Meetings are often considered as the bane of employees’ worklife.  “How can I  get any work done when I have to spend so much time in worthless meetings?”

 An old adage defines a meeting as a gathering of a group of people where hours are wasted and minutes are taken.  When employees in many companies are asked about their pet peeves in their workplace, a frequent  response is that there are too many meetings and that the meetings they are forced to attend have little value for them.

Meetings that are properly planned and executed can offer many developmental opportunities for your employees.  Here are some ideas on how to use your staff meetings to develop your employees’ skills.

 1. Assign a different staff employee to put together the agenda for each staff meeting.  This will require the person to gather information from you (the manager) and other staff members on reports to be made and issues to be discussed, to discuss priorities with you, and allot time to each agenda item.  [Development Areas:  Getting a broader perspective of the work of all members; developing business acumen; meeting management skills; learning more about the manager’s  priorities]

2.  At each staff meeting assign a staff member to bring in and lead a learning activity, such as discussing a recent problem situation, circulating an article of interest and the leading a discussion of it, suggesting a change in how the group does its work and leading a discussion of it, or bringing in information on a competitor’s product and service and leading a discussion of
it.  [Development Areas: Leading a discussion; listening skills; presentation skills; learning about the perspectives of other staff members; receiving feedback]

3. Rotate responsibility for facilitating each staff meeting among staff members.  [Development Areas: Listening skills; meeting management skills; facilitation skills; conflict management skills]

4.  Brainstorm the solution to a problem, challenge, or opportunity in a staff meeting.  In some cases, you may want to announce the topic and start right in during the meeting; in other cases, you may want to tell people of the topic ahead of time so they can
think about alternatives before the brainstorming session.  [Development Areas: Brainstorming skills; listening skills; influencing
skills; developing synergy among staff members; critical and creative thinking skills]

5.  Invite a guest speaker to a staff meeting.  This could be a customer or a supplier (internal or external) who can address how the two groups can work together more easily and effectively.  [Development Areas: Listening skills;  critical and creative thinking skills; problem analysis skills]

6.  Assign a staff member to run the staff meeting in your absence (e.g., while you are away on business or on vacation). 
[Development Areas: Meeting management; leadership; management skills; conflict management skills]

7.  In running your staff meetings, take the time to notice who among your staff tend to dominate the discussions and who participate little, if at all.  Develop your own meeting management skills to get the introverts on your staff to participate more and
the extraverts to limit their input.  Not only will this result in more equal participation, but it will also model meeting management and facilitation skills for your staff members. [Development Areas: Meeting management skills; facilitation skills; leadership
skills]

8.  Open yourself to new ideas.  When a staff member suggests a change in how the group handles a procedure or process, and it is something that you “know” won’t work, or it varies from the procedures you have put in place, don’t just reject it out of hand, but ask probing questions to help the employee develop the idea.  Perhaps the idea won’t work, but it may also be that a discussion of the idea may spark others to suggest improvements that will work.  Just because a suggestion differs from how you would do something yourself doesn’t mean that it doesn’t have value.  By handling these situations well, you will be modeling skills that you want your staff members to develop. [Development Areas: Facilitation skills; critical and creative thinking
skills; conflict management skills]

9. Bring an exercise into a staff meeting to help staff members better understand themselves and others.  For example, you might ask someone from the company’s organization development (OD) group to come to a meeting and administer an assessment instrument, such as DiSC, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), or the Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Inventory.  These types of instruments can help staff members (and you) better  understand their own working styles and those of other group members.  There are many such instruments available in the marketplace – you should make certain that you are using a validated instrument and that the facilitator you use to administer the  instrument has been trained in its use.  A skilled facilitator can use the instrument to help coach the group and  individuals within the group on how to be more effective in working with others.  [Development Areas: Self-understanding and self-management; understanding and working with others;
dealing with conflict]

10.  Throw your staff a curveball – be creative. Instead of following your usual agenda for a staff meeting, take the  staff on a field trip to spark their thinking and creativity.  Choose a site for the field trip that is very different from what they usually do or what your company typically does.  Visit a customer or supplier to see how  they do things differently from you.  I once took my staff for an afternoon to the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum to spark ideas for how we could better design training
materials.  Or take your staff to an Apple retail store to see how differently it is designed and how differently  its staff members work.  The  possibilities are endless.  But also make certain that you follow up the field trip with discussions of what everyone saw and how you might use some of those new and different ideas and methods to improve your own operations.   [Development Areas: Creative and critical thinking skills]

11.  Introduce a new analysis tool to help solve a problem.  Many analysis tools exist, such as those used in the realm of quality provement, that can help employees and groups better analyze and solve problems.  Tree diagrams, affinity mapping, force field analysis, and fishbone diagrams are among the many tools that have proved useful in analyzing problems and making decisions.  Teach your staff a new tool and start using it in your staff meetings.  Your staff will then learn how to use the tools themselves, resulting in better problem analysis and decision making.  [Development Areas: Critical and creative thinking; analytical thinking; decision making]

12.  Help your staff see the larger context of their work.  A General Electric Aerospace commercial shows the staff who make jet
engines standing on a runway while a plane takes off using the engines they have designed and manufactured.  Too often, employees are so focused on their particular work tasks that they lose sight of the larger context of their work.  By demonstrating to them how their work contributes to larger organizational goals, employees develop a better understanding of the business of which they are a part and start developing their own business acumen.  [Development Areas: Business acumen; taking pride in one’s  work]

Food For Thought

What if every manager, at every level within an organization, started each meeting with the question: “What have we
learned since our last meeting that will help us better meet our goals?”

The first few times this question is asked, there will likely be little response, except for puzzled looks on the faces of
the participants.  But if you persist in asking this question to start each meeting, people will start getting
the idea that you are serious about this and will start providing answers, and good answers at that.

Not only will this make every employee aware of his or her personal responsibility for learning, but will go far in
establishing a positive learning environment within the organization.


 

For a number of years, I taught part-time in graduate management program for working adults.  One year, in a class on organizational development, I had a woman student -- let's call her Sally.

Sally had worked for several years as a service technician for a company that sold and leased industrial forklifts.  She didn't mind her work, but she really disliked the company for which she was working.  "They never listen to us lowly peons in the service department," she complained.  "All of the attention, and all of the rewards, go to the sales reps.  They get the big bucks, and the service department, which is the group of people who really keep the customers happy with out products, get little attention or rewards.  Our work could be so much more effective and profitable if the bosses would only listen to our ideas and spend a little time, effort, and, yes, money, to improve how we work.  But it's never going to change."

For the first several weeks of the class, every time we discussed ways of improving organizational performance, Sally chimed in with these same remarks.  After several weeks of listening to her complain, I asked her what she was doing to make change happen.  "Nothing much," she replied.  "They'll never listen to me."  I gave her a pep talk -- nothing was going to change unless she made it change.  She had to make her case to top management, describing in detail what she wanted to change, what it was going to cost, and what benefits the company would garner from the changes.

I didn't have Sally in any of my other classes during the next two years.  I was surprised to get a call from her as she was getting ready to do her capstone project, as required for the master's degree.  Would I be on the review committee for her?  Of course I would.

When I got her paper to review, I was amazed.  She had taken to heart the advice that I had given her (and which other professors had probably given her as well) and had become the change agent.  She was no longer a service technician, but had become a consultant to the company's owner/CEO.  All the ideas she had talked about to improve the company's service operations -- well, she had implemented every single one of them and then gone on to find more ways of improving the company's business.  Both sales and service revenues had increased sharply due to her efforts.  And her former colleagues in the service department were much happier in their work.

The final proof of her success was that her CEO came to her final presentation on the project and gave her a rave review. 

So, what are you doing to implement the ideas you have?  How are you applying what you learn to your job?  Do you just sit around and complain about everything that needs changing, or have you, as did Sally, become the change agent to make your ideas real?

A not uncommon occurrence – a cross-functional team is formed to develop a new product, create a new marketing
campaign, or to solve a problem.   The manager of each group that is to be part of the team appoints someone to represent the group on the team and gives the delegate these instructions: “We have been told that we have to be part of this team.  The team
wouldn’t be necessary if everyone just listened to our approach and adopted it.  Your job is to convince everyone else on the team that our approach is the only one that will work.”

What happens at that first team meeting?  Each delegate presents his or her group’s solution,, never bothering to listen to the ideas from other groups because they already know that there is only one “right”approach – theirs.  The team is setting itself
up for failure right from the start. There will be no questions, no discussion, no learning – just arguments as each team member tries to convince the others.

Being part of a cross-functional team is a prime learning opportunity for all team members.  It is an opportunity to learn more
about the larger business process of which each team member is a part, an opportunity to learn from each other, an opportunity to understand how the various groups represented on the team measure their success, an opportunity for team members to learn from each other and to learn together.

I always define a “team” as a learning team because if the members are not open to learning from each other, or
together learning something new, they are not really a team, but only a group of people who happen to work for the same
manager.

The whole quality movement was built on the idea of learning teams.  With quality improvement teams, members
received training on how to work together, on how to use a variety of quality improvement tools, in order to improve product or service quality.  Similarly, the concurrent engineering movement was built around the idea of having engineering and
manufacturing groups work as a team to design products that could more easily be manufactured.

Working as part of team is but one of the many informal learning methods available to employees as part of their everyday
work that I discuss in my new book, Learn Your Way to Success.  Employees at all levels must take responsibility for their own learning and utilize the many informal learning opportunities that are available to them as part of their everyday work.

But it also incumbent on corporate training groups to help people learn how to learn as part of their everyday work, whether
it is learning how to be an effective team member or how to ask the right questions or to learn from their mistakes.

What did you learn at work today?  (www.whatdidyoulearnatworktoday.com)

I have just posted a new article, "Helping Your Employees Learn to Learn."  Find it by clicking on the "more..." button and then on the article title.

My article, "Not All Ladders Lead to Management," has just been published in Talent  Management Magazine.  Click here to read the article.

A perfectionist takes pride in his or her work and in doing it “perfectly.”  But  there is problem with being a perfectionist.  Because the perfectionist has figured  out how to do the work perfectly, he or she resists change – trying something new may result in the work being done more slowly or less perfectly.  But if you are stuck doing your work the same way every time, you are  resisting learning anything new that may yield a better result.

 A perfectionist is not a learner, and it is only by learning and applying your learning to your work that you can improve your  job performance.  Are there risks involved in learning and changing?   Absolutely – as you learn something new, you may make some errors when you start applying your learning to your work, or you may not be as efficient in  completing your work while you progress along  the learning curve.   But being a perfectionist who resists all learning and all change is a suboptimal strategy for the long run.

 In my new book, Learn Your Way to Success, I describe many methods by which you can learn at work in order to improve your performance in your current job and to accelerate your career.  One key to learning is to form a learning partnership with your manager, so that you get the reinforcement and encouragement you need as you learn and some leeway in measuring your job   performance as you start applying your learning to your work.

 Learn more about the book at www.whatdidyoulearnatworktoday.com.
 
What did you learn at work today?

I had the pleasure of meeting with my editor and the marketing and public relations people at McGraw-Hill today.  The highlight of the visit was receiving my first copy of the the new book, Learn Your Way to Success, which is now printed and will soon be distributed to Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other booksellers around the world.  I will also be doing a series of blog entries for McGraw-Hill over the next couple of months (that will be repeated here) as well as for the ASTD blog, and McGraw-Hill will feature the book at their booths at the next ASTD and SHRM conferences.

On December 5th, I will be doing an interview with Susan Stamm (www.theteamapproach.com) as part of her series, "The 12 Days of Leadership."  To learn more about this series and how to sign up to listen to the interview, click here.

More news as it develops.