Sick of team meetings that are boring at best, contentious at worst? Or, do you discuss a lot of subjects as a team without anything ever actually changing? Maybe you frequently experience a lack of engagement or participation? Too many meetings? Not enough? What’s the answer?
At LionSpeak, we think meetings are an essential part of the communication strategy for any successful practice or business, but only if they are properly scheduled and expertly executed. Otherwise, they are an expensive waste of time.
Over the next few weeks, we’ll unpack how to make sure your meetings make sense and even more importantly make a positive difference for your team, your clients, and your bottom line.
First, let’s look at a top-down meeting structure that supports your future vision and addresses current challenges:
- Annual Team Calibration Retreat. This meeting is a one- to two-day off-site retreat which recalibrates your team with your company charter that includes your annually updated vision, mission, values, and strategies.
- Quarterly Strategic Meetings. The main purpose of these quarterly check-ins is to make sure you are on track to realize your annual goals and future vision.
- Monthly Growth Meetings. Don’t think of these as the old-school, free-for-all staff meetings. Most teams need to rethink their monthly team meetings as a time to grow, learn, and master essential skills. School is never out for the pro, and true masters know there is not an end to their journey of mastery. Schedule 1-2 hours every month with at least half these meetings dedicated to bringing in an outside resource and the other six dedicated to a particular internal focus by departments or topics including administrative, marketing, hygiene, frontline, sales, and clinical or production teams.
- Weekly Leadership Check-Ins. One of your most important meetings, this one should be quick and simple. Depending on the size of your leadership team, this meeting should be 15-30 minutes toward the end of the week. This is where we focus on the day-to-day operational issues that need some quick attention. As the Owner, CEO, or Business Administrator, ask only team leaders to attend and be prepared to ask for what you need from them, both collectively and individually. Ask them to come prepared to answer the following questions:
- Did you reach your goals for last week? If so, anything we need to know about your team or clients? If not, why? How can we help?
- What are your goals for the coming week, and do you anticipate meeting those goals? If not, how can we help?
- Are you fully staffed for next week/month?
- Do you have any team, strategic, equipment, process, or training issues for which you need support?
- Daily Focus Meeting. This meeting should be focused only on today’s objectives and schedule and how you can serve your clients, patients, and team better while leveraging any opportunity to grow the business. Fifteen to twenty minutes in length should be adequate for most teams. Keep it simple and to the point. Don’t allow subjects such as training, vacations, etc. that should be on other meeting agendas to filter into these daily huddles. Basic questions would include:
- Did we accomplish yesterday goals? What worked? What did not work?
- What are our goals today and how can we achieve them?
- What does our overall month look like, and, if we’re off track, how can we help? What is our primary focus and priority today?
- (Dental practices)
- Where will we put emergency patients today?
- What opportunities do we see in this schedule?
- Who needs help today?
- Kickoff a great day with a daily leadership focus thought and a team high-five!
This meeting structure has proven to be amazing at keeping the entire team moving forward while staying aligned with the business vision and values both for our own team here at LionSpeak as well as hundreds of businesses and practices across the country.
Next week, we’ll look at how to manage expectations and engagement at these meetings with your team.
“Meetings don’t have to be endless to be eternal.”
~ James E. Faust
