TEAM MEETING: TIPS AND STRATEGY

Team Meetings can be a great tool for managers. Team meetings can  help  

  • Build collaboration
  • Communicate team goals
  • Set team strategy
  • Build team culture
  • Brainstorming ideas
  • Receive team feedback
  • Coaching and training  

However, recent research shows the meetings are often inefficient and ineffective. As per the survey of Harvard business review, 65% said meetings keep them from completing their own work. 71% said meetings are unproductive and inefficient. 64% said meetings miss opportunities to bring the team close together. 

In today’s world of remote and hybrid work team meetings become even more significant and it is essential for managers to run the best possible team meetings. Tools such as OKRify can help to run meetings better in a collaborative and structured manner. Let us discuss three stages for running successful team meetings.  

Planning (Before the meeting):

Planning is key for running an efficient productive meeting, without proper planning and defined structure team meetings could be inefficient and a waste of time.

a) Self clarification: ” By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.”- Benjamin Franklin, founding father of the United States. Be prepared with the following actions, first, ask yourself, What is the purpose and goal of the meeting?

b) Invitees: Make sure whom you are going to invite? And the number of persons you plan to invite to . Limiting the number of participants helps in making swift decisions.

c) Setting up an agenda: It is better to plan along with the team members which give clear perception about the activities of all participants along with timelines. As a result, it becomes more productive and organized. Tools such as OKRify meetings can help set agenda collaboratively with the team members

d) Information and Metrics: Collect all the required information and metrics before the meeting and communicate the information with the attendees. Tools such as OKRify meetings can help get responses from attendees before the meeting starts using questions and multiple options. OKRify Meetings can also include OKRs and KPIs in the meeting with real time status directly from Salesforce. Providing all the relevant information in one place before the meeting to the attendees can help get everyone on the same page, save time and run productive meetings in which you can make decisions.

Execution (during the meeting)

Executing or running the meeting requires following the agenda and framework decided during the planning for the meeting.

a) Greetings: A famous Hungarian proverb implies “ The way you greet someone determines how he will welcome you” so, Try to have personal connection with members by asking how are you? How are things going? Be in touch with people, not with tasks.

b) Timing: Efficient meetings should commence and end on time and stick with the agenda. In general, the length of the meeting should not be more than 60 minutes, so that the participants will not get engrossed and bored. So, keep your meeting brief and concise in order to keep your team hooked.

c) Give an outline:Normally, the employees enjoy meetings when they have clear objectives. So, as a manager, define the meeting’s goal and purpose.

d) Assign people for important roles: It is important to have a facilitator who makes sure to run a meeting on the right path without any complaints like individual dominance, disorganization and deviation from the agenda and also allocate the person for taking notes for sharing it with others along with generated ideas. Assigning roles will make the participants committed.

e) Keep the flow: Maintain the flow by asking questions like what’s next? Can we move on? Does everyone agree? Any novel ideas? At the end, ensure that each decision has action.

f) Action items: Clearly document action items, assign the action items and set a deadline for action items.

g) Summarize: Make sure to summarize the contents, so that everyone has a clear idea on what has been covered and what are the decisions that have been taken?

Using tools such as OKRify meetings to run the meeting with a clear agenda, document meeting notes and assign action items.

Closing

Closing a meeting is critical to ensure the objectives of the meetings are met, all the important agenda is covered, decisions made during the meeting are clearly communicated and action items are assigned to the correct owners.

a)Share the notes and action items with attendees

b)Evaluate the meeting’s progress and its contents.

c)Plan for succeeding meetings.

Using meeting management tools such as OKRify meetings can help with communicating the notes and action items. OKRify meetings can also automatically carry over open items to the next meetings ensuring no item slips through the cracks.

What to focus on in Team Meetings ?

Common proclamation: Let your team members know what is going on in this company? Ensure to define the mission and vision of the company. So each employee has a clear understanding of the role they play in helping the company achieve it.

Objectives : Clearly communicate the team goals and team members individual goals and targets. Discuss objectives progress transparently with the team members.

Wins: Don’t forget to point out everyone’s contribution in the success. So that they can feel how we played an important role in achieving the target. This boosts the spirit of the team members

Open forum: Provide an open forum and allocate time every meeting to bring up issues, obstacles that the team members face with the team.

Tips to chew over:

  • Give space for everyone to speak.
  • Give and receive feedback.
  • Start on time, assign a timekeeper
  • Start with an icebreaker
  • Do not get distracted from agenda unless absolutely necessary
  • Encourage participation
  • Have a rotative meeting organizer
  • Avoid status updates in the meeting
  • Use a tool to Manage Meeting Agenda, Action Item, OKRs, etc