Run These 5 Types of Team Meetings and Enhance Your Reputation as a Skilled Leader

You'll increase team engagement, productivity and your chances of getting noticed by the people that matter

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It sounds dumb, doesn't it? How can running a few team meetings increase your chance of getting noticed?

It depends on what you do in the meeting. If you use your meetings to clarify goals, train your team, and help your team members with their careers, they'll flourish and become more productive. And that is good for your reputation and career, too.

Most of us are used to dull team meetings where we spend most of our time staring into space, waiting for our turn to speak. And no surprises here, these meetings achieve nothing at all.

If you have meetings like this every week, it costs a lot of time and money, but the benefits are zero.

But leaders, like you, who know how to communicate with their teams don't have those sorts of meetings. They have team meetings that raise engagement, trust, and productivity.

If you are wondering what all this jibber-jabber about engagement is, it's nothing to do with rings and weddings but all about how people feel about their jobs and the amount of effort they're prepared to put in. Even when the boss isn't looking, and they could get away with going to the pub instead.

I managed an organization's annual engagement surveys for over a decade and learned that these things raise engagement:

• Feeling that the manager cares for them as a person

• Being clear on work goals

• Getting training & development to do their current role

• Career development and an opportunity to apply for promotions

• Clear communication with and access to their manager

• Having the right tools to do the job

• Being rewarded and appreciated

• Having ideas and suggestions listened to

You can provide all this in your team meetings if you plan them right.

According to Gallup, engaged employees produce better business outcomes than other employees, no matter the industry, company size, nationality, or economic climate. As only 23% of employees worldwide are engaged, if you grow an engaged team, you'll be ahead of your competition and get noticed by your boss and anyone else who can hand out promotions, development opportunities, and pay increases.

So, let's examine the type of meetings you can hold to achieve all this, starting with assessing your team's current level of engagement.

Meeting Type 1: A Quick & Dirty Engagement Survey - Find out what your team really thinks!

Leading an engaged team is fun. Your boss will love you, and it's easy to hit your KPIs without any drama. But it's up to you as a leader to keep tabs on engagement levels in your team.

Enter the engagement survey.

Wait, what? Can you really do an engagement survey in a team meeting?

Well, you've three options:

• Hire a fancy consultancy, pay big money, and get the consultants to analyze all the data for you

• Go cheap and use Survey Monkey and work out what the answers mean on your own

• Find out what your team thinks for free (apart from some pizza or a plate of muffins) by asking them in a team meeting

The free approach, though quick and dirty, will get you some answers fast.

Here is how to do it.

Step One — Tell the team what you are going to do in advance.

There is no merit in springing this type of exercise on a team, plus you want them to arrive at the meeting prepared.

Tell the team you are setting up a meeting to discuss team engagement. There is no hidden agenda; you just want to improve engagement generally.

Step Two — Introduce the meeting

In the meeting, say that you want to check in with the team to ensure everyone is happy, engaged, and has everything they need.

Stress that everything will be confidential. Today, you are just gauging the feel of the team.

Step Three — Do the survey

Draw a long horizontal line on the whiteboard; at one end, write Disengaged; at the other, write Engaged.

Put markers on the line from 1–10, with the one at the Disengaged end.

Explain what you mean by engaged — generally, you want to stay with the organization. You are happy and fulfilled in the job and give discretionary effort to get the job done.

Hand out paper slips and ask your team to write a number between 1 and 10 for how engaged they feel at work. Stress that no one will know anyone else's number.

One or two people will be worried about confidentiality, so make sure you provide the pens so that they are all the same type, and all have the same color ink.

Once your team has written down their number and folded the paper, have someone collect the slips in a container and shake them.

Ask someone else to open the slips and read out the numbers.

Mark the numbers on the line on the whiteboard.

Ask someone to work out the average engagement score.

You want to aim for 7 or 8 out of 10 on average, that’s where the productivity kicks in. Anything lower, you might have some issues to fix, but worry about that after the meeting.

Step Four — Wrap Up the Meeting

You might feel shaky after a meeting like this, especially if the feedback is poor.

Consider what you will say beforehand.

Here are a few suggestions:

• Thank everyone for their participation and their honesty.

• Say that you take engagement seriously and would like everyone to think about what needs to happen for them to be happier in their role.

• Tell the team there will be another meeting soon to discuss their ideas.

Step Five — After the Meeting

You've learned valuable information about how engaged your team is, and now you can work to improve it. Book another meeting as soon as you can and ask your team to bring their ideas for improvement.

Meeting Type 2: Team development

A recurring theme in employment survey results is a lack of training, so a powerful way to raise team engagement is to be the leader who provides training.

Here are some ideas for development-themed meetings:

• A discussion about the development and training team members need to achieve their goals

• A session on different ways of gaining training, such as mentoring, coaching, and self-directed learning

• Team members run a session on their area of expertise

• Team members run a session on industry updates

• Guest speakers from other departments provide training on an area of interest

• Senior leaders run a session about their area of expertise or their career path

• Team members run a session on what they've in any training courses they've had

• Team members talk about their career aspirations or past experiences in other industries

• Team members teach a non-work-related skill

Yes, you talk to your team about development in their performance appraisals, but often, training & development is forgotten, leading to talented people jumping ship and going to another organization to get experience and training.

Meeting Type 3: Q&A Sessions

In times of change, your team will want to know what's going on, and you can use the team meeting as a Q&A session.

Topics the team may want to discuss could be:

• Organizational restructures

• Pay freezes

• Hire freezes

• Recent redundancies

• Department mergers

• Organizational takeovers

• Rumors

• Negative press

Being transparent about possible department restructures and negative news will go a long way to building trust in tough times.

You may not be able to share everything with your team, but being proactive in sharing what you can will help your team.

Remember, your team needs to feel that you value them as people and understand their fear and uncertainty when things go pear-shaped. They will notice how you treat them and remember how you made them feel.

Meeting Type 4: Team building activities

Thankfully, the days of employees throwing themselves off ladders into the waiting arms of their teammates are gone. Well, for now anyway.

But that doesn't mean you can't organize some simple teambuilding activities that everyone will find beneficial.

Do:

Make sure the teambuilding exercise has a point and explain what it is, such as solving a work problem such as identifying communication styles within the team.

Plan the team building exercise in detail, introduce it clearly, and have a review of the outcomes at the end.

Encourage everyone to participate by making it an exercise that everyone will feel comfortable with. At one point, there was a craze for outward bound weekends, which immediately put all the non-sporty people on the back foot-literally. Take into account the physical fitness of the team.

Tell the team in advance why you are holding the teambuilding session and what will happen. Your team needs to know to dress appropriately, what they'll get to eat, and where they are going.

Ask the team to turn off their phones. Anyone who is on call or has to have their phone on because the kid's school might ring, can put their phone on buzz. You don't want your team checking their emails in the middle of the session.

Record the outcomes. You can take photos or videos of the session, including images of flip charts, whiteboards, and outcomes.

Ask for feedback so you can improve your next teambuilding event. Suitable activities will differ depending on who's on the team, and the feedback will tell you who liked what and who didn't. Remember to ask what work-related benefits or insights your team gained.

Don't:

Don't think that one afternoon building skyscrapers with marsh mallows and skewers will make a massive change. It won't, but it will make a small difference you can build on.

Allow your team to do the teambuilding activity based on their seniority. If the supervisors and leaders boss everyone else around and the team are passive, you won't get the most benefit from the session. Mix it up a bit, and let the junior team members showcase their skills.

Have the event on-site or at the office. Team members will be distracted and likely go back to their desks to deal with incoming emails. Plus, office boardrooms aren't private enough or spacious enough for some teambuilding activities.

Make it onerous. Be generous with travel times, overnight accommodation, and meals. If appropriate, provide treats, prizes, or giveaways for the team and make it fun.

Use tired old teambuilding sessions that everyone has seen before. When you're planning the teambuilding activity, ask the team which ones they've done before and what they liked and didn't like. This way, you'll get some input on activities that will be most beneficial for your team.

Meeting Type 5: Social events

All work and no play make Jack and Jackie very dull colleagues.

Yes, must get the work done, but there's nothing wrong with rewarding the team with a break now and again.

Use the team meeting for:

• Celebrating team achievements

• Celebrating birthdays and work anniversaries, team engagements, weddings, and births

• Themed sessions: Xmas, Easter, Diwali, Chinese New Year, Matariki

You can go to the pub after work for drinks, out to lunch, or even do something as simple as a morning tea at the office.

If you want to be more ambitious, you could go to a comedy show or a themed event like a cooking lesson or mini golf.

As with the teambuilding exercises, consider physical capability and what your team will enjoy. Then, ask the team what they would like to do.

If the employer isn't paying, agree on a per-person budget. And whatever you do, don't ask one person to plan all the team outings. If people take turns, you'll get a better range of ideas.

Summary

If you give your team clear goals, some training, and spend enough time with them to gain their trust and show them you care, team engagement will skyrocket. So will team productivity and your reputation as a leader who is going places.

Here's a recap of the types of team meetings you can hold:

• Engagement

• Training & Development

• Q&A

• Teambuilding

• Social

If you mix and match the meetings, plan them well, and get the team's input around what is useful, you'll be on your way to a highly engaged team.

To get a free copy of a Team Meetings Events planner, click here.

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