Meetings are dreaded throughout businesses of different industries. They are mostly viewed as an unnecessary hassle that hinders employees from going home on time. Although it sounds like an evil forced-participation that the corporate has pushed on employees, meetings are necessary and vital to all companies.
Through meetings, employees are allowed to contribute their brilliant ideas. They also find out what the company’s wants, needs, goals, and expectations are. Plus, meetings can create a positive organizational culture that can lead to the success of the business. But all these positive effects can only be genuinely felt when meetings are effective and not a bother. As a new team leader, you should know how to make meetings less hassle through cadence.
A meeting cadence is a schedule of both structured and unstructured meetings that are made to improve a team’s relationship, trust, and work performance. A regular cadence of meetings brings awareness to problems that may arise in a group. With regular sessions, team leaders can help guide their members efficiently and improve relationships by providing a safe space for conversation about work. Team leaders should also consider joining workshops that teach effective facilitation to learn how to execute meetings that can improve their members’ morale.
The Types of Meeting Cadence
The Daily Huddle
No matter what business you work at, daily huddle meetings are a must for quickly distributing information to team members. The daily huddles usually range from five to ten minutes each morning to set priorities and give out information.
The key benefit of the daily huddle is the trust it builds between team members. Unlike other meetings, daily huddles aren’t formal and strict. Therefore, members ease up and relax more, which produces a stronger community in the workplace.
Weekly and Monthly Strategic Meeting
In weekly and monthly strategic meetings, team leaders are encouraged to define a list of agendas and schedule a regular meeting schedule. You should focus weekly team meeting agendas on solving problems, discussing solutions, and task assignments.
Monthly team meetings range from one to two hours and focus more on the overall strategic efforts to contribute to the team. The key benefit of monthly and weekly sessions is the long room for discussion that every member can contribute to.
Shift-Change Meeting
Shift-change meetings are essential for companies that have more than one shift. Errors and miscommunications between shifts can cause errors that might hinder the company. Shift-change sessions are used to distribute information between two shifts freely.
Action and Performance Review Meeting
Performance reviews are formal meetings between a manager and an employee that discuss the employee’s work performance, strengths, weaknesses, and future goals.
You can do performance review meetings weekly. One thing to note is that you can change its execution to remove its stigma. It is important to note that the team leader shouldn’t be presenting the questions. The employees should contribute instead to promote engagement and accountability for their actions.
Choosing the Right Cadence for Your Team
To determine the best type of meeting that’ll benefit you the most, you should know what type of business you are in. Although all the listed meeting cadences above could help you, your team might not. For example, if you’re running an 8-5 job with only one shift, shift-change meetings are of no use for you.
Take note that you can change meetings depending on your team. The cadence shouldn’t always be locked in place. Another essential part of structuring your team’s best cadence is planning. Team leaders should prepare and review agendas periodically and add more unstructured meetings like huddles.
Knowing the right schedule for your meeting is essential too. Meetings should start on time, and you shouldn’t waste time on meetings to meet the sixty-minute mark you are aiming for. Your members won’t enjoy participating in the discussion if you’re extending the session for the sake of time.
Final Thoughts
Always remember that as a team leader, listening to your members should be your number one priority. Like a machine, if one gear fails due to the lack of lubrication, the whole engine will fail to function correctly. This goes to your team too! If you don’t give every member the supervision and support they need, they won’t perform well and lose the drive they need for work.
Most importantly, have fun! Being a team leader isn’t all about bossing your members around. Relationship-building gives both you and your members the inspiration you’ll need to work better. As we all know, nothing’s better than working in an environment you are comfortable in.
