![[18] Have Them Lead the Team](https://imgdetail.ebookreading.net/cover/cover/business/EB9780814417546.jpg)
[18]
Have Them Lead the Team
WEEKLY/MONTHLY MEETINGS are a great opportunity for your team members to gain experience leading your team. Let each member of the team fill this role for a month or some other period of time. Allow them to be responsible for developing the agenda, leading the meeting, and disseminating the minutes. After a full rotation among the staff, your team will better understand how difficult it is to set an agenda and guide a group of people with many opinions and competing commitments. More important, they will better understand how to lead a meeting and will actually become more effective team members.
As their leader, this exercise provides you the opportunity to sit back, watch the dynamics, and be a participant in the process. You will have an opportunity to coach your team members individually (and the team as a whole). A team that better understands these skills will not only be more effective in the larger organization, they will be more in tune with each other. This tip will take some time but, after a few months, you will have new perceptions of people at your meetings—they will be more aware of the issues and run better meetings.
With some coaching and feedback, team members’ skills will improve before your eyes. It is no different from coaching Little League or an Olympic swimmer. Team members need to know the skills and must have feedback on their progress.
If this is a new technique for you, it may be helpful to review some of the ground rules of running an effective meeting:
GROUND RULES OF RUNNING AN EFFECTIVE MEETING
Distribute the agenda ahead of time. We often hear from our clients about this one. Our estimation is that 50 percent of leaders do not do so. What is most amazing is that it takes so little time. Many of our clients have templates for this, along with a “pop-up” on the computer to remind them to distribute the agenda. One leader told us that he not only rotates meeting facilitators but also the responsibility for the agenda and note taking.
State how much time is being allotted to each agenda item and whether it is an actionable item or merely a topic for discussion.
If it looks like an agenda item will go beyond the allocated time, stop and ask the team members how they would like to proceed. If they say that they wish to continue discussing the item, ask them which items to eliminate from that day’s agenda. If they want to table the discussion, ask how and when they would like to resume it. If they wish to complete the item within the time allocated, ask them how this will be accomplished (e.g., leader makes decision, voting, consensus, or the expert in the group makes the decision).
Be sure that team members leave the meeting with clear action items and due dates, and have the note taker place these items on the next agenda for follow-up.
Finally, quickly meet with the facilitators periodically and coach them on what they did well and which areas need to be improved. You might even consider using one or more of the coaching models (see Tip #26: Foster Critical Reflection and Tip #46: Create a Culture of Feedback), which can be integrated here. Another technique is to ask the facilitators what they believe went well and what could be improved.