WORKWEEK

The perfect team meeting has the following:

• Values aligned objective(s)
• Expectations of the meeting are clearly stated and understood
• Focused on rep engagement 

Values aligned objective(s)

tl;dr: know the ‘why’ behind the meeting. 

Have you ever joined a team meeting your boss ran and thought to yourself, “we’re just going through the motions”?

I have. 

I’ve also been a culprit in running and facilitating these kinds of meetings. 

You know the ones – where it’s clear folks don’t really care what’s happening, aren’t fully present and most likely working on something else. Ugh.

Luckily for us, there’s a better way to do team meetings.

The how?

Make sure every team meeting you put on the calendar has a clear objective and that those objectives are aligned to what drives the most value for the people on your team.

🏀Assist: Consider the values of collaboration, recognition, connection, problem solving and learning and development when identifying team meeting objectives. This can help you mitigate the risk of team meetings devolving into status updates. 

Clear expectations

tl;dr: clear is kind and kind is clear.

It’s happened many times where a rep misses a team meeting, citing their need to get through activities as more important.

If your team meetings are simply status updates, it’d make sense why someone would be okay with missing the meeting.

But, if you’re following along with this newsletter, something tells me your team meetings are (or will be) worthwhile ones to attend. 

But – do your reps know that?

If in doubt – or at least to be safe – make sure your expectations of how your people approach team meetings are crystal clear. Here are some questions to answer and communicate out with your team so everyone is on the same page:

• Are meetings optional or mandatory?
• When is it acceptable for reps to miss team meetings? And how should they communicate that with you?
• What homework or pre-meeting preparation work, if any, will reps need to complete?
• Are these meetings rep led? Or manager led?
• Remote / hybrid: Do cameras need to be ‘on’? Or can team members stay off camera? 

🏀Assist: Consider creating a 1-page document that lists out objectives and expectations for each team meeting. This 1-pager can be introduced when a rep is onboarding and then reinforced over time.

Engagement 

tl;dr: Get everyone involved as much as possible.

The two big things to consider when it comes to rep engagement during team meetings are attention spans and interactivity. 

Attention span: your people likely only have a good 10-18 minutes where you’re going to have their full attention before they start thinking about something else. 

Tips to keep in mind:

• Keep team meetings to 30 minutes or less
• Front load most substantial content for the first half of the meeting
• Keep updates and reminders on the back half of the meeting

Interactivity: if you’re the only one speaking in your meeting or you’re clogging up the airways, you’re missing out on driving connection, collaboration, ideation and engagement amongst your reps.

Tips to keep in mind:

• Get people talking early on the meeting using icebreaker questions – if you’re feeling uninspired, use this random icebreaker generator 💕
• Find ways to have your reps talk amongst each other in team meetings – i.e., break your team into groups, assign them a commonly encountered problem to solve, and then have them come back and show how they solved the problem
• Give people time to respond – if there are questions you’re going to ask your team during the team meeting, send the questions out beforehand so it’s easier for them to respond

🏀Assist: I’ve typically found that reps are more likely to pay attention to a peer presenting or leading a meeting than their manager. Knowing this, look for opportunities to delegate meeting facilitation to your reps. For example, if you have a Tuesday Topic meeting focused on learning and development and team connection, consider round robining who runs this meeting from week to week. 

Before we say goodbye

Team meetings are one of the most important meetings that sales managers can run. Done well, you’ll find yourself with a highly connected, collaborative and highly engaged (*cough* more productive *cough*) team. 

Today’s newsletter just scratched the surface though. Next week, I’ll share examples of team meetings you can run with your team and how to facilitate them 😎. Stay tuned for that!