I have three line managers who regularly hold team meetings with their staff. It has become increasingly apparent that these are no more than information cascading sessions.
How can we encourage team members to fully participate in team meetings, in order that they and the management team benefit from shared ideas/opportunities. Staff currenly have the option to add agenda items to the meeting requests but these are very few and far between.
I would greatly appreciate any ideas/suggestions.
Eleanor Barton
11 Responses
agendas as opposed to interaction
Hi Eleanor
I haven’t seen the agenda or attended the meeting but the option to add an item to the agenda isn’t enough to encourage interaction…
~perhaps your managers could try to write the agenda in such a way that would be more participative; for example rather than “New products” try “Discussion of new products; Why do we have them? Who can we sell them to? What do you think will be the difficulties?”… send out the details in advance and just ask the questions at the meeting.
Just an idea
Rus
helping people contribute in team meetings
Eleanor
My first question has to be who is instigating this change you or the manager?
If it is the managers then it is up to them to change their behaviour first. There is little that will change without the purpose of the meetings changing in the eyes of all concerned (see thread on change management).
The extent to which staff are likely to contribute (or not) is often controlled by the reactions of the managers when questions are raised.
It would be interesting to know what your other managers do to encourage dialogue within the culture of your business? Can you encourage managers to ‘sit in’ on each others meetings to see what could be learnt from each other?
I have taken a rather one sided approach to this problem – if I have read the situation wrong I apologise.
If the managers ARE doing their best then one strategy is to survey staff concerned to find out what might be going on in the background.
Team Meetings
I’ve recently had the same issue with Sales Managers running meetings that are about targets, performance and numbers, and the cascading of basic info: that the teams were already aware of. Nothing wrong with this being included, however for me you have to ensure the attedees are ‘turned on’ to the info: being shared otherwise it turns into dead time away from their daily job, thus impacting on their Time & Task mgt:
A great way to turn meetings into events that inform, inspire and motivate is to get the team involved in the agenda – also getting buy-in along the way to their importance.
Ask the manager to brainstorm with the team their ideal team meeting agenda, what would it look like, how would the meting feel, how would it sound if we taped it, who would attend i.e. guest speakers from internally, external clients i.e. trainers/suppliers etc..
what is it that they have to know, need to know and want to know to enable them to be (more) effective in their roles.
I then asked our Managers to go away and look at the feedback on the flip-charts and implement a new series of meetings where the attendees (i.e. their team) take responsibility for the agenda, room booking, inviting of guests, and the running of the meeting (this changes every month, different person in the team chairs, minutes, organises next meeting)
It’s worked extremely well in my company, and the Sales Meetings are now exciting, informative, fun meetings that the guys gain allot from. Still have some way to go in certain teams, but we’re getting there!
Please feel free to contact/call me for surther support.
Good Luck !!
Buffy
Making meetings more participative
Eleanor
A few years back we were in the same boat with our meetings – 3pm on a Friday – it’s the team meeting (again!). A few things that the new boss did to enliven the event:
1. Encourage agenda items from others. The boss actively looked for ideas during the week. When an issue came up, she would say: “OK George, that’s a good point. Could you bring it up at Friday’s meeting”
2. Rotate the chairmanship – the boss ran the meetings initially to lay down the ground rules, then rotated the chairmanship (and the minute taking, and the typing up of the minutes etc etc)
3. Introduce a section where we discuss the way we work together as a team – the goods and the things we could improve. It was amazing the sorts of things that came up.
4. If there are no agenda items, then don’t run the meeting. This boss said that if there are no agenda items by lunchtime Thursday, then we wouldn’t meet.
Hope that heps.
Happy Days!
Bryan
only havbe a meeting when a conversation is needed
I used to work with a team with exactly the same issue, and we used similar solutions to the ones already here. The point about starting with the manager’s behaviour is an important one. I also used to say that the agenda should only contain things that needed everyone to discuss. We also used to put some agenda items as questions, expecting everyone to come with some kind of answer. Against each agenda item was its purpose (for decision/information/new ideas etc). This was a good discipline for the manager and helped to streamline their thinking. It also encouraged the team members.
It’s useful to get into the habit of asking people by name what their view is, on the assumption that they’ll have something useful or interesting to say.
only have a meeting when a conversation is needed
I used to work with a team with exactly the same issue, and we used similar solutions to the ones already here. The point about starting with the manager’s behaviour is an important one. I also used to say that the agenda should only contain things that needed everyone to discuss. We also used to put some agenda items as questions, expecting everyone to come with some kind of answer. Against each agenda item was its purpose (for decision/information/new ideas etc). This was a good discipline for the manager and helped to streamline their thinking. It also encouraged the team members.
It’s useful to get into the habit of asking people by name what their view is, on the assumption that they’ll have something useful or interesting to say.
What went well
Trying to think of an agenda item is never going to work if the meetings are just cascades of known info, becuase most people will decide that they do not need to discuss what they percieve they already have an answer for.
How about taking the tack that for each meeting everyone must contribute the following.
1. What went well since last meeting
2. Why did it go well
3. What was a problem
4. How was that problem overcome (or help I need with the problem)
If everyone has to do t hat, and you limit their slot to 1 minute 30 secs max to get all of that done they will not feel pressure to make big contribution that intimidates them.
You will find some people will trivialise this approach but if everyone is praised for their attempts, they will gradually realise that their comments are being taken on board.
Also this opens the door to any topic being brought to the meeting, and that in a short period of time you should find ideas sparking off of various comments.
I would suggest that the 90 seconds slots be all done in a block, and then have an any question from the group to any of the contributors. If people interject during the 90 secs it can put the talker off. Also after the 90 secs if you allow a break you can break the cofidence of the next person who might be contributing.
I would also suggest that once you have overcome the ‘fear’ of contribution you need to work on the process of making ideas really come out, and for that I recommend reading – ‘Time to Think by Nancy Klien’.
To be honest I think even in a meeting where there are strong contributors, this method allows the less confident to take small steps to joining the party.
Make it worth their while
The most obvious signal – if you’re not doing this already, of course – would be to ask questions and act on what people say.
It’s a bit like flirting. The best conversationalist is the one who listens.
Praise?
I can’t see praise in anyone else’s suggestions. I assume a simple ‘well done everyone for last week…particular mention to X for that work on Y. Could you tell us a bit about it?’ has already been tried.
Im with Pete ( and no not the one from Big Brother!)
Hi,
I would endorse Pete King’s view about the value of a 60-90 second update from all attendees at a meeting. You have to be strict (in a nice way of course) about keeping contributors to the time limit and ensuring that EVERYONE does an update. If the chair then facilitates questions and discussion about the update it can 1) make the contributor feel that their input is values and 2) ensure that everyone has a good understanding of whats going on.
Feel an agenda for the update is very important too.
If the team is too big for all to contribute (each update with questions and discussion is likely to take 5+ minutes), schedule a handful of inputs for each Team Meeting
Change the person in the chair.
The expectation is that the meeting will be used to cascade information down so why should anyone bother trying to do anything different, it is what always happens.
The only way to change this expectation is to change the dynamic of the meeting.
Take the manager who currently chairs the meeting and suggest that their input to the meeting is too valuable to have them wasting their effort administering the meeting as well.
Then ask the workforce to suggest a new chair for the meeting whose job is simply to stick to the agenda and make sure that everybody gets a chance to speak.
This immedeatly stops the one way traffic type of meeting because the person who was abusing the meeting in this way is no longer in charge.
Peter