Welcome to episode number, 11, and today I'm talking better ways to have team meetings. Meetings can get a bad rap, and I think it's often because they're done, just for the sake of it. So I'd like to take you through some top tips and a framework to have meetings that matter. And I'm going to go through five different components. So, first is why we need to be clear on the purpose of our meetings. Secondly, creating a team charter to provide expectations and accountability, including in meetings, why they should be regular scheduled and attended, how we can create a safe space for everyone in meetings, and finally resisting the temptation to use meetings just to talk about what's happened in the last week or the last month, but actually using them as a framework for ideas and innovation and brainstorming and future challenges. So let's kick off with being clear on the purpose of meetings. And I would like to share a story of many years ago, I was in a management team, and we would have a meeting every week. That went for about an hour and a half to two hours. And each member of the team was cross functional so you know if I was HR somebody else might be fine and someone else might be facilities for example. And we would spend this time going around the room, and we would all talk about what we were working on for that week. Now, what did I get out of those meetings. Well, not a lot. Me and my colleagues would roll out our eyes and groan. On the way to those meeting rooms because that was not a good use of our time. What happens is that our manager got an easy way every week to understand what everyone was doing, but for the rest of us in that room. We actually just didn't need that level of detail we didn't need to know those things. And we didn't need to have to spend the time to prepare for that meeting every week just to talk about what we were doing, either. And what I found was that over time. We really just didn't ever talk about what we should have been looking at, well, what's coming up, what are our future challenges. What do we need to start innovating around, we just didn't have a framework for that at all. And so that's the type of meeting that to me is when people just say system meeting for meeting second plate rest of time. Now I contrast this to other meetings I've attended as a management team, where we had a set agenda. And we wouldn't meet every week it might have only been every two weeks or every three weeks. But it'll be a set agenda, There'll be scheduled meetings, and we would have a framework of what we were talking about in that meeting, so that agenda would be let's talk about our goals. So what are our KPIs. And how are we going to that, how are we tracking what's going well, what challenges are we facing and how can I get assistance from other team members. When I have these KPIs that aren't tracking as they should be. So that was, as individuals, what we were talking about and then as a group we would have a look at. Okay, what else is happening in the industry. What are we doing to listen to the market right now. And let's have a discussion around that and other things that we continue to brainstorm what we could do in response to that, as a team. I want to contrast those two examples of being clear on the purpose of the meeting those first types of meetings, you know, we weren't clear on the purpose but what it seemed to me to be is that the purpose was for my manager to know what their team members were doing every week, versus the second meeting. It was really clear on the purpose. The purpose was that we would all be looking at our goals, checking our KPIs, how we were actually tracking to those as a group. And what are the things that we might be missing that are happening in the external market. One of the things that we need to be looking at as a business and as a team, for how to improve. So sometimes people say to me, they do not want agendas for meetings. I understand that I'm not saying that you need to have, you know, a three page document, you know, with a very structured meeting agenda but just pick three things. So, I want everyone at this meeting to talk about what's going well, what challenges you have, what you're seeing as an emerging issue opportunity. Yeah, that's an agenda right there. And then everyone knows when they come to the meeting. So the three things that the guy were talking about. So while I'm on that topic. When you get to the second part which. As an example, a team charter might say, as a team, we're going to be productive and positive keep each other informed. Focus on what's best for the team. Be respectful fair and honest in our communications and encourage opinions and discussions from all team members. So that's my team charter, then I can use that in my team meetings to set the scene and the context for that meeting. It helps to set the scene on how we work together. So we are working together with openness and respect for example, we're holding each other accountable. So it helps set those behavioral expection expectations of the team. And that's a really important part. If you want to have really effective meetings because, you know, we've now got our purpose is really clear but we also need to know what's expected of us as a team behaviourally within that setting. I'm not going to go into how to put together a team charter. In this episode, but we do have a article on our website which I will link in to our website, and provide hr.com Today you follow the links to the podcast section, and you'll see the link there. If you are interested in knowing a little bit more about how to put together a team charter. The third component to having a framework for meetings that matter, is have them regularly. Make sure they sheduled and attend them. Now, what's the right regularity, that's up to you and your team to decide. And I would say that you determine that together, because now that we know is the purpose of the meeting. We know what's expected of us in terms of how we work together as a team. Now we can actually look at, Well how regularly should we have these meetings, what's going to make sense. So we don't just need to pick weekly or monthly because what we've always done, have to think about what does that look like. And maybe if we're going to have more than one type of meeting so we're going to have a regular meeting every three weeks to look at our goals but actually we need to get together once a year or once every six months to talk about our overarching strategy, then do that as part of that discussion around deciding the regularity of your meetings. Once you've got that decision, then you need to schedule those meetings, if you don't schedule them, they're not gonna happen. Make sure that you've got them all on the calendars, everyone's aware, and that they're attended. So what do I mean by that. I often see this happen, that managers will set up meetings with their team, and they are always moving them. So whether it's a team meeting, or a one on one. It is consistently moved canceled postponed. And the message that sends to the team members is actually, this meeting is not important, is one on one, is not important, this team meeting is not important because I've got all these other things that I need to do that I think are more important than actually meeting with you. It's really, really important that these meetings are given the same level of importance, as you would for a client meeting. So think about the impact of moving postponing and canceling those meetings before you do it. It really should be the exception. So making sure we've got that regularity agreed the sheduled, and then we are attending them. And if you need to have longer meetings. Also think about do you have pre reading. And then make sure that everyone commits to doing that pre reading before the meeting because it is very frustrating, and I'm sure you've been in that situation where you send pre reading to everyone for meeting, and then you find out that no one's actually read it and you have spent the first 20 minutes going back over the pre reading. So that's something to really discuss as part of agreeing on that regular sheduled and attending the meetings as well fourth point is around having a safe space. So in a meeting, you want to have a space where everybody feels that they can contribute. And you may have heard of a concept called psychological safety, and this was essentially coined by Amy Edmondson and the way that we define psychological safety is that people in environments that feel psychologically safe, they feel safe to say no to disagree. To put forward ideas without being embarrassed or punished. If you think about, if you've ever been in a meeting. And it might be with people that you don't know very well, and someone who seems to be the most dominant person in the meeting so perhaps, the owner of the business or the leader of that team says something that you don't agree with. There aren't many people that will feel comfortable in speaking up and having a counter point of view. And that's what we mean by psychological safety is that you actually feel like no, I can speak up and disagree on that in a respectful way, without being embarrassed or punished my ID will be listened to, and psychological safety has been seen across multiple studies, as the most important aspects to have a high performing team. There's lots of great resources on our website called rework. So, our, e w rk.google.com. And if you have a look there are high performing teams, and it'll show you a lot of information around psychological safety why that's important in the workplace. There are things you can do to think about having a safe space in meetings, is using different types of tools and assessments, things like hybrid thinking or disc or Myers Briggs, are often used for sales teams but sometimes use for other types of teams. These are really important tools for people to understand more about themselves. So whole brain thinking is around thinking preferences disk is around behavior bias Bruce's around personality. You know they all give us an insight into this is how I think behave feel at, And actually the way that I do that is different to the way that other people do that. So they're inexpensive, and what do you do what is a team, it's really important because you can all of a sudden understand and have a common language about this is why that person always wants so much details so many facts so much data, that's why that person over there wants to have a chat for 20 minutes before every meeting. That's why that person over there wants to be able to have a metaphor or analogy to understand concepts so it just gives everybody a really good idea of what their own thinking behavior or personality type is what everyone else is, what are the pros and cons because we have pros and cons for all of our preferences, and how do we work best together as a team. And that's a great way to create that safe space and to also understand as a team. Are there bits and pieces that were actually missing. So I've done Hubbard thinking assessments for many many years, and you will find that certain jobs lead to certain preferences so if I have an accounting team, they're going to be much more left brain thinking so much more about facts process policies. If I was with a marketing team. They're much more right mode of thinking. So creativity, conceptualizing very much about interpersonal skills. So, which are all great things, but if you have an entire team, that is thinking that particular way, then you might be missing those other things so that's part of why using these tools can also be really really helpful for teams because you can actually see as a team, where are the areas that we really like to think about we don't prefer that type of thinking we don't really behave that way we don't really have a personality type over there. So we need to be aware of that as a team. And finally, having a framework for your meetings which is a little bit different to the agenda, or to the purpose because this is really about. Resisting the temptation to talk about your week, or your month. And I have found that even when teams have agendas and they have a purpose. They still will default to this because it's easy. Right, it's much easier to talk about what we'd be doing this week and what we're doing this month to talk about goals, KPIs metrics, dashboards, because sometimes those conversations are not very positive. Our profit is that we thought it was, we're not getting as many leads as we wanted to our sales are down, we've lost a big client. Our staff turnovers got up, but they are such important conversations to have because if we're not having those as a team. We are missing, what those emerging issues and opportunities are, which is why they're having that safe space, also really helps because people know that can bring that bad news story to the meeting. And it's okay. So, we want to have that framework that yes we have an agenda we have a purpose, we've got these regular meetings scheduled. We want to create a psychologically safe space, but also we want to make sure that we're all coming to these meetings with our ideas with innovative thoughts, we're brainstorming and thinking about future challenges we're talking about our problems we're discussing our mistakes. And one of the ways to do that is to encourage everyone bring a question to every meeting. If you have a question about how something's working in the business, what you've seen in the external market. Let's bring it let's chat about it at that meeting. The other thing that I would encourage you to do is at every meeting is to go around the room and ask. Who have you recognized this week for however long it's been since you've been in the business and why. Because that's the way that you are going to get recognition happening in your organization. Doesn't matter which platforms you have, How many vouchers you give out the way to do it is to hold each other accountable and to make sure you've got that on the agenda is to always be asking Who do you recognize and why because now at our meetings, we are making sure that we are having them. We know why we're having them. We know how to behave. Together, we are able to discuss things openly disagree. We can put forward ideas we can tell bad news. And we're also making sure that we're recognizing the great things that we're doing in the organization. And hopefully you can get a sense of the feeling of that as a meeting, versus going to a meeting every month because you've been told to just to talk about what you did that month. Thanks to further information on this topic will be available over on our website, and fight hr.com.au Just follow the links to the podcast section. If you have received value from this episode, I would love it if you could leave a rating or review over on Apple podcasts, and coming up in our next episode, is when to review your team structure. So often we wait until someone leaves or they complain they have too much work. But is there a better way to be more intentional episodes are released every Monday, so click on that subscribe button and you'll get notified of when it's available. Thanks so much for joining me, I'd love your feedback, just head to FYI hr.com au or connect with me on LinkedIn, and we can start a conversation.