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Three of my clients at the moment have got this problem which is in their team meeting, they usually have it every week for about an hour, they do their usual spiel and then when they ask for input from their team, there’s tumbleweeds. Silence. No one says anything and it drives them nuts. If you’ve got this problem, I’m going to talk through an alternative.
The weekly team meeting is something that your people can really love and look forward to or it’s something that really doesn’t want to turn up. I’m just going to share a way that you can set this up where they’re going to get more value from it and you’re going to enjoy it more.
The Two Functions
It occurred to me that in fast paced moving environments which most businesses are now, that this team meeting needs to have two functions:
1. It needs to create motivation and momentum.
2. It needs to help with the alignment of the team.
This is the task and this is the purpose and the collaboration and the energy that people get from it. It’s got a function of reviewing backwards and planning forwards.
The second part is your role as host and I don’t know if it’s you or if it’s someone else. But the role of the host is critically important, this is one of the things I usually help with is review the team meeting, look at the structure, but then also train and look at the facilitation of that meeting so that it’s enjoyable for people.
The host role is really important because your job is fundamentally to make connections in the room and help people understand that actually working together and understanding each other and what they’re working on is a really important thing for both the culture of the team, but also getting the task done.
Scrum Style Meeting
First. Think about how do you make that a valuable experience and it creates momentum? And the second is: think about your role as a host and whether you’re connecting people with one another.
The structure I recommend is scrum style meeting.
- Hearing from everyone and everyone’s contributing
- 30 to 45 minutes a week and each person would contribute three things.
- The first is: What’s the one thing from last week that they were really proud of that they want to celebrate?
- What’re the three important things they want to really get done on the weekend.
- Everything they’re working on, what are the three important things that they want to get done?
- And the third is: What’s one thing that they need help on from the team that they’re struggling with and that they would really like the advice on?
The things that they need help with, the three important things, they don’t have a lot of time in the meeting to elaborate on them, but your job as host is to help to make the connection so that out of the meeting they feel rewarded for the work they had done the week before, which is good for motivation.
You’ve got alignment for the week ahead in terms of here’s the important things I’m working on and the team’s aware of them. And then the third thing is that there’s a sense of momentum and being not alone because there are people they can go to with their struggles.
Summary
I believe team meetings are really important to people feeling that they want to be at work and feel connected to a team. And I would argue that if you can put this scrum style meeting in place and engage as a host in the meeting and make connections between the group, people will want to be there and you’ll avoid the tumbleweeds.
Leave me a comment or Get in Touch
If you want help with your team meeting and putting a really robust structure in place that helps people feel like it’s a really valuable use of their time rather than tumbleweeds, book a time with me down below and we can talk through a strategy that will work for you.
And if you want to help to implement it, I can talk you through how that works. I hope this has been valuable for you and your team. Talk to you soon on The Reason & The Road.
