Until recently, we were used to having meetings with the work team in the traditional way: everyone sat around the table, the leader talking during most of the meeting and the others just making occasional observations, often with the help of slides or graphics.
But this has changed. With the advancement of the home office model, companies needed to reinvent themselves to continue working in the distance model and also to be attractive when they occur in person, preventing employees from dispersing and not being able to connect with what is being presented.
Why is it important to capture the attention of employees?
A team only works well when all its members are integrated and aware of all the details that are happening in the project. In fact, most team meetings serve this purpose.
It is necessary to plan the meeting so that it is pleasant for everyone, does not interfere with any employee’s schedule and is not tiring, so that everyone can concentrate, listen to what the other has to say and not miss any important details for the conduct of the meeting. process.
There is no foolproof formula and you should base yourself on how your team works best to structure this new meeting model. Some teams work better with a long meeting that takes place at longer intervals, others prefer short daily meetings.
There are teams that like it when everyone expresses their opinion, or they are better focused when they just listen and observe examples of what needs to be done. It is up to leadership figures to understand these characteristics and apply them.
Here are some tips that can help you design your strategy.
Techniques to make a team meeting more productive
1 – Adjust the duration time to the rhythm of your team
A good way to get your team interested in the meeting is to set the meeting’s duration and frequency according to the team’s pace.
Some teams prefer a more dynamic day-to-day, with constant small deliveries and a quick update on how the project is progressing. For these cases, the best would be short daily meetings, of a maximum of 45 minutes, so that everyone could align what was done and the next step to be taken and then go back to their duties.
Other teams already like to work to long deadlines, doing a fair amount of activities before talking about them. In these situations, we recommend longer meetings, between 1 and 2 hours, and that take place weekly or, depending on the case, even fortnightly.
Meetings longer than 2 hours should be avoided and, when they occur, allow at least a 15-minute rest so that everyone can relax and avoid mental fatigue, which would distract from the discussed agendas.
2 – Speak up and let everyone speak
The centralized model of meetings, where only the leadership figures speak and the others only listen, is already very outdated. In the new model, which is more aggregating and receptive, all employees will have space to speak, give their opinion on the direction of the project and also clear up their doubts with managers or other colleagues.
By opening space for everyone to express themselves, you make the meeting a plural environment and motivate employees to participate, to be heard, which makes the process of participating much more pleasant.
In this way, everyone is in an even better tune and more productive, wanting to reach their best potential stimulated by the climate of trust and union worked on in the meetings. An employee who feels welcomed works much better than one who feels rejected.
3 – Apply agile methods
Agile methods are specific techniques to accelerate deliveries and increase team productivity. When applied to the team’s production method, they adjust the role of each member to enable results to be acquired in a faster and more organized way.
There are several types of agile methods and there is no one that is better or “more recommendable” than the other. There is, yes, a method that will be the most suitable for your needs and work dynamics, but you will only know what it is after a test period, observing the adaptation of your team to it.
For this reason, we recommend that you research the main agile methods and experiment until you find the one that is most appropriate for the results you want to obtain.
4 – Make a schedule for the meetings
An unstructured meeting, where one interrupts the other during the speech, no one knows what the agenda will be and there is no organization that discourages any professional, especially when it is a mandatory activity that he feels does not help him at all.
For this reason, organizing a meeting schedule and structuring it in a way that makes its functionality clear is essential to capture the team’s attention.
An idea of structure is to first expose the central theme of the meeting and, in order, everyone gives their opinion on the subject. But this is just an idea. It is up to leadership figures to understand which dynamic works best for the team and implement it in meetings.