Jacob Ahmadzai – Page 23 – STL

We all attend meetings, and quite often they are important and necessary. However, how many times have you attended a meeting which left you feeling frustrated, robbed of your time, but more importantly, that no real decisions were made? Attending, and more importantly, using tools and ideas on our Introduction to Management course will give you a range of practical, tangible tools. In addition, you will receive strategies to help you succeed as a manager. These include how to lead effective meetings that help with productivity and efficiency. Here are some interesting facts and some practical ideas to show you how to lead effective meetings:

The Facts

According to research, the average employee spends a third of their time attending roughly 62 meetings a month. 33.4% of employees consider too many meetings the biggest waste of time and this results in a 60% productivity loss. 63% of meetings are conducted without a pre-planned agenda. 91% of people admit to daydreaming in meetings. 73% do other work and 47% complain that meetings are the number one timewaster in the office. As to the costs – read more on our website!

Have a good agenda

Any productive meeting will benefit from an agenda. Regarding this, a great way to create an effective agenda is to include not only topic titles and who will lead on it, but what outcomes or objectives are required. More importantly, give it a timeslot and stick to it! Also, why not drop the tired and old-fashioned talking shop item of “Any other business”. If a matter is so important that it really should have been proposed for the agenda in the first place, then asking beforehand is important.

Define roles and expectations

Having a good chairperson is extremely helpful. You will need someone who will keep matters and people on track and to time and someone who will ensure contribution of all. To create more engagement, perhaps rotate the role of chairperson with those attending regular meetings. Have ground rules, let people know what you expect of them, but let your team create the rules. Have a notetaker if required – but if detailed minutes are not necessary, just use an action log – far easier to complete, read and digest.

More tips

Allow busy people to attend just for their allocated time slot and then let them leave
Circulate information that colleagues need to read before the meeting
Set a clear objective and focus on it
Redirect conversations back to the objective
Listen and ask open questions to probe
Summarise for the group to ensure understanding
Encourage people to share ideas and opinions
Assign roles and responsibilities
Follow up on roles, responsibilities, and actions

Concluding thoughts

Always question if you really need to actually have a meeting. If you don’t need it, don’t do it! It only leads to vast amounts of wasted money, resources, and productivity. An effectively led, efficient and focused meeting will result in people actually looking forward to attending your meetings. They will see its worth; plus, you’ll be thanked for it. We hope this blog answers some of your questions on how to lead effective meetings!

When team members lose confidence in their ability to complete their tasks successfully or to make change in their workplace; performance, motivation, and morale suffer.

Team members don’t lose confidence overnight. Similarly, team confidence is not built in a day. It is a gradual process, where each positive experience builds to develop into real confidence.

A confident team will need to rely less on their leader to make decisions in their role, knowing that they’re on the right track. This means more time for both you and your team to focus on what matters and engage on the bigger issues that need solving.

Team confidence creates an environment where people aren’t afraid to speak up. The voice in the head changes from “Are you sure that’s right?” to “I’m sure something’s not right here.”

What creates a confident team?

Firstly, they believe that they can perform their work well and that when they put their mind to a task, they’ll be able to succeed. This is called self-efficacy.

Secondly, confident team members have high self-esteem. This means that they believe in themselves and that they are a valuable member of the team.

What can cause a lack of confidence?

Unrealistic expectations
Lack of constructive feedback
Micromanagers
Fear of failure and the consequences
Not using skills and the feeling of going backwards
Negative attitudes

What to do to boost both self-efficacy and self-esteem

Delegate step by step

When someone lacks confidence and competence you need to set realistic expectations. Your job is to help them set reachable goals and to break difficult tasks into smaller steps. Ensure you gradually give more responsibility and give coaching and support until they no longer need you. In that way, people slowly but surely gain confidence as they start to master each step of the assignment.

Once they have the confidence to go it alone, get out of their way and let them get on with it. Checking in too often and nit-picking will only destroy the confidence you have both worked hard to build.

Show your team your support

One of the best ways to boost confidence in your team is to actively support, motivate and build them up emotionally. Connecting with individuals one-to-one, listening to concerns, and providing constructive feedback which focuses on the next steps, helps them realise how much they have to contribute and are valued. When you get to know what really matters to members of your team you will know best how to support them.

Create a safe environment to experiment

Another great way to build confidence is to let people know that it is OK to make mistakes – as long as they learn from them. When you remove the fear of failure you make people feel safe. Knowing that they won’t be penalised for mistakes takes away the worry and negative energy that gets in their way. As a result team members open up and are more willing to contribute and experiment.

Develop people

To improve self-efficacy you need to not only utilise the skills of team members, but to help them improve and develop new skills. One way of doing this is to set up knowledge sharing sessions to benefit the entire team or to give the team access to training courses and conferences.

Having senior team members mentor juniors also helps develop self-efficacy.

Firstly, your junior people will gain confidence and learn new skills from the support provided by the senior mentor. But this isn’t where it stops. Your senior people will actually build confidence because your juniors are relying on them to succeed. The mentors in your team will also build self-esteem because they can see that they’re valuable, not just from doing their work, but by building capability in the team at the same time.

Developing skills is one part, but the other is to develop team members in line with their career aspirations. A leader that invests in people to achieve career goals sends a strong message that people are worthy and valuable.

Bin negativity in your team

Negative attitudes destroy confidence more than anything else as people start to question themselves and their abilities. As the team leader you need to set the tone to create a healthy working atmosphere. Maintaining open communication where people feel confident to raise complaints and ask questions is essential, as they feel they are heard and there is a reduction in negative gossip.

Try not to give negativity a stage by paying more attention to positive comments and attitude. In addition, check yourself for negative comments and focus on giving positive feedback, praise, and appreciation. This is what makes people happy, and happy people are positive people.

Conclusion

If you want your team speaking up and feeling confident to work autonomously, then you can gain a lot by building team confidence. Start taking some of these steps today and see the difference. The rewards are big – from improved employee engagement and motivation to increased performance and productivity.