I’m a stickler (PITA – aka "Pain In The A–") about providing a time and place for “conversations” in the workplace. I am all for connection, team building, sharing personal victories and working through where you are stuck in your life. I feel I am by nature a heart-centered person. I spend most of my free time on the yoga mat, hiking, camping or spending time with my dear friends and family. I’m all about connection and conversation. My Language of Appreciation is Quality Time and I lead with WHOO on the Strength Finder 2.0. However, I have strong convictions around limiting “conversation” during dedicated meeting and reporting times.
I’ve heard rumblings of the team saying, “She cuts me off mid- sentence sometimes,” or “She gets irritated easily during department meetings when we XXXXX.” When my director of operations shared some of this feedback with me recently while measuring the effectiveness of our department meetings, none of it surprised me. I feel exactly what they are feeling. I lead my department meetings like a boardroom meeting, always anchoring to the agenda and standards, story-stopping and data-seeking. I always hold the team members’ feet to the fire around consistent tracking, measuring and reporting versus stories about what it all does or doesn’t say.
Weekly team meetings, quarterly internal team retreats, unscheduled water cooler meet-ups, impromptu phone calls, team building events, etc. – ALL of these are excellent places for conversation and connection. But if you're allowing your weekly department meetings to be a place for coffee klatching, you will quickly find people dreading meetings because they are ineffective, and possibly useless. People thrive on structure and accountability. (And yes, you must hold separate department meetings even if you are a team of 1.5. HINT: Revisit The E-Myth.)
“How are things going? What’s occurred since our last call?” That is how I started the monthly CCI call with a firm this past week. The attorney: “I’m not getting my reporting and have no idea what is working, what’s not working and where we stand with conversion rates right now. I know we are really, really busy, but I’m uncertain if any of this business is connected to revenue. I don’t know what is going on day in, day out because I am behind closed doors counseling, solving or convincing people of why we are worth our fees.” The client services coordinator instantly became defensive and spouted all the reasons why the reporting is or isn't occurring from her perspective. I really didn’t matter at that point; we were having a conversation about what we thought and felt was the state of the business. The reports weren’t doing the talking.
The attorney was really trying to communicate one simple thing with the story-stopping and desperate plea for consistent reporting. Business owners need (not necessarily want) the consistency of weekly meetings that are led and run by someone else. Every business owner needs weekly reporting and tracking so we know if we are shooting in the dark or aiming true north. Business owners are typically secretly walking around scared to death that today is the day “the other shoe will drop.”
You undeniably must create time and space in your workplace for conversation and connection. But if your weekly department meetings lack the unrelenting standards of a boardroom meeting and are instead weighed down with casual conversations, you can guarantee you're crushing your future revenue.
To learn more on how to effectively run your weekly department meetings, contact mhall@lawyerswithpurpose.com.
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Molly L. Hall, Co-Founder, Lawyers with Purpose, LLC, and author of Don’t Be a Yes Chick: How to Stop Babysitting Your Boss, Transform Your Job and Work with a Dream Team Without Losing Your Sanity or Your Spirit in the Process.
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