If you’re like many staffing leaders, you’re probably planning your end of year leadership team meeting.
You know, the one where everyone sits around a conference room table and you do a presentation on the hits and misses of the year and the budget for next year? Then you have lunch brought in, everyone checks in with their offices, and you spend the afternoon reviewing next year’s strategic priorities?
And by 3:00 everyone is yawning and thinking about happy hour…
It’s not that there is anything inherently wrong with that kind of meeting. It’s just an old model focused solely on data and business objectives and typically lacks the kind of creativity that gets a leadership team excited about looking forward.
This is the year to throw that model out and build a new and improved strategy meeting agenda.
For starters, you may be meeting virtually and not in person. If that’s the case, you’ll need to work even harder to keep the team excited about participating and contributing.
Never has it been more important to energize the troops!
Here are 3 ways to mix things up to make your meeting productive, energizing, and motivating.
1. Consider leaving 2023 financial results where they will soon be – in the rear view mirror.
Do you really need to call attention to the fact that the company lost 35% of its revenue in March? They know what an extraordinarily hard year this has been, on many fronts. Why start your meeting off with that traditional recap of 2023. Unless your business has had an extraordinarily fruitful year you want to celebrate, leave the past in the past and focus on a bright future!
2. Give your team some developmental leadership soft skills “pre-work” to complete before the meeting.
For example, you could have everyone complete an assessment and kick your meeting off with a subject matter expert doing a group debrief. I use the DiSC Work of Leaders in my coaching practice for its simplicity and coaching tips – but there are many others. Another option is to have them listen to a short podcast and open the meeting with a discussion about it. Along the same soft skills lines, https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/savvy-psychologists-quick-dirty-tips-for-better-mental/id803978236?i=1000476885552HERE is a psychologist discussing in less than :15 how to cultivate a “wise mind” blending the rational and emotional parts of the brain.
3. Make your meeting interactive and collaborative.
In truth, your 2024 priorities probably won’t surprise your management team, so the discussion should be about listing them, prioritizing them in order of what will produce the highest ROI, and assigning people to own project-managing each key initiative (suggestion: try to have no more than 3 key initiatives to avoid overwhelming everyone and to increase the likelihood they will be accomplished).
Interactive activities in a virtual environment could include polls and whiteboarding ideas. Divide the group up to take on a specific challenge by putting them in breakout rooms – virtual or live – and ask them to present their collective approach to the larger group. Have everyone rate the approaches and give the highest-rated team a prize.
Lastly, make sure to end the meeting with something fun such as happy hour with a musician or a magician that you hire to entertain everyone (virtual or live).
