Team Meetings: Coaching Activities Series

“Your teams are coached perfectly for the results they produce today.”

What does this mean, exactly? As the leader of a team (whether you’re a tenured CEO, new frontline manager, or something in between), your team’s performance is a direct result of how you are leading them. Thus, if you want better results from your team, you need to improve your coaching. However, telling a leader to “coach better” is like telling a sprinter to “run faster” – most leaders know they need it, but they don’t know what actions and behaviors specifically lead to better coaching.

Improving your coaching may sound like a daunting task, but we’re going to break it down into four approachable activities:

• One-to-one meetings
• Team meetings
• Performance feedback
• Career development discussions

When each of these coaching activities is done well, they serve as the foundation for all great leaders. They may seem simple, but our research shows that few leaders actually know how to execute them in a way that leads to better performance. In this short series, we’ll share exactly how to optimize these activities (including free downloadable templates) so that your teams can achieve their best results yet.

The activity

One-to-one meetings

How to define it

Regularly scheduled individual coaching meetings to proactively address business, personal and developmental needs.

Why we do them

• Build relationships: Getting to know team members personally builds rapport.
• Create order: Having team members define the next steps drives accountability.
• Drive complexity: Asking questions teach team members to think.

Important tips

• The recommended frequency is once a month. However, each team is different, so take your own team’s unique needs into consideration when scheduling (i.e. smaller teams may find that meeting less frequently works best if they already are working collaboratively by nature, or fully remote teams may find that more frequent meetings help establish connections with their colleagues).
• Agree upon standards for re-scheduling and attendance. Put a recurring meeting on the calendar so both you and your team members are aware of the timing. If your team members are used to cancellations because you’re “busy,” it will have a negative impact on their trust.
• It may feel cheesy, but start with an icebreaker. Research shows that if a person speaks once during a meeting, they are much more likely to speak up again. Beginning with an icebreaker gives everyone a low-stakes opportunity to use their voice. Large teams (or simply talkative teams) may choose parameters to help with time, such as limiting responses to three words.
• Make it collaborative. Assign team members responsibilities for the next meeting: Who is asking the icebreaker, who is leading best-practice sharing, etc. If your team members are hearing from the same few people meeting after meeting, they’ll glean less value.

Questions to help you get started

• What’s the right frequency for you to be having team meetings with your team?
• How might your team meetings be perceived as a low-value activity in their current format by your team members?
• What is one action you will take to improve your team meetings starting next week?