What Breaks The Camel’s Back: Part 1
Staff Meetings
My two year old, Ari, loves the Disney film Encanto. I love it too.
One of Ari’s favorite characters is Louisa. Louisa is “super” strong. With massive muscles and Herculean strength, she does all the toughest physical tasks for her town and family. But underneath, she feels the pressure.
Pressure to be perfect.
Pressure to never make mistakes.
Pressure to show no weakness.
Pressure to know how to do everything.
Pressure to have endless endurance.
Pressure to tackle any task, no matter how difficult.
She eventually cracks under that pressure, lamenting how she feels is a classically awesome, Lin Manuel Miranda-inspired ballad.
I think Louisa is the perfect metaphor for what it means to be a manager in many workplaces today.
Managers are under immense pressure.
Pressure to perform.
Pressure to know all the answers.
Pressure to show no vulnerability.
Pressure to see around corners.
Pressure to have brilliant strategy.
Pressure to please those above and below them in the pecking order.
Pressure to work endless hours.
Pressure to constantly be available.
Pressure to be inclusive.
Pressure to literally do everything.
Managers, I see you. And I know you’re exhausted and at your wit’s end. If you’re wondering “can things be better?”, the answer is a resounding YES.
This is the first installment of a series of blog posts exploring common situations managers may find themselves in. Situations that reinforce the aforementioned pressures and reinforce the types of operating systems you may work within. Operating systems that optimize for winning no matter the number of metaphorical bodies left behind. I’m here to tell you it doesn’t have to be this way. And that how you get where you’re going is just as if not more important than getting where you’re going.
My goal is to help you see what may not be working, and give you some new tools and experiments you can try that will lead to a better employee experience and better outcomes for you, your teams, and your company.
And if you want it, I’m here to help.
THE SITUATION: Staff Meetings
A manager curates a staff meeting agenda based on what they think the team needs. There’s probably an ice breaker, a guest speaker, and most certainly, definitely, and positively a LOT of flow down. When the manager suddenly has a scheduling conflict, they cancel or reschedule the staff meeting, leaving teammates in the lurch.
That’s ok, you can all wait until next week.
THE PROBLEM:
This situation is centered around the gravity and needs of the manager instead of the work.
When the manager makes agenda and schedule decisions in a vacuum, it can send the message that they are more important than the team or the work, and that work can’t get done without them–reinforcing the common theme of manager as superhero.
When the manager decides what the team needs in a staff meeting, they aren’t giving the team the opportunity to think for themselves or ask for what they need. Did they really need that guest speaker? Did they need 30 minutes of flow down? Did they have the opportunity to collaborate with their team or get their questions answered so they could do their work?
When a manager has a schedule conflict and reschedules or cancels the staff meeting at the last second, they are centering themselves instead of the work. The work doesn’t stop just because the manager has a conflict. There are still decisions to be made, updates to be had, team connections to strengthen, questions to be asked, etc. If the manager reschedules the meeting, then the team is left waiting and they likely have no place to get what they need until the next meeting.
THE SOLUTIONS:
Done right, staff meetings can be powerful tools to help teams co-create connection and trust, make decisions, collaborate, include, prioritize, reflect, and more.
So how can you make your staff meetings better?
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Experiments to Try:
Choose a recurring date and time for staff meetings. These meetings should be held sacred–nobody misses them. If they need to be rescheduled, it should be decided by the team and not one person deciding for the group. The staff meeting should be a core part of your team's operating rhythm.
Set a clear meeting purpose so you can stay laser-focused on what’s most important while avoiding the typical chaos.
Example: Our staff meeting purpose is to align on, unblock, and move work forward. It is NOT a place to do work.
A predictable and repeatable meeting structure that is used every meeting and can be facilitated by any teammate is a must have. This ensures that work continues to be addressed even if someone is absent. It also gives teammates confidence and comfort in knowing there is a designated place to get what they need.
Consider experimenting with an Action Meeting. Its purpose is to align on, unblock, and move work forward. Utilizing an Action Meeting means that you, as manager, will never be responsible for creating a staff meeting agenda again—seriously!It takes repetition to get comfortable using this structure, but done right, it’s one of the most powerful tools for keeping a team aligned. Sam Spurlin of The Ready does a great job outlining how and why to conduct an Action Meeting in this post.
Flowdown should be communicated asynchronously whenever possible. If you have important flowdown, don’t wait to share it in a staff meeting. Consider sharing it via email or persistent chat (Slack, Teams, etc.) ahead of time. This will save time in your meetings and give teammates the opportunity to digest the flowdown ahead of time in order to ask better questions and make more informed decisions.
Happy Experimenting, and as always, The Ways We Work is here to help.
