Welcome to issue #8 of Pondering Leadership: A Deliberate and Thoughtful, Yet Informal Look at Leading and Managing. Last week, I wrote about buildings. Knowing your building can save you a lot of time and stress and, maybe, carpet and materials. This week, I am writing about meetings. It’s ok to have meetings. It really is.
Having Meetings Is OK
Most information, announcements, updates and discussions can be done via email. Email is a great way to make sure everyone gets the same information at the same time in the same way. It is a quick and easy communication method. Also, your ‘sent’ folder can be very helpful if want to remind yourself when you announced something and to whom you announced it. Discussions via email can be an effective way to work. I love the meme about meetings, “This could have been an email.” But, sometimes, there are topics, concepts, direction, announcements or other information that is best communicated in person or via a Zoom meeting, depending on your work situation. Who should be in which meetings?
Standing meetings with individuals, your management team or departments – For these types of meetings you can evaluate regularly for your participation. Do people scheduling meetings want you in their meetings? Maybe? Do you need to be in every standing management team or department meeting? Probably not. Sometimes, you can pop in at the beginning or the end to hear concerns, answer questions and provide updates. If there is a new initiative, a major change or product rollout, maybe you do need to be in the meetings regularly for a while. At least once a year, review your standing meetings. Have any of the meetings changed in any way? Do they not take as long or take longer than they used to? Maybe the length of the meeting needs to be changed or the timing of the meeting can be moved from a weekly to a monthly schedule. Maybe a meeting can be eliminated completely or moved to email. If many of the same participants are in other meetings, combine the meeting content with another meeting. Standing meetings do not have to stand forever if their purpose has changed or no longer exists.
Your Direct Reports – Is the information such that it affects your direct reports only? Is it knowledge that you feel comfortable personally sharing with them and you’re comfortable with them accurately sharing the information in meetings with their staff? It can be smart to initially share certain information with your direct reports, instead of all staff, so they feel more comfortable asking questions.
All Managers – Sometimes, you will have information that is relevant for managers at all levels. This type of information could include management training opportunities, expectations, or year-end bonus information.
All Staff – Many organizations have annual or quarterly all-staff meetings. These meetings are generally a few hours at the end of a work day at an off site location. I have attended annual all staff meetings down the street from the office later in the work day. After the meeting, there was food and time for everyone to chat informally with co-workers i see regularly, as well as catch up with those I had not seen in awhile. Content for all-staff meetings is often motivational in nature. It is nice when the CEO/Director shows appreciation for all the hard work everyone does during the year. Thanking people goes a long way toward building and maintaining a positive, supportive culture. (More about building and maintaining a positive, supportive culture in a future issue.) An all-staff meeting is a good time to discuss the results of the latest customer survey or announce initiatives that employees will be hearing about in the coming year. Most employees like to be informed about what is going on in their organization. They want to hear how their work impacts the company as a whole. They will appreciate the heads-up about what they might be working on in the weeks and months ahead.
Holding a Meeting
If you have decided that an email is not robust enough for the content you want to communicate, hold a meeting. You don’t have to be super official and use Robert’s Rules of Order, but you want to make sure you’re using everyone’s time wisely.
Every meeting should have an agenda. Generally, participants should be able to add agenda items. All attendees should get the agenda in enough time before the meeting to review and prepare, if necessary. Depending on how your meetings have gone in the past, if you need more control over the discussion, include the amount of time you will spend on each agenda item. The agenda can be as simple as an email saying, “Bill and Dorothy, Here are the two things I want to talk about on August 30 at 10 AM Do you have anything to add?”
For a meeting with more people and more items to discuss, here is a breakdown of what I have used for an agenda that worked for me.
At the top, include the organization name, department or name of the meeting. “Weekly Manager Meeting” or “Monthly Customer Service Department Meeting.”
Include the date and start/finish times. If you do not want to keep track of the time if you are running the meeting, ask someone else to keep an eye on the time as your meeting is working through the agenda.
List attendees. You may want to assign a timekeeper or notekeeper. Also, if everyone is comfortable doing this, rotate the person running the meeting.
Body of the agenda - Structure your meetings the way they work best for you. This is what worked for me for my manager meetings.
Announcements – Anyone can offer announcements. There may be times when there are none.
Old Business – What is the status of issues we discussed last time that we did not resolve or needed more information to continue the discussion. It’s great to be able to close out an issue that was resolved in between meetings.
Ask managers what is going on in their departments that other departments need to know.
New Business – New items of interest for discussion, brainstorming and solving.
Anything that someone wants to bring up that has not been discussed.
Summarize resolutions and assignments to be completed for the next meeting.
Schedule enough time. Knowing your agenda and how hot the agenda items are, make sure you have enough time to dissect a problem, discuss solutions, decide next steps or who will get more information for the next meeting.
Location - Sometimes, it’s nice to get out of the office for a meeting. Is there a park nearby? Or do you have green space with benches outside close? If you have a lot of meetings during the day, you probably do not have time to go to way offsite to a library. One time when I lived really close to work, I had an all staff meeting in my backyard. Everyone brought lawn chairs. Our IT guy brought a screen and projector, so I could show the finalized budget for the next fiscal year. I lived by Dairy Queen, so I treated my staff to Dilly Bars and Blizzards while I gave announcements and updates. Information is often easier to take in sitting outside on a comfortable summer night eating ice cream.
Minutes – Depending on how official you want to get, minutes may not be necessary. If you summarize resolutions and assignments at the end of the meeting and everyone agrees, you may not need an official record of the meeting. Of course, if you are subject to FOIA or OMA, you should take that into consideration. Most internal meetings do not require documentation, but if you have it, you may have to provide it if asked. Check with your FOIA/OMA officer or lawyer for guidance on keeping minutes.
Unofficial Unplanned Meetings
Having said all of that above, for some types of meetings, agendas are not needed. If a staffer wants to get on my calendar for a quick meeting, I always ask for the topic so I can prepare if I need to, but we don’t create an official agenda. Sometimes, staff will pop into my office and want to talk about something for a few minutes. When I let my staff know that I am walking over to the bakery a few blocks away for a smiley face cookie, I take orders for treats. Often, someone will ask to walk with me so we can chat. The best meetings are walking to and from a bakery. No agenda needed.
Your Turn…
Meetings can be quite useful. What strategies have you used to keep your staff engaged? We can talk further in the Discussion.
Entire books have been written on meetings. I do not plan on writing one. I’m willing to help you with meeting topics by doing a quick Q&A for no charge. For a more involved project, we can talk about a project rate. Connect with me on LinkedIn, or reach out via Substack to start our conversation.
Thank you for reading issue #8 of Pondering Leadership. I hope to see you next Thursday afternoon for issue #9. My topic next week is the ultimate meeting: the staff training day.
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