leadership
Meetings with a Mission, Part 1: Get Contributions from Your Team
Monday, October 21, 2013
1. Get contributions on agenda items from your team.
Effective and productive meetings require buy-in from every team member. If you don't see your organization or business primarily as a team, then there's more for you to consider and understand about any organized group of people before you can have an effective meeting. Or at least make a commitment to reorient yourself in that direction so that your meetings can be more effective.
If that's the case for you, don't get too overwhelmed too quickly. Realize that you will experience maturity, growth and development as a leader, manager or business owner in on-the-job training. In other words, as you follow the steps for a good meeting found in this series, you'll mature as a leader in your understanding how good teamwork operates in an organization, regardless of whether it is for-profit or non-profit.
Each member of your team,
or each employee,
has valid concerns,
issues, questions,
and problems
that need assistance
and resolution in order
to do their job better.
It's easy to see this as their personal work agenda. It's not a "personal agenda" per se. It's just a personal agenda they have at work. They have a running list, at least in their heads, of the things they need to get done or that they need help with in order to do their jobs better and feel like they are accomplishing something. Always have regularly scheduled times with your employees and team members to hear about these things. They need to know you care. They want to feel their job matters and that their position and role has value.
That said, not everything on their personal agenda is important enough to come to a meeting, right? Much of what they need is just plain old, ordinary help from you as a manager, team leader, supervisor, or business owner. These are often "one and done" type issues, where you hear them out, understand their issue, concern, problem or whatever, and then you help them resolve it.
The best way to filter what problems can be addressed by one person, and which problems need to be addressed by other persons in a meeting, is to ask whether or not it takes more than one person to solve the problem or address the issue or come up with a valid solution. When it takes more than one person, their personal agenda item should become a meeting agenda item, simply because the problem is too complex for just one person to handle.
To Do Today: Make a list of your team members or employees. Then do the following:
1. Make a plan to simply stop by and say hello to each of them.
2. Thank them for their work.
3. Point out and verbalize to them one encouraging thing you see about what they do.
4. Ask for their input on one thing they feel they need most in order to do their job better.
5. Write it down in front of them.
6. Take it back to your office and determine whether you can help them personally, or whether they need the help of other teammates.
7. If they need your help, then help them...immediately.
8. If they need the help of other team members, then you have your first agenda items for your next meeting. Good job.
Part 2: Having a Driving Mission
About the Author: Rob is a follower of Jesus at Jubilee Church. From there he pursues Jesus' mission at Revive Consignment as the Business & Operations Development Director, as well as at Jubilee Church of Atlanta, in Woodstock, GA. From there he envisions and pursues missional-shaped business for the kingdom. He and his wife Sherri have been married for 20 years and together have three sons and a daughter. Rob believes the mission of the gospel is summed up in four simple phrases: know God, obey Jesus, make disciples, and plant churches. This is the pursuit of his life, as well as the point of his blog.
