inclusion in the Workplace
      • 360 Leadership
      • Employee Onboarding
      • Stay Interviews
      • Exit Interviews
      • One-on-One Meetings
  • STEP 7: COMMUNICATE & TAKE ACTION
    • Communicating Results
      • Constructive Strategies for Leaders with Low Scores
    • Action Planning
      • Organization vs. Leadership Action Plans
        • Pitfalls to Avoid When Action Planning for Senior Leaders and Managers
      • Develop an Action Plan
      • Create Action Teams, Documentation and Implementation
    • Action Planning Resources
      • Before You Start
        • Action Planning Quick Wins
        • 6 Steps to Successful Action Planning
        • Plan for Action Planning Difficulties
        • Proven Action Planning Tips
      • Tactical
        • How to Start Action Planning
        • Action Plan Framework Guide
        • Action Planning - How To Guide
        • Action Planning Checklist
        • Action Plan Template
        • 3 Post-Survey Action Planning Tactics
    • Action Plan Library
      • Compensation
        • Bonus Pay Or Incentives
        • Determining Fair Compensation
        • Total Rewards Packages
      • Customer Focus
        • Build Loyalty, Not Delight
        • Making Customer Feedback Work for You
        • Translating Competition into Improvement
      • Diversity & Inclusion
        • Employee Resource Groups
        • Mentoring Program
        • Multicultural Potluck
        • Sensitivity Training
      • Growth & Development
        • Develop Cross-Training Programs
        • Implementing Job Shadowing Programs
        • Increase / Improve Training
        • Instituting Regular Career Pathing Conversations
        • Professional Development Plans
      • Immediate Management
        • Avoid Switch-Tracking When Given Feedback
        • Developing Emotional Intelligence
        • Fika: Creating Genuine Connections Over Coffee
        • The Pomodoro Technique
      • Information & Communication
        • BLUF Your Way to Better Communication
        • Stand Up for One Another
        • Want Better Groupwork? Talk Less
      • Innovation
        • Establishing Innovative Onboarding
        • HR Analytics
        • Mental Health Coaching
      • Mental Health
        • Lunch-n-learns
        • Stress Audit
        • The Canine-Colleague Culture Connection
        • Volunteer Program
      • My Role
        • Autonomy Advances the Workplace
      • Performance Feedback
        • Improved / Better Communications
        • Set Clear Goals
        • Utilize the Right Technology
      • Safety
        • Fitness Challenge
        • Health and Safety Committee
        • Health Fair
        • Kick the Sit Out of Work
      • Senior Leadership
        • Develop Empathy Superpowers
        • Embracing Change in Long-Term Thinking
        • Evangelizing Your Vision
        • Hosting a World Cafe Session
        • Increasing Visibility
        • Integrating Vision to Boost Engagement
        • Setting Ambitious and Realistic SMART Goals
        • Understanding Communication Styles
        • Use Storytelling to Share Your Vision
      • Systems & Resources
        • Investing in Technology
      • Teamwork
        • Clarifying Roles
        • Project Management Tools
        • Reward Excellent Teamwork
      • Work Environment
        • Adapting to Open Office Environments
      • Work/Life Balance
        • Enforced Digital Downtime
        • Flextime
        • Focus on Productivity Not Hours
  • DIY SURVEY DESIGN & DEPLOYMENT
    • Compass Questionnaire Design (DIY)
      • Getting Started (DIY)
        • Build a Survey
        • Style a Survey
        • Test a Survey
        • Pulse Survey Overview
        • Getting Started With Logic (Branching)
      • Compass Survey Design (DIY)
        • Build
          • Question Types
          • Add a Question
          • Require a Question
          • Add Text / Instruction
          • Page Title and Description
          • Copy & Paste
          • Reorder Questions
          • Reorder Pages
          • Copy a Survey
          • Skip Logic
          • Question Logic
          • Restore "Undo" a Question or Page
          • Textbox / Long Answer Character Limit
          • Post a Survey Link
          • Disable a Question
        • Style
          • Add Logo
          • Text Options
          • Preview Survey by Device or Language
          • Choose Respondent Interaction
          • Hide Progress Bar
          • Hide Page Titles, Descriptions, and Question Numbers
        • Test
          • Survey Diagnostics
          • Invite Others to Test
          • View Comments Made by Survey Testers
        • Tools
          • Rename a Survey Title
          • Text & Translations
            • Change Required Text, Messages, and More
            • Add Translation
            • Test Translation
            • Share A Translated Survey
            • Reuse Translations for Standard Messaging
        • Design FAQ
          • Why is there a red asterisk on my question?
          • How do I add or remove page breaks?
          • How can I design surveys to be more accessible?
          • Why is my question title and/or answer option blank?
          • Why Is the font for some of my survey questions different?
          • Why are the option buttons not displaying in my survey?
          • What is a thank you page?
    • Compass Survey Deployment (DIY)
      • Create an Email Campaign
      • Hide Unsubscribe Link
      • Upload Participants
      • Add Reminder or Thank You Emails
      • Add Image to Email
      • Change Email Font
      • Test Email Campaign
      • Convert UTC Time
      • Resend a Survey Link
      • Source Tracking
      • Rename an Email Campaign
      • Close a Survey
  • GENERAL
    • FAQ
      • How do I escalate an issue?
      • When will I receive an invoice?
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  1. STEP 7: COMMUNICATE & TAKE ACTION
  2. Action Plan Library
  3. Information & Communication

Want Better Groupwork? Talk Less

Picture a group of people trying to solve a problem, and you’re probably picturing what’s called brainstorming. People compete to call out ideas, trying not to judge anyone’s idea, no matter how unusual it may be. Now picture a meeting – it’s a lot of people talking across a table, right? Problem is, neither is the most effective way to stimulate deep thinking or good ideas. For that, you need to harness the power of silence.

Goal

Use science – and silence – to make meetings and problem-solving sessions more productive for everyone.

What is Want Better Groupwork? Talk Less?

To understand the power of silence, you first have to understand what’s problematic about the way popular idea-generating or information-sharing scenarios in the workplace operate. In 1985, two professors published the results of an experiment in Journal of Pereonality and Social Psychology. They showed that groups tend to focus on already-shared information rather than new information provided by lone members: in other words, group-think is biased against individual-think. This means that scenarios where groups try to think together – out loud – are less successful at hitting on or taking up new ideas than are scenarios where people think individually. But while silence and independence are necessary for creativity, fortunately there are ways to harness an individual’s ideas for the good of a group. They just requires a willingness to avoid, for short periods, the first tendencies of groupwork: talking.

How does Want Better Groupwork? Talk Less improve employee engagement and culture?

Exceptional idea generators are often introverted, but most group idea-generation works against introverted thinkers, encouraging attention to be paid to the loudest or the most willing to talk: in other words, the extroverts. Extroverts may benefit from thinking aloud, but introverts may not, and you don’t want an important subsection of your company to feel ignored or underused, especially when it comes to areas like idea-generation that should be among their strengths. Rebalancing the process of sharing ideas and working collaboratively means introverts are more able to share their ideas, and that groups are more willing to engage with ideas from everyone. Employees who feel listened to feel more valued, leading them to do better work.

What are the benefits?

Understanding idea generation and group information-sharing dynamics will better attune your workplace to resources already at its disposal. Don’t suffer internal brain-drain! Tap into the potential of employees you have and reap the rewards.

How do you conduct Want Better Groupwork? Talk Less in the workplace?

As you think about the power of silence in the workplace, you might want to look to an unlikely model for inspiration: Quaker worship meetings. Lots of business meetings start with ice-breakers or chit-chat, and there is a time and a place for those – sometimes meetings are merely to reconnect the team and share updates. But sometimes you want to prepare colleagues for deep thinking or problem-solving. The default state of Quaker meetings is silence: while participants can speak, they are not obligated to do so. In spirituality, as in creativity, silence helps remove distractions. This deeper state of thinking is what we want to access when getting things done.

Action

Talk Less to Think More

  1. It’s hard to think deeply when you’re listening to someone else talk – you’re guided too strongly by responding to what they are saying, meaning one speaker can inadvertantly limit the scope of possibilities for everyone. Susan Cain, who wrote Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, says that people working in groups come up with fewer ideas than an equivalent number of people working alone. What you want to do, then, is reformulate your idea-generation activities to balance the strengths of the group and the strengths of the individual. In this, silence is a proven productivity hack.

  2. If Happy Hour Is 9 to 5, Alexander Kjerulf says “silence breaks” in meetings encourage deep thinking and reflection. They can be extra-helpful for making the second stage of longer meetings more productive, especially when tackling bigger issues or during brainstorming solutions. It may seem odd to sit in silence, particularly when your team first tries it, but stick with it. “The purpose of meetings is not to talk,” Kjerulf writes on his blog, but “to arrive at ideas, solutions, plans and decisions.”

  3. So say your meeting is veering toward auto-pilot, and you’re worried participants are tuning out. Take a “silence break”! This isn’t a break where everyone stretches, checks their phone or chats to their neighbour before being quieted down again: instead, the meeting continues, just without talking. Minds are refreshing themselves; people are thinking about matters at hand.

  4. Likewise, when your team faces a particularly thorny problem, try brainstorming silently rather than aloud. Doing this gives introverts a chance to do their work without getting caught up in worries about interjecting in a group free-for-all. You don’t want to lose some of your best thinkers simply because they never get to contribute – or never get the brain space to come up with their ideas in the first place!

  5. Colleagues can write their ideas on paper and then combine them all afterward to discuss. Or everyone in turn can explain their best idea after the period of silence. Some call such techniques “brainwriting.” No single voice or personality dominates the discussion – at least not before the ideas have been generated – and people who need time and space to work best are allowed it.

  6. Some take this process further. In a 2007 article in Computers in Human Behavior, researchers found “electronic brainstorming” – generating ideas via a shared platform, without being interrupted by others – led to greater success than face-to-face collaboration. This can be done remotely or from opposite sides of the same room!

  7. Whatever you do, reflect on another interesting aspect of silence. Surveys show those who think meetings went the best are usually the ones who talked the most. If you’re the leader, that’s probably you – but quieter participants may disagree, because they didn’t feel they participated. Balancing silent creative time with vocal collaboration time make everyone feel involved in how the meeting went. Turns out you can communicate more by – sometimes – opting to saying less.

Reference Material

PreviousStand Up for One AnotherNextInnovation

Last updated 12 months ago

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Why Your Meetings Stink—and What to Do About It
The Science of Silence: How Solitude Enriches Creative Work
How To Improve Meetings, According To Science
The Case for More Silence in Meetings