How to Make Your Next Team Meeting More Effective

Team MeetingIs it important for teams to hold regular meetings? Well, definitely yes! Meetings matter not just to make sure the job gets done. They also serve as a great means of communication among team members, who need to have a clear understanding of the activities and needs of the team. Meetings also allow for creative brainstorming and group innovation. It is also through team meetings that work skills are developed, interpersonal relationships are deepened, and team morale is boosted.

When team meetings are considered useless or nonproductive by its members, there will certainly be a negative impact on how workers perform in their respective jobs. Thus, it is of utmost importance that team meetings be planned well and conducted systematically and with purpose.

Making Team Meetings More Effective

Aside from the obvious points about being prepared, on time, and making sure everyone is involved, there are other things that can help make your next team meetings productive and effective. Here’s what you should do:

Have a Purpose

Why is the team having a meeting anyway? Is it because it’s a requirement? Or you have a specific reason for holding the meeting? Before you even plan a meeting, you’ve got to figure out what the purpose of the meeting is. You have to make it something that your members will look forward to, and not something they think is just a waste of their time.

Less Is Often More

Meeting your team several times a week can leave you holding meaningless team meetings. It is always better to have fewer but more meaningful meetings with your members. If certain issues arise, check if they can be addressed through one on one conversations or email messages perhaps. Meeting less frequently will increase the chances of your team meetings becoming more purposeful and useful.

The Meeting Agenda

The success of any team meeting pretty much depends on its agenda. It is important that your agenda be specific so that participants will know what to expect from the meeting. A vague agenda can cause members to be uninterested in the meeting. Be sure also that you distribute the agenda ahead of time to allow members to make the necessary preparations for it.

Acting As a Facilitator

There is a difference between facilitating a meeting and chairing a meeting. You’ve got to figure out what your role will be. Knowing how you should run the meeting will give you a clear idea of how you should start the meeting, how the meeting should run and how it’s supposed to end.

Ask for Feedback

There will always be a way your team meetings can improve. But you will never know how to improve it unless you ask your team members for feedback. It would be of great help to you if you could know what they think and how they feel about your team meetings.

Work with a Mentor

If you’re not used to holding meetings with a group of people, it is recommended that you work with a mentor. Perhaps your company offers executive coaching programs you could join. This will be a great opportunity for you to learn from the more experienced individuals in the organization.

Leadership Tips on how to be a better Manager

Leadership_MIf there’s one thing a hardworking manager still needs to do in order to get to the next level in his or her career, it will be to know how to turn management skills into leadership skills. Managers are the ones expected to make important decisions that will boost employee productivity, and thus, having great leadership skills is an absolute must.

What Sets a Leader Apart from the Rest?

In today’s business world, companies are opting to retain and offer promotions only to their managers who have outstanding management skills and demonstrate qualities of a good leader. The good thing is that while some people are born great leaders, leadership skills can be learned and developed, but only if you know where to put your efforts into.

The key to becoming an effective leader is to understand that leadership is all about bringing people together for the fulfillment of one goal. You, as a manager, not only have authority and power, but a great responsibility to lead your subordinates so they may contribute to the growth of your organization.

How Managers Can Become Great Leaders

Learn from customers and staff every single day.

Checking in on a regular basis leads to better communication. You don’t have to hold general meetings to do this. Short staff meetings scheduled regularly and implementing an open-door management policy can help you establish clear lines of communication with your staff. You would also learn a lot about how to improve your products or services by soliciting feedback from your clients or customers.

Listen before speaking.

It takes a lot of practice and determination to become a good listener. And when you become one, you will see how positive its effects are to your people. Employees appreciate managers who know how to listen to them. Customers can also see your sincerity in offering great service.

Learn from what other leaders did in the past.

Take time to know what your predecessors did in the past. You can apply what worked for them, and avoid those that didn’t. The past is always a good source of knowledge, especially for those managers who don’t have much experience yet.

Get staff involved in the decision-making.

It is always a good idea to get your people involved in the decision-making process, especially if the decision to be made relates to them. All you need to do is encourage them to be creative and to share their ideas. You may even give rewards to acknowledge their success.

Focus on the positive…always.

As a leader, your people look up to you and even get inspiration from you. Thus, you should always focus on the positive, so that they may do the same.

Climbing up the corporate ladder is every manager’s dream, but this can turn into reality if they learn what it takes not just to be a manager, but a true leader. Taking part on executive coaching programs is an important step if you’re looking to acquire and develop the skills that will make you an effective leader.

How to Engage Your Team to Be More Productive

Business teamFull time workers spend many hours of each day and a huge part of their lives in the workplace, so it matters to them how they feel about the work they do. For managers, it is equally important to keep their employees engaged in whatever the company does. If workers are disengaged, there is a huge possibility that they will look for other opportunities. What’s worse, their attitude can have a negative effect on the productivity of the entire team.
Good leaders acknowledge the fact that employee engagement is a huge asset to the organization, and that implementing a solid engagement strategy is a priority. Here’s what you should do to keep your employees engaged and productive:

#1 Take Time to Know Your Employees

Get to know your people better by asking and learning about what they love doing. This will help you build better relationships with your employees, which has a direct effect on their motivation and engagement. Also, demonstrate even in the smallest and simplest ways that their happiness and wellbeing matter to you.

#2 Offer Your Employees Basic and Essential Training

Effective managers pay attention to their employees’ career advancement by providing them with the training they need. By making sure they have the skills to complete their tasks properly, you are giving them motivation to achieve their goals, and this can lead to a higher level of engagement. Managers should realize that employees feel more engaged when they have a clear understanding of their responsibilities and roles in the organization.

#3 Recognize and Appreciate Your Employees

Getting some sort of recognition from a manager is an important motivator for workers, which also promotes productivity and positive behavior.
To be an effective manager, you have to make employee recognition easy and visible to your employees. It does not have to include money or expensive things; in fact, even a ‘nice job’ or ‘thank you’ can go a long way in making your employees feel good about themselves.

#4 Emphasize the Importance of Teamwork

Teamwork is the result of trust and openness between employees and managers. When employees are made to feel that they are an important part of a team in the company, they become more enthusiastic about their jobs.
You can encourage teamwork by acknowledging the efforts of those employees who offer their help to others, and creating channels in which workers can recognize one another’s efforts. When trust is formed between employees, they become more engaged and obviously happy with the relationships they have with their coworkers.

#5 Do Not Ignore Employee Feedback

Employee surveys are conducted to determine if there are changes in the organization that employees wish to have. Thus, any executive coaching professional would always emphasize the importance of acting on employees’ feedback. If they don’t see any changes in the way business is run in the company, they will feel like their voices are unheard and ignored. Indeed, lack of action on the side of the management can significantly reduce employee engagement and productivity.

What it Takes to be Persuasive

Even if your job is not to sell, there will come a time when you will have to persuade someone. Persuasion happens not only between salespeople and their potential customers. As a manager, for instance, you may need to persuade your subordinates to perform at a higher level. And if you think you have a brilliant project in mind, you should learn how to persuade your boss to take on it. Needless to say, the ability to persuade somebody is a desirable one, and something that you can actually learn and develop. What you will learn in this article are the things you should do to become persuasive. [Read more…]

The Importance of Emotional Intelligence among Leaders

When talking about a ‘perfect leader’, we easily think of someone who seems to be always in control. This person never allows his temper to overcome him no matter how difficult the situation is. You may also imagine a perfect leader in a person who is trusted by his staff because she is someone who knows how to listen to her subordinates and has the ability to make informed decisions. If you try to analyze such traits of a good leader, you will realize that it takes a high level of emotional intelligence to become a perfect leader.

This article will help you understand how important emotional intelligence is for leaders. As a leader, you will also learn here how you can improve your emotional intelligence to eventually become a perfect leader. [Read more…]

Tips on How to Prepare For a Management Interview

The most important ingredient to a successful management interview is the way you prepare for it. As a department manager, you will have to work not only with your subordinates, but also with the upper management, the managers in other departments, and even with clients and customers. [Read more…]

The Path to Becoming a Good Female Leader

One of the biggest fears that career women normally have is their inability to get noticed by their boss, especially when it’s time for promotion. They are worried that they will be stuck in their current position and will not have the chance to hold a leadership position. Unfortunately, many companies also lack the resources or funding for the professional development or training of their staff. For women in the workplace, a bigger challenge for them is how they could grow, improve, and develop as professionals. [Read more…]

Tips for creating a Leadership Resume

Employers and hiring managers are not known to have the time and patience to go through stacks of CVs or resumes in detail. In fact, around 20 seconds is all they need to glance over an applicant’s resume. They also know what to look for, and when they don’t find what they want in your resume, you won’t get any chance of getting called. With that said, you would understand the importance of putting the right details in your resume for it to be noticed. [Read more…]

How to Bring Out the Best in your Employees

Several reliable surveys have revealed very surprising facts regarding the way employees today feel about their jobs. Apparently, more than half of the interviewed workers stated that they plan to leave their jobs once they see an improvement in the economy. It was found out also that most employees in the workplace are not happy with their jobs. Simply put, it’s too obvious that most of the employees of today are just unmotivated in the workplace, and unfortunately for employers, this costs them billions of dollars a year. [Read more…]

What Could Cause Leadership to Fail?

There are certain traits a person must have to be considered a good leader. By having such attributes, a leader is then expected to be capable of guiding his or her subordinates towards success. But what if the leader starts to take these traits to the extreme? Can this still be considered healthy for the organization?

One thing that every leader should understand is that even the things that make them a good leader could also end up being the cause of their failure. Any positive aspect of leadership that goes unchecked can become a reason for leadership to be ineffective and negative. This is because there is a very thin line separating good leadership and bad leadership. [Read more…]