Team meetings are important in any business. It’s essential that everyone in the company understands their role and what expectations they need to meet in order for the business to be successful.
Do you know how your employees feel about these meetings? Do they bring new ideas? Are they engaged with the company’s decisions?
Unfortunately, too many of the meetings we attend seem not to have the employee’s engagement. Instead, people normally get mentally exhausted and frustrated. Usually, it’s because these events are not planned and executed correctly.
It’s known that a group of people meeting together can often produce better ideas, plans, and decisions than can a single individual, or a number of individuals, each working alone. Good managers understand the importance of these meetings and put effort to make them interesting, high-energy and productive.
Turnkey will give you some tips to help you take advantage of this valuable collaboration time with your team.
- Be Prepared!
Always plan an Agenda. This is the best way to identify the priority topics for the meeting. As the leader, you must own the event, which means that all the planning and execution must be done by you, and nobody else. Do not delegate this task to another team member. Remember to set a realistic amount of time for each item. Important projects and complex decisions demand more time than other topics. The meeting facilitator will also have to make some judgment calls as to whether it is worth continuing a discussion if a topic is taking too much of the team’s time. Set an end time for the meeting and stick to it.
2. Ask for Input on the Agenda
Although it’s the leader’s responsibility to develop the agenda, team members can be invited to contribute with meeting topics. This is a great opportunity to give your team a chance to lead discussions, share ideas and give suggestions. The manager can ask his/her team to prepare a presentation on a specific subject, for example. When the combined experience, knowledge, and imagination of a group of people are brought to bear on issues, a great many plans and decisions are improved and sometimes transformed.
3. Follow-Up
A meeting creates in all present a commitment to the decisions it makes and the objectives it pursues, but it’s important to keep track of action items and make sure each participant understands their assigned tasks. Follow up before the next meeting and hold individuals accountable for their commitments.
4. Vary the Meeting Format
Sometimes it’s good to spice it up a little bit, by doing some extra activities during the meetings: celebrate something, bring an interesting food, engage the team in brainstorming, invite other company’s departments to explain their roles, change locations, or any other thing that can bring fun and break up the monotony.
5. Use Meetings to Collaborate
Instead of just sharing information, try solving a problem or working with the group on arriving at a decision. This will make your team more engaged and more confident about the goals that the company wants to achieve.
We hope we’ve given you some insight into how to lead a better team meeting. Taking the time to plan, collaborate and consider how to make your meeting more engaging is an integral part of managing and leading a team. When your meetings are run effectively, your team will be more aligned, productive and on track to reach your team goals.