10 Team Meeting Questions Managers Are Asking in 2022 (2023)

My team meetings are the second most important meeting on my calendar after my 1:1s. They are a special time for the team to align on goals, address roadblocks, share feedback, and build trust with one another.

But team meetings can get boring when the agenda is the same every week. That's why adding fresh new questions to yours is so importantAgenda for team meetings. And that goes beyond just talking about work.

Aside from talking about goals and work-in-progress, team meetings are also a great way to build better team relationships and connections. This can be done by addingTeam Building and Ice Breaking Questionsevery now and then, but also by encouraging the exchange of feedback. Now that many businesses have transitioned to hybrid and remote models, it's more important than ever to take the time to connect with the people we work with every day.

In this article we go through:

• How do you come up with new questions for team meetings?
• What to talk about in team meetings
• How to encourage constructive feedback during team syncs
• The 10 most important meeting questions to ask in 2022

Let's dive in!

How do you come up with great team meeting questions?

Look, I see. Thinking about new and effective questions to ask in team meetings can be time-consuming and exhausting, especially when you're at the top of your never-ending to-do list. So here are two ways you can come up with great meeting questions before your next team sync:

1. Use helpful resources

Considering that you've landed on this article, you're already on your way to using every helpful resource out there! In addition to the 10 questions listed below, we also have an ever-growing library ofsuggested questionsThis consists of over 500 battle-tested 1:1 and team meeting questions from the best technology leaders.

Our question bank reduces your cognitive load and allows you to have meaningful conversations with your team.

Other resources you can check out are:

1. Questions about the one-on-one interview(Many of these can also be used for team meetings!)
2. Meeting question suggestion bot
3. 10 icebreaker questions
4. Meeting agenda templates

2. Encourage your team to attend meetings

Another great way to find great team meeting questions is to outsource the work to your team. using aCollaborative Agendamakes this 10X easier. Instead of signaling to your team that you alone own the agenda, invite them to come to each meeting with their own thoughts, ideas, and questions. Giving your team the space to participate in team meetings ensures everyone feels heard and one less thing to worry about each week. Win. 🥳

And there are some questions that are used much more often than others. Over the past year, these are the top 10 most common team meeting questions identified by managers using hypercontext.

What do you talk about in a team meeting?

When it comes to team meetings, the discussions can cover a variety of topics. These are the most effective:

• Questions about the icebreaker:These provide a great opportunity to relax into the meeting while building better relationships and discovering new connections within the team.
• Questions about team building:These conversations can be a great way to build on the trust you've already built within your team. This may includeTeam building activitiesor can be as simple as prompting for acknowledgements, which are shared across the team.
• Feedback Questions:Feedback moves the world, don't you think? It is crucial that feedback is not purely a top-down activity, but an ongoing process shared by everyone on the team. These conversations can lead to initiating process improvements, identifying common roadblocks and frustrations, and identifying opportunities for the team to achieve goals faster.
• Professional questions:No, we're not talking about status updates here. This puts your team in "This meeting should have been an email" territory. Instead, these questions focus on understanding how the team can workbettertogether and across functions.

How to encourage the constructive exchange of feedback during team meetings

We all love positive vibes, howeveronlyTalking about what's going well won't help your team move forward or improve.

There is always room for improvement and that is why sharing constructive feedback is so important. But without a high level ofpsychological safetyIn your team, you will pull your teeth to receive constructive feedback. When it comes to my team, these are my top two "hacks" to achieve this:

1. Practice vulnerable leadership: Leading by example is never a bad idea. It's important for leaders who want to practice vulnerable leadership to understand that being vulnerable doesn't mean you have to share your entire life story. Waterworks are not required. Instead, vulnerable leadership is about understanding where your strengths and weaknesses lie, and being vulnerable enough that you can be honest about it not only with your team, but also with yourself.
2. Sign the salad pact with your team:Inspired by Kim Scott's management approach Radical Candor, theSalad Pactfocuses on creating a collective understanding within your team that when feedback is shared, it should come from a place of good intentions. Of course, delivering is an important part of sharing feedback, but understanding the intent behind it also helps the recipient, especially in constructive feedback situations.

Top 10 questions for team meetings 2022

Okay, now let's get to the heart of this article.

Do you sometimes ask your colleagues what they talk about in their team meetings? What questions encourage meaningful and productive conversations? What questions are most useful to facilitate honest feedback sharing and relationship building?

Thousands of managers conduct their team meetings with Hypercontext every year. This year, from our library of over 500 suggested questions, we've seen 10 questions consistently added to these meeting agendas.

Below we examine the top 10 questions for team meetings and why you might want to add them to your own team meetings (if you haven't already)!

1. What is our biggest challenge as a team?

This is the most frequently asked question in team meetings. It is a must.

That's because as leaders, we only know about 4-9% of the problems our employees face. This number diminishes as one rises in the organization.

This concept is known asiceberg of ignorance, which states, "Only 4% of an organization's front-line problems are known to top management, 9% are known to middle management, 74% to supervisors, and 100% to employees..."

If we are not aware of the challenges that are slowing our team down, the lack of empathy can lead to a lot of frustration and misunderstanding when measuring team success.

So what's the best way to uncover these issues?

Very simple: just ask.

What you will discover with this question

The goal of this question is to better understand what challenges, roadblocks, and frustrations your team is experiencing. Perhaps a competitor has introduced a high-demand feature that your customers have been asking for. How will the sales team position your product against this competitor when it comes up in customer conversations? Or maybe there is a lack of process between the product and marketing teams and as a result there are many problems in aligning go-to-market strategies for each new version.

When you can uncover challenges within your team, both internal and external, you will have a better understanding of what your team is facing and how best to solve them going forward.

2. What are the biggest time wasters for you every week?

This is a question to ask your team because it's important to understand what's working and what's not. Looking back at the iceberg of ignorance we just discussed, day-to-day work for managers can get lost. Whether it's a specific meeting the team isn't finding value in or a specific process, it's important to give your team the space to share their frustrations.

What you will discover with this question

Asking this question will usually lead to constructive feedback and uncover inefficient processes that may not always be easy for people to bring up in an organic way. By opening the ground for improvement-focused conversations, you can streamline existing processes, address recurring blockages or issues, and empower your team to do great work.

You'll never get to the point where you know every single problem your team is facing, but being able to talk about the most important things every now and then will ensure that you can solve at least some of the problems they run into .

3. When is the best time to give feedback on your work?

This is a good question to ask your team because when it comes to providing feedback, timing is everything. Nothing is worse than being at the end of a project only to get feedback from your manager on the key parts of the project so you can start all over again. What a waste of everyone's time, right?

What you will discover with this question

The solution to your team's feedback process can be as simple as sharing it in the right place at the right time. What works for you may not necessarily work for individuals on the team, or even make sense in terms of the process of specific projects. While it's not a one-size-fits-all solution, at Hypercontext we swear by the 10-50-99 feedback framework. After asking this team meeting question, you should consider proposing this feedback framework and testing it on your team.

Das 10-50-99-Feedback-Framework

At Hypercontext we use the10-50-99 Feedback-Frameworkwhen it comes to all our big projects. In my opinion, this is the best way to enable constructive feedback at different levels on larger projects without causing a lot of frustration for everyone involved. With this framework we give feedback in 3 phases of the life of a project.

For example, these are the questions we would ask ourselves at any stage of painting the Mona Lisa:

• 10% done- Basically not done at all. This is where you give feedback on the core elements of a project: Should the picture be of a woman or a man?
• 50% done—Where the core components come together. This is your detailed wireframe, first draft, colorless mockup, you name it. That's when you ask, "Will this be what we had in mind?"
• 99% done- This is your last opportunity to provide feedback before going live with your project. All the important details you've been wanting to talk about are finally welcome, from grammar and spelling to color choices. At this stage you would say "Your nose is missing, once we fix that we're good to go!"

Understanding when is the best time for your team to share feedback is critical to avoiding potential misunderstandings and frustrations and moving the team forward.

4. How can we improve our team's collaboration?

This question is another great way to get constructive feedback from your team. Whether it's inefficient processes, pointless meetings, or the wrong goals you're working towards, direct feedback from the team will help you be more productive.

On the other hand, asking this question also opens the door to sharing additional context about why things are made the way they are. If the answer is "because we've always done it that way," that opens the door to discussions about process improvement. However, if there are valid reasons for these decisions, it gives the team all the information available and reduces misunderstandings and assumptions.

That's not a question you should be askingoneHowever, if you do meet up, asking at least once every quarter is a good start!

5. As a team, is there anything we should START?

This is obvious if you've ever heard of itStart, stop, continue team retrospective technique. Most people overcomplicate this and forget...just ask your team if we should start (or try) to do something. This invites your team to find time to get their insides outF.U.D.and frustrations.

What you will discover with this question

There are many reasons why you ask your team what to do. The endless possibilities are pretty exciting, but a few are:

• Brainstorm new strategies to reach your goals faster:set goalsshould not only be put together by the manager. Instead, it should be a collaborative process that incorporates ideas from the team. Not only will this lead to a greater sense of ownership across the team, but you will also bring more perspectives into the planning process. Not to mention, you've likely hired experts from multiple areas to join the team, so the diverse perspectives you bring allow you to have a more polished plan for the quarter and year ahead.
• Opportunities for process improvement:I know we've talked a lot about process, but with so much new technology out there, it's becoming easier and easier to automate tasks and scale with technology rather than more people. This also feels like a less harsh way of sharing constructive feedback within the team, as "beginning" feels a lot less harsh than "what should we improve". Changing the wording could give people the opportunity to contribute ideas where they might not otherwise have done so.

6. As a team, is there anything we should STOP?

Close behind is the downside of question #5. These are the other 33.3% of the “Start, Stop, Continue” team retrospective technique. What I like most about STOP is that you don't need a budget or unplanned work to turn a profit here.

What you will discover with this question

From addressing roadblocks to eliminating time-wasting activities, this question gives the team a chance to share ideas on how you can all work better together. This works with the direct team, but also across functions. Similar to finding opportunities to test new things to help you reach your goals faster, it's also important to be flexible and skip certain activities or KPIs and readjust your goals when they no longer make sense. The market changes, customer needs change and so does the world. Flexibility is key and this question will help you have more of it.

7. What are the biggest obstacles that prevent us from doing our best?

To me, leverage is one of the greatest tools available to a manager. If we can remove a step in a process that wastes the team's time, the productivity gains can be huge.Brad Feldcall thatthe 2% change. This 2% change includes small changes. These are some examples Brad mentioned:

1. Increase your prices by 2%
2. Eliminate 2% of variable costs
3. Reduce meeting time by 2%
4. 2% increase in employee engagement within the team
5. Increased conversion rates by 2% at every stage of our funnel
6. Reduce published errors by 2%

You get the gist. This question is central to finding some of that 2%.

What you will discover with this question

if you tryimprove by 1% every dayor improve something by 2%, the focus of this question is on understanding what is preventing you from reaching your full potential. You'll likely have some ideas as you strike up the conversation, but you'll be pleasantly surprised at what your team has to say. From there, you can put plans into action to reduce any potential blocker on the team, allowing them to work to the best of their ability rather than making the best of what their environment allows.

8. How can I support you better?

I think this question and #7 revolve around the same topic: What can the manager do differently to improve team productivity? While the previous case was about removing anything slowing down the team, this question gets a little more personal. Don't expect people to open up right away...let the conversation flow a little.

hear crickets? That is thetime to be vulnerable.

What you will discover with this question

Whether your team is going under or lacking in mentoring, this question can uncover many areas where you can have a major impact on the quality of your team's work life. In some cases, their personal lives too. Based on the answers you get from the team, you can dig a little deeper into their thoughts during your 1:1 meetings.

Is your team about toBurn out? Do you find it difficult to work with cross-functional teams? If you ask this question, you will get answers to some of these questions.

9. What are you the LEAST clear about – in relation to our strategy and goals?

Alignment is a must for any high-performing team. It doesn't just come from setting big goals and letting the team go with them. Instead, alignment comes from sharing additional context about those goals, the decisions behind them, and reviewing those goals weekly as a team.

What you will discover with this question

When you first present your team goals, it might feel like everything makes sense to the team. Everyone nods their heads as you share additional context and address thatWhy. After a week, however, those goals could become a bit unclear for the team. Because of this, it's important to review your goals and overall company vision more than once a quarter and create opportunities to discuss them.

This question can also serve as a starting point for new ideas on how to achieve these goals faster. Perhaps the set KPIs are not the right ones and need to be adjusted. Better do this a month after the quarter rather than at the end.

10. Who deserves a shoutout? What have you done? 🎉

A recent study found that37% of employeessaid that personal recognition would encourage them to do better work more often. Do you want to know a simple way to get people to work harder? Have a recurring theme in your team meeting for peer-to-peer shoutouts. Sometimes they even yell at you loudly... Feels good, doesn't it?

What you will discover with this question

building aCulture of praisecan be a great way to celebrate employees for all their hard work. However, this should not be a top-down exercise. Instead, recognition should come from all directions within a company's org chart. Adding this to your team meeting creates a space for people to publicly appreciate and acknowledge their teammates. Sharing recognition is also a great way to reinforce the behaviors you want to see on your team.

Bonus! The #1 Avoided Suggested Question:

"What can we do to improve our working environment?"

Why are you avoiding it? Here's my best guess: While there are tons of articles spouting mumbo jumbo on how the best wayIncreasing productivity and job satisfaction is office design. The truth is that the office environment and workplace perks don't do much. Indeed, in a post-COVID world,74% of companiesPlan to allow remote work arrangements—pandemic or not. This office experience is much less relevant than it used to be.

Office space and leisure activities do not make the difference at work. Think of it this way: you could have the best office in the world, 5-star chefs, puppies, and pinball machines... but if you have a bad manager, it doesn't matter. The work will suck. Sundays get stressful. Monday will be the worst.

My suggestion? Focus on asking questions that make a difference at work. Things like how you can improve collaboration, productivity and recognition in your team. Also, you'll discover more of those 2% changes you can make to have a great team.

PS: If you want to organize your team meetings better and try the suggested question yourself, you canHere.It's free!Forever!

Conduct better team meetings with hypercontext