How often do you meet with your staff? Are the meetings productive? Successful? Over the years we’ve been through many iterations of attempting to have great staff meetings. While I wouldn’t say we’ve “arrived” as of yet; I would say we’re doing a pretty good job right now.
We meet every Wednesday at noon and begin with a brown bag lunch. In our experience here’s what I would say are the top 5 “keys” to having successful staff meetings:
- Have a Start and Stop Time – Begin the meeting on time and end the meeting on time. Create an “on time” culture and insist that everyone be at the table and ready at the start time. Also, respect everyone’s schedule by managing the time well, ending the meeting on time.
- Have a Formal Agenda – Preferably a few hours before the start of the meeting, publish a formal agenda. It’s important that the staff know what’s on the agenda and even have an opportunity to get things on the agenda.
- Develop A “Schedule Of Topics” – We meet every Wednesday. In order to make sure certain things are always covered, we’ve created a schedule of topics. For example, in the 2nd meeting of the month, we review our strategic plan. Each staff member gives an update on where they stand with their key tactics. To keep the meeting on schedule, each person has a strict 5-minute limit!
- Have A Meal Together – Everyone brings their own lunch for the meeting. We believe it’s important that the team has at least 1 meal together each week.
- Have Fun! – We always try to keep it fun. The first 10 or 15 minutes of the meeting, while we’re eating, is just having fun together. On our schedule of topics, the 5th meeting of the month (when there’s a 5th Wednesday) is a “fun day.” These days we usually go out or do something fun together instead of the formal agenda we have for all of the other meetings.
It seems pretty simple, doesn’t it?