Small Business Growing

Archive for the 'Teams' Category

Small business owners who talk too much, listen too little.

I offer this respectfully…with full awareness that this is not a problem that is typical of every small business owner.

But if it is a problem in your enterprise, there is a good chance that you are not at all aware of it.  It becomes automatic and unconscious…a normal pattern that is just the way things are done.

But it can hold your business back in a big way.

The problem is simple:  talking too much and listening too little.

As small business owners we achieve success by taking charge and getting things done.  This asset can easily become a liability when it impacts our listening ability, or lack thereof.

I have met many, many small business owners who are out of touch with their people.  And even those who are not as out of touch, can still do more to mine the gold that their team members want to contribute.

One simple place to start is just to self-assess.  Take a look at how many times during the course of a week you get feedback on some relevant business or customer issue from your team.  If you are on top of this, fantastic.  But be careful.   Many leaders think they know their people, but are really not as tuned in as they believe.  They have not taken the time to just listen, without immediate directions and solution generating.

You can do a lot of this without spending much extra time.  It has to do with the quality of interactions and questions you ask, and the quality of how you hear what comes back.   Depending on the kind of organizational culture you have, it may take some work before your team learns to speak without holding back.  It is human to respond in ways that we think others want to hear, especially in boss-employee relationships.

If you are a small business with employees, and you have employees who want to make a difference and are well suited for the work they are doing, you have an ongoing opportunity to engage their creativity and their good will.  It just requires the intent and the practice of good listening.

How to Conduct Effective Team Meetings for Small Business (5)

How much real team work goes on in most organizations?

If you are like most people you might say “very little.”  It takes effort and discipline to achieve team work, but the rewards can be impressive, if not dramatic. 

Our starting place in this extended series on team work is focused on the discipline of good team meetings.  It is hard to grow great teams if the meetings are not working.  Please go back and take a look at the basics we covered in the previous posts in this series.  This post just picks up where we left off.

We have covered some of the most basic things to help with productive meetings. including:

• a start and stop time that is respected
• a specific agenda visually posted for all to see
• consistency in meetings (i.e. monthly, weekly, whatever is appropriate)

Effective meetings need a person to serve as Facilitator, and that person will have to demonstrate certain behaviors if the meetings are to be productive.

I’ll quickly mention that in group theory there is a distinction between the team’s formal leader and the facilitator role.  Some organizations hire consultants who both teach techniques to enhance effective team work and serve as facilitators of team meetings, especially for projects which have defined time limits and special objectives.  Most small businesses don’t have the luxury or inclination for this.  They need to lead their own meetings.  So my comments are directed toward small business owners who will do the “facilitating” of team meetings on their own.

I have seen the spectrum of team meeting styles and skills in working with managers and other leaders.  Some business owners have their heart in the right place, but just have not learned how to lead an effective team meeting, and then there are others who don’t even try.  But there are also some who mange to lead highly effective team meetings and reap the business rewards for their efforts.

I can’t cover everything in a single post, but let me focus on two things:  First, someone needs to serve as the Facilitator of the meeting, preferably the business owner or team manager.  Second, there are a set of skills that come with this role and the more the Facilitator/Leader can demonstrate those skills, the better the meeting will go.

Here is one of the most important of those skills. It is obvious at one level, but not widely utilized in many small businesses:  participation.  If you want better team meetings, this is one place to start.

The most productive and high performance teams I have seen…teams where people are energized, involved, and using their talents to advance business goals…are teams where the leader has learned how to get people talking and contributing during team meetings.

You know what your meetings look like.  But what I often see is leaders who talk too much and employees/associates who talk too little.

If it critical to know this:  what happens in your team meetings is a reflection of your business culture, and the quality of relationships that are already present before you begin any given team meetings play directly on the quality and output of the meetings.

What is going on in your organization’s culture?  At some level you will see this reflected in your meetings.

Improving your business culture is a bigger topic than team meetings, but you can begin to enhance the culture by improving your meetings.

How to get people talking
How do you encourage participation during meetings?  Well you start by talking less and asking more questions.  Just start paying attention to the amount of time you are speaking and how much others are contributing.  It starts with awareness.

Next, it is critical that people be allowed..no, encouraged, to speak honestly.  This means it is OK to talk about problems, as well as solutions.  When people fear repercussions or political fallout for speaking honestly, most will tow to the “party line.”  Creating an environment of respectful openness is necessary before people will take the risk of speaking honestly.  Of course,  you may have a benevolent culture already, and the problem is simply that you as the leader need to ask more questions and let people talk.  It all depends on the character and dynamics of your established business culture.

In summary, make sure someone is the designated meeting Facilitator.  Second, that person has a list of skills to refine, but one of the most important  is learning how to ask good questions and encourage participation.

If you currently do not have really effective team meetings as part of your business culture, you may be surprised at what you are missing once you start enhancing the level of participation.  It will take effort, but the results can be deeply satisfying and profitable for your bottom line.  Most people want to use their skills to make a difference.  Your team meetings are one more way to get those talents engaged to everyone’s benefit.

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Team Work for Small Business (4)

Most of us have experienced business meetings that are unproductive, or a lot worse.

Team meetings can be huge black holes of time waste, or highly productive and necessary to the health and growth of the business.

It all depends on a number of factors that can be controlled.  If your meetings are not currently what they should be, you can turn that around with a little consistent effort.

Understand that team meetings are prime culture shaping tools for your business.  They work – or should work – in tandem with the one-to-one conversations with your individual team members.

Let’s stop right here for a reality check.  I understand that most small businesses don’t have all of the team dynamics training and leadership development options that are present in some larger organizational settings.  In the current environment many small businesses are hustling to keep life and limb together.  Working night and day to keep the business going.

What I am suggesting in this series is that even in the presence of challenges, your greatest asset …at least potentially…is in the talents and motivations of the other members of your business.  But you have to create the environment where those abilities can have their best shot at helping the business succeed.  How you conduct team meetings is one way to let those talents come forth.

We have been discussing “basics”  that are all too uncommon.  One of those basics is making sure you have an agenda which specifically identifies the major items the meeting will address.  Sounds so commonsensical, you’d wonder why it is not performed with ease.  There are lots of reasons why:  Habits from the past, leaders or team members who “over contribute” and simply take all the time,  lack of awareness of how to run a decent meeting, and maybe most of all just the time pressures we as small business owners live with most days.

To get your team groove moving in the right direction, you start out simply.  Building on what we have described so far, to get your agenda working, take a few of the really important things you and the team should be talking about and planning for, and arrange them as the core agenda items.  These items should be written on a large stand-up type chart or other media tool, visible to everyone.

How are the agenda items determined?  It depends.  In a highly participative culture the members of the team contribute to the content of the agenda.  What is appropriate and realistic in terms of who sets the agenda will vary based on lots of factors unique to your business.

What you determine the agenda items to be is, of course, very important.  Some effective teams organize the agenda by category.  For example, customer issues, current projects, carry-over items not resolved at last meeting, updates from each team member,  or whatever categories are relevant for the kinds of things that your business needs to discuss and work through.

The really good news is that most small businesses can enhance the quality of their product or service by changing or improving how they communicate and function in the meeting format.  When you enable people to become part of something a little bigger then self, it is amazing what can happen.

But it is gradual and absolutely requires committed leaders.

Let’s summarize the basics so far:

• First ASSESS the level of team work in your small business, and if you conduct team meetings COMMIT to doing them right.

• Second, START AND END MEETINGS ON TIME

• Third, MEET AT REGULAR TIME INTERVALS

Team Work for Small Business (3)

We are working our way through a set of ideas and practices focused on how to enhance the quality of team work for small business.

We are getting the basics to you in a very practical way, but don’t think that the “basics” are widely practiced.   No telling how many tens of thousands of meetings are conducted every day, and so many are unproductive, if not downright damaging to the business.

But great teams, and productive meetings are easier said than done.  Having worked with teams over several decades, I can attest from experience that building exceptionally well-performing teams does require discipline and persistence on the part of the leader.  But it pays off in a big way when you start to lock-in to a good meeting rhythm.

If you are a small business owner and happened to run into this team building series, let me offer encouragement to you to “do the right thing” regarding building good teams.

And one of those “right things” has to do with how frequently you meet as a team.  Last time I encouraged the simple yet often neglected practice of making sure meetings start and end on time, as advertised.

But how often should the team meet?  Of course this is a situational question.  Some businesses need brief update type meetings daily to deal with dynamic operational realities.  These meetings should also be subject to the  practices of effective meeting management, such as we will be discussing.

Other situations do not require this level of frequency.  Monthly meeting is a good option for some, and for others it may be weekly or every other week.

The consistency and regularity of your meetings is what I’d like to emphasize in this post..  To that end, consider establishing a predictable time or at least a regular frequency for your team meetings.

This consistency communicates many things to the members of the business.  Along with how the meetings are managed, the frequency becomes part of the organization’s culture, for better or worse.  Infrequent and ill prepared meetings communicates volumes about how the business feels about team work.

On the other hand, well run meetings that happen predictably and consistently are venues in which all kinds of good things can happen.  One of those things is the accountability that becomes part of the cultural mix when meetings involve communication on status of current and ongoing projects for which team members have responsibility.

Well run and consistent team meetings also impact the way in which the business leader(s) is/are perceived.  One aspect of effective leadership is the perception of reliability and consistency so necessary for trust to grow and flourish.  Negative things happen when leaders fail to establish a predictable set of routines – only one of which is the team meeting  -  that enable team members to communicate to better do their work.

Bottom line:  establish a regular schedule of team meetings, whether it is once a month or whatever frequency is fitting, given the requirements of your business.  Even if customer requirements dictate that not all members will be present at each meeting, get a routine established.

And you don’t have to be a professional meeting facilitator to make progress.  But you do need a decent meeting agenda.  We’ll talk about that next time.

And…if you want to take quick look at a very powerful way to build better customer relationships and referrals, take another minute to check out this tool, and let me know if you’d like to know more about it.

Team Work for Small Business (2)

Last time around we started this series on small business and team work.

In that larger context, we are now focused on the role team meetings play in the overall performance of your business, especially with regard to how your people work as a team.

In small business..and in life…the most basic things are often the most illusive.  This applies to team meetings as well.  The core methods for effective meeting management are pretty simple.  But simple does not always equate to easy.  Let’s take one of the simplest rules for getting a great team meeting process established:

• START AND END ON TIME

I understand this is basic, but it so often is not practiced.  And yet it is critical to establishing  a culture in which team meetings are not viewed as a monumental waste of time.

Developing your meeting routines so that they work seamlessly is something that really does require work and discipline.  It rarely happens because personalities magically jell.

It happens when certain practices are put into play consistently.  And one of those disciplines is starting and ending at the advertised time.

Lots of things can conspire to prevent this from happening.  Let me just provide one example:

• the leader/owner who talks too much.

This is a common problem and it can become invisible to the leader.  Who is going to tell you , the owner, to talk less and let your team talk more?

I have seen this pattern countless times and it hurts the business.  We’ll come back and revisit this exact issue, but for now the point is simple:  start and end the meeting at the advertised time.

Parkinson’s Law applies here.  The more time allotted for meetings, the more there will be to talk about.  So make a judgment about what is a reasonable amount of time for your meetings, and stay with it.  If you are chairing/facilitating the meeting, of course you have to control the pace just enough to enable all of the agenda items to be covered.

So start right here, with this practice:  set the start and end time and stay with it..  This is only the start of very high performing team meetings, but it is a good start. the next obvious question has to do with frequency of team meetings.  Let’s take that one up next time.

By the way, if you are finding this helpful, you can receive our posts automatically by going to the subscribe link.  And if you are putting what we are talking about into practice, let us know how you are doing.  We’d love to hear from you!

Team Work for Small Business (1)

If you are a small business with more than one person, you have a huge potential for team work, and all of the competitive advantages that it can bring.

However, for many small businesses the potential for team work remains just that…a potential, not a fully realized benefit.

There is a huge range of team effectiveness among small businesses, from totally dysfunctional to extraordinarily productive and well integrated.

The primary difference, the source of great team work on the one hand, to barely cooperative on the other, is in the leadership.  And for small business that usually comes back to the ownership.

In this series we are going to lay a foundation for effective team work by starting with team meetings. It is not the only place to start building great teams, but it is a good place.

Meetings are one of the key building blocks through which teamwork can be crafted and refined.   We’ll start by talking about foundational principles that I hope will add a little something to how you think about and manage meetings.

If you don’t have particularly productive team meetings, let me remind you of two things you probably already know.   The first is that the human talent within your organization, your own included, is the greatest single resource you have to improve your business.  The second thing is that team meetings are one of the primary culture building and performance enhancing vehicles to take your business to its next level.  The point:  if you get better at managing team meetings you can help build talent and shape a more productive culture.

But I can tell you for sure that it won’t happen automatically.   You will have to invest some time experimenting, learning, and enhancing your ability to lead more effective team meetings.

Let’s start with thinking time.

Before we get into some very simple strategies to run better meetings, I’d like to encourage you to think about the overall level of team cooperation within your small business.  Most small business owners are necessarily involved  in keeping the business going by dealing with the urgencies and priorities of working IN the business.  Working ON the business by thinking about things like team work and productive meetings can seem like a luxury.  But it is a necessary luxury if the business is to grow

Think about how much real teamwork you have now.

• How well coordinated are the players in your organization?
• How does the communication flow between people?
• To what degree do people in your business feel part of the business rather than “hired hands.”

Next time we’ll start to outline a set of very straight-forward steps you can put into play to build a culture of effective team meetings.  If you see this as something your business needs to work on, spend a little time on those questions, and do some serious reflecting on just how much your business functions as a team.  This will help you clarify your own concept of the difference between a small business that functions with a very high level of team work, vs. those that do not.

And I am not talking about a “text book” state of team heaven.  I am talking about learning to gradually move up the performance ladder to a better place.

I also invite you to read about a tool we use to build customer relationships.   If your business needs strong customer/client relationships to grow, you should read this section of our blog.