How To Have An Awesome Project Kickoff Meeting

On  Conference Calling, June 21, 2017

…As the meeting begins, and even as the project progresses, every new team is going through Tuckman’s “Storming, Forming, Norming, and Performing” stages of group development, according to Alan Zucker, Founding Principal of Project Management Essentials LLC.

“The faster the team moves through these stages and becomes performing, the better,” he says. Being able to ask questions—what Zucker calls “transparency and democratizing forces”—is a key part of team development.

For this reason, Zucker recommends maxing out the travel budget for the kickoff meeting. “Having a social gathering or ‘team-building activities’ can help jumpstart this process,” he says. And face-to-face interaction can build trust. Says Zucker: “The chat in the break room or the shared joke during a presentation is invaluable.”