5 Ways to Make Your Next Staff Meeting Less Painful
Let’s face it, your team probably doesn’t want to attend your staff meetings. They’d rather be doing something else. Your staff shows up because they have to, not because they want to. Don’t take it personally. You probably don’t like to show up for your boss’ weekly meetings, either. Regular staff meetings have a bad rap. It’s time to change that.Short of cancelling your next staff meeting, here are a few ways to make better use of the time:
- Ensure that your meeting is needed – this week. Sometimes meetings stay on the schedule for no other reason than habit. A day in advance, carefully check your agenda. Is it necessary to meet, or not?
- If someone’s presence is not truly required, give that person the option of sitting out. There is no need to invite everyone simply because you fear excluding someone. When you give a colleague the option of not attending, you don’t come across as excluding them or uninviting them. (“Joe, we aren’t discussing your project this week, so I want to give you the choice of attending tomorrow’s meeting – If you have other stuff to do, it’s ok….”)
- Change where you sit. Have you ever noticed that regular attendees tend to sit in the same seats week after week? Change it up! Instead of leading the meeting from the head of the table, sit somewhere else. Changing the seating arrangement will change the energy – and level of input – in a meeting.
- Get to the point and get out. It’s fine to spend a few minutes on friendly banter., but keep it to a minimum. Use valuable group time to focus on actionable items, and only on those that require the attention or input of the majority of attendees.
- Summarize tasks and deadlines before you adjourn. Far too many meetings become a waste of time because next steps are not clearly reviewed. Use the final moments to review who needs to do what, by when.