In my time as a coach, I have come across many companies who struggle to fully engage their managers and align them behind a common vision. This is a characteristic of many businesses. A Forbes article I recently read quotes a Gallup poll that reported that only 30% of workers are fully engaged; this is not surprising when you learn that only 36% of managers are engaged.
It for this reason the Monthly Management Meeting is so critical. This half-day meeting is your key to building the team, learning together, solving problems, working on specific issues, and reinforcing your company’s culture, initiatives and goals.
Here are some ideas on how to structure your Monthly Management Meetings:
Schedule them for the whole year in advance.
You might have them at the same day and time to make it easier on your team to get in the rhythm. For example, every first Thursday from 9-1 is always your Monthly Meeting. Attendance is not optional.
Allocate time to share good news in the beginning. It is a best practice to begin with some kind of ‘check in/check out’ around the room to get everyone engaged and talking in the meeting. This is usually more fun if you’re focusing on something positive.
Provide a company update. This may be the entire agenda of the meeting if your Monthly Meeting is primarily to determine the new plan for the quarter.
If it is the middle of the quarter, your update time might be to share financial performance or an update on how your key initiatives are progressing over the quarter.
You might also include a short time for updates from different departments, like marketing, operations, or sales, so that managers in various departments know what’s happening in the company as a whole and aren’t working in silos.
After the company update, the agenda typically varies. You might choose to either have a specific learning or training session for the team, or you might decide to work on solving a particular problem together. If you aren’t sure what to work on, here are some ideas:
Is there a part of your plan where your team is stuck? Not enough sales leads in the pipeline or not hitting your forecasted launch date on a big project. Maybe you spend an hour having all of the managers just brainstorm 20 ways to solve the problem. You don’t necessarily have to solve the problem in the meeting, but this gets your team thinking creatively and working together and gives you a chance to tap into their collective intelligence.
Are you getting feedback from customers or employees that need to be addressed? Maybe you’ve had a lot of complaints or ideas for improvement about a particular process, product or practice that you could talk about as a group.
Are there specific areas where your managers are struggling? Could you offer some training or leadership development in those areas? You can bring in an outside trainer to teach specific skills like effective communication, delegation, accountability, etc.
Do your managers understand and connect with the core elements of your strategy? You might need to use some of this time to bring your BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal) to life for your managers and help ignite passion for your long-term strategy.
Does your team have difficulty working well together? You might consider going off site to do an activity together to help the team bond.. You could also bring in a facilitator to do a DISC analysis for your team and help you find ways to work better together and communicate more effectively.
Wrap up the meeting. To do this effectively, you want to be sure to document any follow up items that came out of the discussion. You also want to be sure to close by checking in with each person around the room, getting them to share a key takeaway from the meeting.
