10 Ideas for Better Team Meetings

Meetings can be a challenge, keeping them interesting and focused is not always easy. But when they’re done right they are vitally important. They provide alignment, allow team members to contribute, and most importantly can encourage innovative ideas and solutions to big problems.

There are a lot of objections to meetings but when best practices are followed they bring tremendous value. Part of a Leader’s role is to join meetings and ensure productive conversations take place and important decisions are made.

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So what are some of the best practices you could adopt to improve your Meetings?

1. Purpose - ensure every meeting has a purpose, why are you and your team downing tools and connecting together? Ensure the purpose and goals of the meetings are clear from the outset.

2. Meeting Norms - agree with your team on what the expected behaviors and standards are for the meeting. These are important to ensure alignment and consistency. Some examples:

   1. Arrive on time

   2. It’s about getting it right, not being right

   3. Come with an open mind

   4. Challenge your colleagues with the right spirit and intend

   5. Treat everyone with respect and dignity

   6. Actively Listen

3. Agenda Document - you should have a shared agenda document that all team members have access to and can add items to. Everyone should review ahead of the meeting so they know what’s been tackled.

1. Who’s Meeting - the meeting should not be the Leader’s meeting, it’s the team’s meeting. The leader or the host is just there to facilitate the meeting, ensure the agenda is being covered and completed within time. When it becomes someone’s meeting, the team loses interest.

2. Participation - as the meeting is not your meeting, ensure you’re inviting people to speak and participate. You may ask team members to cover specific topics or even invite special guests. This keeps things interesting and helps the team feel that it’s their meeting and not your meeting. Try and speak 20% of the time and leave the other 80% to the team to ensure they get enough air time.

3. Time - Google and Outlook calendars make it easy to schedule 30 minutes or 60-minute meetings, most of the time that results in you having a 30 minute or 60-minute meeting. Parkinson’s Law states that work expands to fill the time available. Can you change the meeting from 60 to 45 minutes? You might realise that actually drives a more productive conversation and gives your team some time back.

1. Type - break your meetings up into better meetings. Patrick Lencioni’s book “Death by Meeting” provides a framework and is a great resource, linked at the bottom in the resources.

• Daily Stand up - could take place in the kitchen, on Zoom, or at your desks. Ensures daily alignment. What went well yesterday? What are we doing today? and does anyone have any blockers? Time: 15 minutes.

• Weekly Tactical - KPIs, day-to-day issues, team challenges, and important announcements. Time: 45-60 minutes.

• Monthly Strategic - bigger items that need debate, conversation, or planning. Time: 60-90 minutes.

• Quarterly Offsite - away from the office or work. The primary focus should be discussing the road map for the next 6 months and secondly, time allocated for team building and having fun. It’s important that we work on our relationships with the people in our team. Time: 1-2 days.

1. Cancel - don’t be afraid to cancel meetings. When there are no agenda items or mainly updates, perhaps an email will suffice. Give the team time back to catch up or use the time for personal development.

2. Conflict - conflict and disagreement keep meetings interesting. They also ensure everyone contributes and feels heard. As the host, poke holes and challenge people to challenge one another. Challenge and conflict create creativity and encourage new ideas to surface. The 5 Dysfunctions of a Team is a great book for this.

3. End Strong - wrap up the meeting 5 minutes before the end, and confirm any next steps and who is the owner. Pro tip: Follow up with an email so it’s written down and super clear.

Hope these ideas help you run more effective meetings and reboot any which have gone off course.

All the best

David

Resources Of The Week

• Book - Death by Meeting by Patrick Lencioni. Lencioni provides a framework for his groundbreaking model, and makes it applicable to the real world. Death by Meeting is nothing short of a blueprint for leaders who want to eliminate waste and frustration among their teams, and create environments of engagement and passion.

• YouTube - Simon Sinek on Why you Win with Consistency. Simon talks through why all the small things and the daily occurrences help you achieve your goals. Not one-off events.

• App - Blinkist. Do you ever read books and think there was a lot of fluff in there? This app saves you hours with its premium book summary app which condenses hours of reading down into a 10-15 minute summary for you to read or listen to. Try this app to save you time.

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