By Chris Dyer, performance expert, consultant, speaker, Founder and CEO of PeopleG2, a leading background check company and author of best-selling book, The Power of Company Culture
If you're an executive, wouldn't you love the chance to put one effective culture fix on autopilot? Here's a gift: run values-based meetings.
At the heart of any company's culture lie its values, which most businesses boil down to a succinct statement. Let's suppose your stated values include transparency, fairness, and responsiveness, to both customers and employees. Here's how to hold better meetings while you reinforce the values that your team is asked to share.
Transparency, Your Most Valuable Currency
Great culture springs from allowing employees to do their best work. Transparency is the means to that end. Let your meeting frameworks echo your efforts to be transparent throughout your organization. Be sure to let participants know:
- the purpose of each meeting, and how that affects your company's performance in the market
- who the key players are, what their company roles are, and why their input can help you all achieve the goals of the meeting
- the background information that will support discussion of the meeting's premise
This gives your people some skin in the game. It defines the current needs, shows who will shed light on them, and provides a common basis for discourse. In other words, steps toward transparency make every meeting important.
A Level Playing Field Elevates the Best Ideas
Everyone wants to be treated fairly and giving all meeting participants a voice or a chance to understand the issues on their terms promotes a culture free of bias. This only works to your advantage if the right people are at the right meeting. At my company, we classify meetings by which parties need to be there:
- Cockroach meetings are for anyone to attend. These are called to address general issues, to brainstorm, or to debrief on issues that affect the whole staff.
- Tiger team meetings are targeted to individuals responsible for big stuff, like retaining top clients or changing course after setbacks. Managers tag people to do advance work before the meeting or to plan and execute whatever results.
- Ostrich meetings are informational sessions in which project team members brief managers or executives on need-to-know initiatives.
Organizing consultations by their level of urgency levels the playing field for all who attend. They know that they are involved in the topic at hand and that their input is valued. This makes every meeting relevant.
Great Listening Skills Make Everything Else Possible
We've all been to conferences where lots of people talk but little is said or, worse, understood. Model effective listening and hold participants to the same standards.
- Ban multitasking and cell phone use.
- Listen to gain knowledge, not just to respond.
- Ask clarifying questions until you understand the speaker.
There are many more tactics for listening thoroughly and with purpose. I recommend researching the topic and adding to your playbook, so you can show colleagues how get as much as possible from observation and communication. Listening well makes every meeting productive.
Whatever your company's stated values are, using them as building blocks for better meetings pays off. You refresh your values statement in the minds of your staff. You demonstrate the worth of these values by incorporating them into dynamic meetings that people will actually want to attend. And you promote great culture by making your core values a part of these crucial business activities. This is an easy, automatic way to pump up your culture without adding anything extra to your to-do list.
