Alas, you find yourself on the precipice of the Elysium fields of a working group. How do you participate? What is expected of you? How do you chair a working group? What outcomes are you searching for coming out of the working group?

Below is a quick guide to give you a starting foundation as you interact with working groups. Take this, mold it, make it your own, and find how you can best contribute.

Finding yourself as a working group participant means you are passionate about the subject the working group is focused on, you have technical knowledge/capabilities in the area or field the working group is focused on or both.

Below are items I hold of importance, for participants to actively contribute to a working group:

• Be here, now.

  • Avoid multi-tasking where possible. Pay attention to the conversations occurring in the working group, and speak up to add value when you can.

• Add value without filling the space

  • There can be times when it feels like you should be heard, or when a lull in conversation feels like it should be filled.

  • If you don’t have data relevant to the discussion occurring, don’t feel obligated to speak.

  • Speak up and express your opinion and the data you know and have when it’s applicable to the situation.

• Volunteer for tasks that you are suited to handle

  • In your working group, tasks will surface that need to be completed.

  • If you have the capability technically and the time in the current schedule to complete the task, offer to take the task on.

  • Working groups operate by their members offering their time to complete the tasks they identify

• Provide realistic dates on deliverables

  • We’ve all been in a place where we offer to complete a task and then give a date that we know cannot be met

  • Giving a date three weeks out is better than a week out, knowing the week-out date will not be met.

Finding yourself as a working group chair means you’ve got technical capabilities in the area the working group is focusing on, and you’re passionate about the outcomes produced by the said working group.

Below are items I hold of importance, for participants to actively contribute to a working group:

• Be ready to actively engage with the members of the working group on times that work for them to get together.

• Come prepared

  • Come with starting topics for conversations

  • Come with documentation to support conversations

• Be ready to lead discussions

  • As often happens, discussions can take tangents down roads less traveled

  • Be ready to steer the discussion and working group participants back to the subject at hand

• Build documentation/POCs ahead of meetings

  • We’ve all been in a project at work and/or school where we don’t see anything accomplished due to lacking a solid starting position

  • A great place to start as a chair is to bring a partially constructed artifact to the first conversation, to help get the group rolling

  • This can be a sample diagram, a picture, a bullet point list of topics to cover that can be shared, etc.

  • This can often be the difference between 30 minutes of casual conversations and 30 minutes yielding a draft document that can be utilized/consumed.