Keep Meetings Productive | Tips Tuesday for Leaders

In this week’s Tips Tuesday for Leaders video, I’ll share 3 things to include in your team meetings to keep them productive. (If you’d rather read about these than watch the video, keep scrolling to see the transcript.)

 

 

Keep Meetings Productive Video Transcript

 

Hi! Karin Naslund here with Naslund Consulting. I want to welcome you to today’s Tips Tuesday for Leaders! Today I want to talk to you about having productive meetings. Whether it be a one on one session with one of your staff or your team meeting, it has to be purposeful and have meaning for the entire team.

 

Often times we adopt whatever agenda has been in place for our meetings prior to us taking on the responsibility, and we don’t really give it any additional thought. I want to encourage you to take some time to evaluate your agenda in the meetings and the productivity of your meetings with your team. Are they getting out of it what is best for everyone? Or are you basically going over the same material or having the same discussions that you’ve had at other times with different team members or the entire team? We want to ensure that the team meetings are going to get at new information, as well as help to build relationships and educate the team around things that could help them do their jobs better. 

 

My Team Meeting Agenda

 

I typically have an agenda for my team meetings that includes a few different things.

 

1) Informational Consent Agenda

 

I would encourage you to give some consideration to what Carver does when he talks about Board Governance. This is what I did with my Board of Directors as we continued to evolve. We had very short time to talk about critical things, and it seemed like we would get really bogged down by the non-essentials. So, we developed what was called a Consent Agenda. The Consent Agenda would go out with the regular agenda to all of the board members, and within it would be a listing as well as supporting information about the kinds of things they needed to be informed about that we didn’t need to spend time on at the meetings. In fact, those were the kinds of things that took up a lot of our time! So, that informational component, or the things that they needed to understand, would go into the Consent Agenda. It was expected that the board members would read over the Consent Agenda — and all the items included — so when it came to the actual board meeting, a motion would be made and the Consent Agenda would be approved. If there was something in there that a board member wanted to go over in more detail, it could be pulled out of the Consent Agenda and added to the Agenda itself for that meeting or put on a future Agenda. So, if you’re looking at your organization, it could be memos coming from leadership, changes in operations or policy, or financial information that doesn’t really need to be discussed at the meeting, itself. The expectation is that all team members are going to read through the information and that they will commit to this when it comes to the team meetings. It really puts the accountability back on them. 

 

2) Educational Component

 

We’re about enhancing quality service and making our team members stronger in their jobs, yet we don’t spend sufficient time on doing this. In fact, as nonprofit organizations, it’s one of the first things to get cut from the budget. There is much research done on the fact that maintaining and ensuring ongoing education for staff is a retention strategy. Also, no doubt, it helps to increase their capacity and capability to deliver the work in a higher quality manner. 

I tell people that take my training that they might want to think about how they could include some educational parts, and then give them to their team to be responsible for each month. TED Talks is a wonderful resource. Or pulling articles and having discussions around things that are relevant to the team is another way to make sure that everyone is getting the same information in the team meeting. 

 

3) Time for Building Team Relationships

 

Continuing to build team relationships in each meeting is really important so that everyone feels they belong and that they’re part of something bigger. Being able to have conversations around successes that you’ve had — and also to evaluate some of the challenges you’re facing — is critical. An ongoing means to be able to develop relationships between team members is important, which may mean getting them out of the office to do something fun! For instance, take them on a trip to experience something new. One of the things I did with my team was a craft. Another idea: paint parties have become really enjoyable — something that people have grabbed on to — so you might want to think about doing a paint party with your team. Those are just a couple of ideas, but you really do need to invest in your team and in the ways they will pull together. We have very limited time to do this, of course, and one of the times we can is during team meetings. So look for exercises. Look for ice breakers. I often encourage teams to do brain teasers which stimulate the mind and are fun!

 

Please don’t lose sight of the fact that your team meetings are an opportunity to build relationships and to increase people’s commitment to the organization and retention of your staff. This happens as you develop their skills, build their relationships and give them opportunities to grow, develop and evaluate the kinds of things that are going on. 

 

Another really important part of all of this is motivation. You need to continually put forward that passion behind the work that is done. Every team should have a Vision Statement that grabs their attention and has meaning for them. Other times, I talk about the importance of having a Team Charter, which is something you might want to look into. I might discuss it further in a future Tips Tuesday for Leaders video too! 

 

As you work forward with your team this week, consider these productivity tips for meetings. Until we meet again, remember: Success is yours! Bye for now!