How to effectively prepare for leadership meetings
As a leader, it’s valuable to have other skilled leaders in the same room when discussing how to best tackle organisational issues. Leading a team is not an easy task and running leadership meetings effectively can create an open environment where everyone can freely explore ideas and form solutions - a key aspect towards achieving collective success.
Because each leader has a different background and experiences, having multiple people with different perspectives together in the same room produces more effective results for the organisation. However, it can be difficult to consistently get everyone on the same page.
1. Create a context-driven agenda
A well-prepared meeting agenda is essential. It helps to ensure everyone stays on track, and that the meeting runs efficiently, covering all necessary topics. To get the most out of scheduled time, it also helps to add in as many notes or backup documents as possible so all meeting participants can prepare in advance.
A well-thought-out meeting agenda can also help set expectations with the rest of the team, not only including what topics the leader wants to cover but also why they’re important to ensure that everyone has the same understanding of what needs to be discussed—before they arrive at the meeting. Sending the agenda in advance allows people to have the time to review and prepare their thoughts. Providing more notice also gives other meeting participants a chance to provide feedback about the agenda, ensuring that you covered everything important for the meeting.
2. Prepare and prioritise
Preparation before each leadership team meeting allows leaders to begin thinking about ideas and suggestions they might have and devote time to necessary research so they can add value and lend expertise to each meeting. It helps to block off an adequate amount of preparation time for each meeting so that leaders can make the most of their contributions to the discussion.
When setting your agenda for a leadership meeting, it is important to focus on the highest priority items first. By prioritising the most important items, leaders can ensure that anything that needs to be done and discussed is completed and addressed before leaving the meeting.
3. Follow a delegation process
A leadership team meeting is an ideal time for leaders to make important decisions, but only if all the team members are on board and feel empowered to take ownership of those decisions. To accomplish this, at the end of every meeting, it is important to try to wrap things up by assigning action items to the appropriate team members and capturing any key decisions they have made.
As a leader, it is critical to focus on your team’s accomplishments. One way to counteract any negative focus that might sneak into the leadership meetings is by having each attendee in the room share one “win” from their team or department at the beginning of the meeting. This allows the other attendees to know what exciting things are going on in other areas of the organisation; starting the meeting on a positive note and boosting team morale.
At Acumen, we pride ourselves in offering training and development that gives managers practical tools to help solve real-life challenges. We offer an extensive menu of courses, workshops, and coaching programmes, ranging from communication skills to executive leadership development. In most cases, we design the interventions specifically for each client, but we also offer a wide range of off-the-shelf programmes for those who prefer this approach. For more information about our programmes please contact Simon at simon@askacumen.com.