Last week I talked about the format and important elements of effective senior leadership team meetings. I want to build on that this week by looking specifically at relevant topics and how you can effectively use your team members in meetings.
Agenda items should always be there to advance one of the following:
- Purpose of the organization or team
- Vision of the organization or team
- Key areas of responsibility of the team
- Culture of the organization
If an agenda item doesn’t pass this test, then I would argue that you probably shouldn’t be talking about it at a senior leadership team meeting.
Let’s assume a senior team has the following for their key areas of responsibility:
- Culture of servant leadership
- Vision and strategy
- Financial performance
- Development of leaders
These areas of responsibility will guide this team’s meeting agendas. It is then up to the leader to insure that meeting time is used for discussion not reporting. Reporting can be done one on one, or via reports before the meeting. Meeting time should be used to capitalize on the collective brainpower in the room to build ideas, game plans, and solutions.
Leaders ask great questions to drive relevant discussion and discovery within meetings. Examples of this based on the above agenda items might be:
- What is your read on employee morale and why do you say that? / or Where have you seen evidence of people exhibiting company values?
- What have we done in the last week to advance our vision?
- What is happening when you see the organization falling short on our financial expectations? What are things we could do to overcome that situation?
- Where are we seeing the best evidence of leaders being developed? What should we do to enhance our bench strength of future leaders?
A servant leader’s role is to build on people’s strengths, capitalize on the collective knowledge of the team, promote discovery, raise the bar on performance, and lead. Running effective meetings, and talking about relevant topics that will advance the organization’s purpose, vision, and culture is an important part of their role as leader.
Are your team meeting topics relevant and promoting the appropriate team discussion to advance your organization to high performance?
Mark Deterding
Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Hebrews 12:1