how to run effective leadership team meetings

3 ways to make it happen.

by jody grunden

doing the disc assessment with our team, we learned that some people love meetings and some people despise them. the “d” (dominance) personality on the disc scale tends to be direct, very results-oriented and less collaborative in meetings. the “i” (influence) personality enjoys meetings because they provide an opportunity for social engagement and collaboration.

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the “s” (steadiness) personality may not feel comfortable speaking up in meetings unless they are called upon. the “c” (conscientiousness) personality may need to rally more energy within themselves for meetings because they tend to value working independently over collaboration. knowing the personalities of your leadership team members will help you run more effective meetings.

if you’re the type of person who cringes at the thought of “another meeting,” i’m here to tell you, you’ve got to get over it. when you work with and for your clients remotely, you simply have to embrace meetings. not only do meetings become the foundation of every relationship within your company, but they are the stimulus for where the work gets done.

“for now and forever, let’s dispel the myth that all meetings are bad, that meetings are a waste of time, and that there are already too many of them. the fact is that well-run meetings are the moment of truth for accountability.” – gino wickman, “traction”

you may be curious about who we include in the weekly leadership team meetings. we include everyone on the team who is a manager level or above. that includes our managers, directors and cfos. that means at times we may have almost half of our employees in these meetings, and i am okay with that. actually, i love it!

transparency is key to the success of our organization. some people may think that 15 (or more) people in a leadership team meeting is too many, but i completely disagree. we deliberately keep everyone in the meeting engaged, and because of that, it works very well. everyone on the leadership team walks away informed about what’s going on within the company and in line with the direction that we, as a leadership team, want to go. they can then take the information they learned in the meeting and address or discuss it with their individual departments.

meetings are a great way for people to connect with one another, and they can be extremely productive … when led effectively. our leadership team meets weekly and also annually, and we have an annual all-team retreat.

weekly meetings

meeting weekly helps a team

• stay focused on what’s important,
• solve issues early on and
• learn to communicate well with one another.

by meeting weekly, you stay on track for the quarterly goals you want to accomplish, which plays into the more long-term goals and vision of the company.

our meetings are scheduled for either 30, 60 or 90 minutes, depending on our objectives. these meetings are designed for the team to review the goals, customer and employee feedback, team to-do items, and gino wickman’s “issues solving track,” which he calls ids for identify, discuss, solve. the ids process includes three simple steps designed to help teams identify issues by getting to the root of the issue, discuss the resolution for the problem and implement a plan to solve it.

this is the meeting cadence that we use at summit cpa. it starts at the leadership level, but it doesn’t stop there. we use the weekly meeting structure in all of our team meetings, and we participate in structured weekly meetings with all of our clients as well. the key to all of the meetings that we conduct is that they happen face to face.

now, i’m not suggesting you fly your entire leadership team to one location every single week. you may do that for an annual meeting, but for weekly meetings, videoconferencing does an amazing job of establishing that face-to-face connection that phone meetings simply cannot create. it also gives you an empathic human connection with the other person or team even if they’re hundreds of miles away.

whether or not you adopt the meeting structure that we use, i recommend

• finding a meeting structure that works for you,
• meeting regularly and
• using video whenever possible.

posted on december 15, 2019