Televising your Team Meetings - what would the show be called?

The ideal is that Team Meetings are platforms for getting work done. A way for a group of people to deliver on their Common Endeavour, a demonstration of what they can achieve together as opposed to separately. Performing is key.

Everyone is engaged, excited to be there, stretched, challenged and challenging.

Yeah right!

I believe in everything I have written above and I work to help my team coaching clients to get there but practical experience shows that most team meetings are more likely to fall into the following categories;

Antiques Roadshow
Each meeting and every agenda is about the past - last week, last quarter, last year. What we did, why we did it, what worked, what didn't.

There is of course value in review and reflection but teams don't thrive and get energised on the past - teams perform on the now and for the future.  Death by looking in the rear view mirror


Winning Streak
I better give some context. This is an Irish tv show (but I am sure every country has one like it) where members of the public win, via a scratch card, a place on a TV show with the chance to win ten to fifty thousand euro via a spinning wheel and other random non skill related games.

But this program is so bad that despite the chance of winning big money most people I know would say that if they won the opportunity to be on the show that they would ask someone else to represent them as the personal shame and humiliation of appearing on it  would be too much. Even the presenters (large L for light, small e for entertainers) don't want to be there.

I see lots of Winning Streak meetings - no one wants to be there (watch the body language and the volume of email done during the meeting) or they keep sending someone else in their place. The kinder team members say things like "its only an hour a week", the less kind add up those 52 hours a year and day dream (while in the meeting) about how they could have been better spent.

The format is dull and unimaginative, no one knows the purpose of the meeting and no real work is done so there is no value.

The Apprentice
It is all about me showing everyone how clever I am and maybe, as a bonus, showing how clever you are not. People grab every opportunity to hold the microphone and convince themselves and others how great they are.

While one person is talking, everyone else is preparing their own speech or looking for attack points in what is being said.

Being visible to the boss is the key objective of a few while the silent majority are ....silent...either because they don't want to play the game or the risk of being stabbed in the back is too high. And the boss - they are either blind or get a kick from the fake hero worship.

Concepts such as common purpose, common accountability, common responsibility flee after the first meeting.

Shooting Stars
This is a comedy game show populated with celebrates. And from there it just descends into chaos and madness with the resulting look of confusion and nervousness on the faces of the celebs.

I love it as a show but as a team meeting nothing is ever achieved in the chaos of is the meeting on or not, who is or is not attending, will the boss turn up and what will be today's crisis or key imperative compared to the different crisis and key imperative of the week before and the week before.

No team norms, no acceptable or unacceptable behaviour and often just turns into a bitching and moaning session.


So which tv shows do the meetings you attend resemble?

In or Out of the Swimming Pool

We have been trying the find the right swimming class for our young boys  - a class where they will obviously learn, have fun and of course be safe.

And after trying out a number of options and talking to other parents, a key differentiator has emerged and it is this - does the instructor get into the pool or not.

I have been amazed at the number of classes where the teacher stays at the edge of the pool and tells the kids in the water what to do. In or Out? - it seems a no brainer which would be most effective and that is what we have found in terms of which classes helped the boys learn and have fun.

So it got me thinking about whether we in our roles as leaders and managers perform our roles in or out of the pool.

Do you stay out of the pool?- spend a lot of time in your office, lot of time in meetings that are not at the coal face, find yourself giving lots direction and instructions through email? All important and justifiable (but then I am sure the swimming instructors have their good reasons for not getting into the pool too).

What would being in the pool more look like for you?

• Attending customer meetings with your team?
• Attending meetings with the customers of your internal customers?
• Shadowing a key stakeholder for a morning?
• Walking around the factory or office floor and making time to talk to the team?
• Committing to and doing 1 to 1's?
• Having skip level meetings with the folks a few levels below you?
• Have lunch with your people as opposed to at your desk?

Does this make a difference?  It sure did for my kids and their swimming (they have made leaps and bounds since moving to a class with the teacher in the water with them). But in business?

The Sales Executive Council published research that a sales team performance went up 17% just from 2 hours a month of coaching from their manager.

So Summer is here (kind of) - why not pull on your leadership speedos (no one will see them I promise) and get into the water with your people.

Resurrecting your career by following the rules of the stock market

It's resurrection time as mother nature comes back to life after the Autumn and Winter recess.

So let's look at a common coaching challenge I often see - resurrecting one's career in your current organisation.

The fact that one's career needs help can often catch you unawares, like the lobster not noticing the rising temperature of the water around it in the pot.The awareness that there's an issue often comes from some form of comment or feedback from a boss or senior stakeholder  through a process like a 360. 

The analogy I use with clients who find themselves in this situation is that of their personal stock price. Historically they have experienced career advancement,  their stock price consistently rising. But now suddenly we discover that people are selling as opposed to buying the individual's stock.

Here are the steps I advise my clients to follow to get their career growing again

1. Get to the issue.

Be relentless in finding out what the perceived problem is - why is your stock price falling. Even if you have feedback, go back and get even more specific feedback. The more data you have on why people have a specific perception of you and your career, the more focused you can be in addressing the perception.

2. Identity the institutional investors in your career.

Stock prices are not based on individuals like you and me trading - its all about the pension funds and the big institutional shareholders - their decisions move the market. So as opposed to convincing the whole organization how great you are, identify who the big institutional investors are in your career. This may or may not include your manager depending on how senior they are. Very often it is some key folks a couple of levels above you in the company.

3. Get a sponsor to help you demonstrate value to the institutional investors. 

Companies need intermediaries to get them in front of investors and venture capitalists. So do you. Who is going to get you in front of the senior people while also selling your worth to them when you are not in the room. This is were a supportive boss or mentor can really help you.

4. Communicate, Communicate, Communicate.

Wall Street does not support a stock just because they like you or think that you may have value - they buy based on stated intentions, follow through on those intentions, demonstrated results and constant communication of all these. You need to start broadcasting to your sponsor on a regular basis so they can both sell you and challenge negative perceptions about you that come up in senior leadership meetings. And you need to broadcast, on an appropriate basis, to the big investors in your organisations to show them your impact and value. This is not PR over results - it is visibility into your results.

The four steps above have helped my clients get focus and leverage to rebuild their personal stock price.

But! But if the above steps represent plan A, I always encourage my clients to start building a plan B no matter how tentatively. Sometimes the perception is so ingrained with very senior people that at some point one needs to be able to cut ones loses and go elsewhere. In other words, you need to think about refloating your stock in a new market.

PS: the other bit of resurrection going on here is with my blog which has been dormant for over a year. I want to try and make it a more regular process for me

Two lessons I learnt last month from Mai and Dave;

1. Don't write for perfection - just put your thoughts out there i.e. let the writer me, not the editor me, own this process.

2. Write for a few mins every day - something will come out of the simple discipline.