I did a poll on meetings on IG recently and found that almost a third of people wanted to get rid of meetings. Wow, people really want to reduce meetings, I thought. This crowd wants to only have the meetings that are useful for building relationships, gaining understanding, and getting perspective. But I was wrong. When I probed for more people said there was nothing that couldn’t be handled by email. This one is so much better with visuals. Click here to head to YouTube for the full effect.
One person even said that they have successfully removed all meetings from their small business. They don’t hold a single one. I honestly couldn’t control my face. Sadly, I’d put money on that small business, if they continue avoiding meetings like the plague, being out of business in just a couple years. Meetings are essential to transforming business results and creating a culture of winning warmth. Today I’m giving you the 3 meetings your team needs to be successful and how you can make them as looked forward to as a school assembly, no funny mascot fiascoes required.
Photo by Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels.com
Which ones do you keep?
My advice would be to only have meetings that are absolutely necessary to achieve your biggest goals. You know if the meeting is needed when it requires a tone, listening, stories, or the ability to dig deeper than any email or poster ever could. Let’s look at the 3 most critical meetings and how you can use them to their full potential.
Town Halls
Town hall meetings, also called all hands meetings, are where everyone in a specific group and listens, almost classroom style, to speakers. They have very formalized agendas with little wiggle room for dialog though there may be a question and answer section following the speaker(s). Town hall meetings usually include results and trending information as well as progress toward goals for the department or company as a whole. People think of these as a waste of time because of the limited interaction between the group and the speaker. You hear things like, if you’re just talking at me send me an email and be done with it.When done correctly, town hall meetings have the most listening of any option. These one-to-many meetings allow leaders to share a consistent message. They can use their tone, body language, and presence to convey more than simple words ever could.
One leader came to me as she was implementing new software. The business was 4 years in to a 5 year project. As you can imagine, the change had lost its shine and people were frustrated. They seemed to have a never ending bug list of issues to fix. While they had sent email after email, people had started to go numb to the details, or, stopped reading them all together. The leader and I worked on adding this to the town hall. She included total bugs logged and how many had been fixed to date. She shared how new bugs identified had tapered off. Finally, she shared specific stories of fixes that were completed. We watched every department member sit up a little straighter with each story she shared.
Team Huddles
Team huddles have much more verbal back and forth. They’re typically led by a direct supervisor and attended by their direct reports. These meetings include similar information to the town hall but specific to the team. Are team metrics on track? What progress have we made toward our goals? Are we trending in the right direction? Often, the supervisor leads the huddle and encourages lots of interaction from the group. You hear complaints like, I don’t have time to listen to how busy everyone else is. We could be getting work done! In reality, team huddles compress time and share the load ensuring everyone is successful and we’re consistently raising the bar.
A team lead, experienced in leading huddles, introduced them in her first week with a new company. Her boss said it was fine to hold the weekly meeting but fully expected it to fizzle out. People are just too busy for all these meetings. So, she started holding 15 minute meetings with her group where they shared what they were working on and how they were doing. They used a simple traffic light system to break the ice and gave specifics on how they felt.
One team member was red three weeks in a row. He complained the volume was just too high. So, the team lead asked for a breakdown of his process. The team lead found he was duplicating work to make tasks show in multiple systems. By uncovering this issue they created a single process saving the company thousands in overtime costs and the employee 2 hours a night that he could now spend with his kids.
Photo by Christina Morillo on Pexels.com
One-on-Ones
One-on-one (1:1) meetings are the most likely meeting to get skipped. They are consistent meetings between a supervisor and their direct report, just the two of them. They can be done on a weekly to monthly basis and provide the most amount of back and forth in communication. The best 1:1s are led by the employee, not the leader, and ideally cover results, individual trends, and personal goals. (Are you seeing a theme here?)
The common argument here is again, that they are a waste of time, but with a small twist. Complaints about 1:1 often sound like, I am an adult, I know what I’m supposed to do. I don’t need to talk about it all the time. Just let me work. So the argument is more for independence than time specifically. When 1:1 meetings are done well, they provide more individual autonomy and empowerment than you’d ever get keeping your head down in the work.
What makes 1:1 meetings different?
One-on-ones are different from other meetings because we focus on individual goals. Those goals could be improve an area the employee is weak in, train or mentor other team members, learn a specific skill, work toward a promotion, etc. The goals further the overall mission of the team, the department, and company. However, they are tailor made for that employee. Without 1:1 you have no way to check-in on these goals and trends at an individual level.
One employee I supervised directly is a perfect example of this. She engaged in the town hall meetings. Her personal results drove the team scores up and she inspired many team mates to compete to beat her results. In truth, she was bored. In her 1:1 I learned that she really wanted more of a challenge on top of her day-to-day that would help her to advance. So, I took that to my one 1:1 with my boss and we worked out a plan. Based on my peer’s huddles we found an area that needed support. My employee could jump in with an outside perspective and help build a process that would support them long term. It relieved her boredom, streamlined a process, and gave them the lift they didn’t imagine they could get without a new hire.
Why do we love to hate meetings?
We love to say that meetings waste time, share nothing new, and are used only to check the box. In some cases, that might be true. You might have employees sitting in meetings that do waste their time covering the same bullet points the same way and you could accomplish the same thing with an email. These are the very reasons you need meetings, just better ones.
Your team needs to feel like their work is valuable to the company. They want to be in the know on important changes. Finally, they want to know they are your top priority. When you empower your team to bring their challenges and wins to their one-on-ones, you’re showing them you’re all ears on what’s important to them. The town halls give them an appreciation of what’s going holistically and how it all works together. When you combine those with your team huddles, your team has ownership over their piece of that big vision. Connecting people and their values to the company values is a two way street that no email chain can provide.