How Do I Get My Team In Sync?

Posted in: Leadership Organizational Plan Posted on

In This Episode

Communication is always a challenge, whether in business or in life.  We often meet business owners who lament about the challenges of trying to get their team on the same page.  It might sound something like, “How do I make sure everyone knows what is going on?” Or “Why isn’t everyone rowing in the same direction?”

Whatever the communication challenge might be, one of the first questions we will ask the business owner is, “How often does your team meet?”  This question is usually followed by a pause and a sheepish grin and an admittance that they don’t have any regular meetings or the owner will often blast out talking about what a waste of time and resources meetings are and how they tried that over the years.

We can certainly relate to meetings gone bad and understand why meetings often get a bad rap.  Some of the most common mistakes and frustrations with meetings include:

  • No agenda (or there is one but it’s not followed)
  • 1 or 2 people dominate
  • Meeting doesn’t stay on time (e.g. a 30-minute meeting runs for a couple hours)
  • No one is in charge

You can do better!  Scheduling meetings out for the year gives everything in your business a place to be discussed based on its priority.  Should it be discussed daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, or annually?  If we encounter an organization that has no regular meetings we will encourage them to start with one meeting, usually a weekly or monthly meeting.  We will encourage them to put together an agenda that has set categories to cover at each meeting but can be customized as needed.  Everyone in the meeting should have something to Present so they are participants in the meeting instead of just observers.

Keep in mind that meetings will usually fall into one of two categories as either update/status meetings vs. working meetings.  Sometimes they’ll morph together a bit, but if you’re in an update meeting and two folks start going down a rabbit hole then someone needs to ask them to take that discussion offline and get the current meeting back on track.

During the show today we gave several examples of how meetings helped create a better rhythm with our clients and how they can help your business and getting your team in sync!

People, Companies and Resources We Mentioned in the Show

 

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