How to Hold Effective Team Meetings

To have an ideal meeting that hits all of the marks, you must include these critically important elements in the format.

Another Meeting?

Do your team members love your department meetings—or not so much? How can you make meetings effective and ensure all team members’ collective time is worth the attendance? How can each department meeting have complete focus and buy-in from all team members? And how can you increase team accountability and get everyone one the same page? It’s completely possible if you have the right meeting format!

Key Meeting Elements

To have an ideal meeting that hits all of the marks, you must include critically important elements in the meeting format. If these elements are present, all team members will agree that meeting together was worth the time, and the objectives moving forward are clear. Here are the key meeting elements you don’t want to miss for your meetings:

Punctuality / Keeping Meetings On Track

It’s easy for meetings to take tangents and get off track, and it takes discipline to stick to the agenda as planned. But, that’s absolutely necessary in order to make sure all of the other important pieces of the meeting get their fair share of time. Here are the rest of the key elements:

Key Metric Tracking

Knowing if you’re winning—or not—is critical! Your team/department needs a compelling scorecard that tracks the proper lead (not lag) measures—those actions that when done, actually cause the result that the team desires. If key metrics are tracked and goals missed, they can be captured and discussed during the issues discussion section of the meeting.

Accountability

Good meetings have full accountability. As discussions take place, assignments and action plans are created—and when those discussions lead to a path forward, it’s critical that someone must capture the details. What where they specifically supposed to do? And by when are they supposed to complete it?

Accountability Piece #1: Previous Assignment Follow Through

Accountability includes looking at prior assignments made to assure they were completed. The way to avoid assumptions is to be thorough and follow up on them, and further discuss them if they are behind or off track.

Issues Discussion and Action Planning

Of all these important elements, this one is key—setting time apart to discuss the issues that your team is facing. It’s amazing what a room full of unified minds can accomplish when presented with a problem to solve. During the issues discussion, ideas and solutions are presented that can clear the way forward for the success of the team. Make sure not to allow one person to dominate discussion and give all members an opportunity to contribute their thoughts on the topic of discussion.

Accountability Piece #2: New Assignments

When issues have been discussed and action plans are created, individual team members will receive assignments, or “To-Dos” that they will need to complete before the next meeting. Make sure they’re captured, and that they’re clear on who is doing what so they know what to focus on until the next meeting.

Meeting Conclusion – Review Assignments and Rate the Meeting!

As the meeting concludes, make sure everyone present is aware of what they’re being asked to do, and determine whether or not they will be able to realistically get them done—To-Dos may need to be re-delegated to other team members with more available bandwidth if needed.

Spend the last few moments of your meeting by asking your team to rate the meeting! On a scale of 1-10, they can use the following criteria to determine if their meeting was worthy of a perfect score of 10:

  • The meeting started and stopped on time
  • Agenda was followed
  • Stayed within time limits on agenda items
  • Reported metrics on or off track without discussion
  • 90% or more of previous assignments were completed
  • Issues were captured and discussed only during Issue Solving
  • The top 3 most important issues were chosen during Issue Solving before discussion
  • Stayed on topic during Issue Solving
  • Clean meeting conclusion with assignment review

You will be amazed at the improvement of meetings when rated by all team members–you know exactly how the meeting went and where improvements to future meetings can be made.

Efficiency for Your Business

Philantech3 cares about helping your business be effective and profitable in whatever ways we can. We use the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS) for our business and the Level 10 Meeting format has been immensely helpful for our team meetings. If you’d like more information about EOS and how it can help your business, we’ll get you pointed in the right direction. We are passionate about helping small businesses thrive in the Spokane area.

Philantech3 consults with many Spokane area businesses on how to keep their businesses solvent and safe, especially in these times of uncertainty and surprises.  If you’d like a free consult on how we can assist your company, please call us and we’ll be glad to help you prepare for the future.

Image by mohamed Hassan from Pixabay

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