How To Have Better Meetings
Leadership takes work, and being part of a team requires both sharp thinking and reliable doing. Plenty of teams are full of brilliant ideas, but to be truly effective, those ideas must match your team’s vision and abilities. Plus, your members must be motivated to follow through.
If your department is anything like the many others undergoing more budget cuts and staff departures, your team is seeking strong leadership. A director must be in touch with the shared mission and goals of the organization as well as the defining logistics of budget, policies, and structure. A leader invests time in understanding it all, using their intersecting knowledge to foster collaboration, creativity, and production across the team.
To be a leader that supports both your team’s abilities and your organization’s mission, take these three foundational steps toward a smooth year:
Set the vision, inviting team members to see how their presence contributes to your shared mission.
Present an organized meeting agenda:
State the purpose of the meeting at the top of the agenda.
Set a start and end time and actually end on time.
Include a time frame for each agenda item.
Assign a team member’s name to each agenda item. Ahead of the meeting you’ll want to ask them to contribute to the meeting, what they'll share, and if the allotted time is enough for their report or presentation.
Create space to celebrate individual accomplishments and contributions to the team.
Clearly specify action items and next steps at the end of the document.
Invite the team to contribute to the next meeting’s agenda, and follow up with them to create consistency, follow-through, team engagement, and task completion between meetings.
With no organizational focus, individuals disengage or work hard to fill the void, but they lack follow-through or sufficient information to establish goals, policies, or programs aligned with the full picture of the organization. It’s up to a leader to effectively gather individual members'’ input on how they can help support or advance the team’s goals.
With a consistent framework refined through input from everyone, you can organize your members into a cohesive team and look forward to the work and growth you’ll do together this year.
