Issue No. 308 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting suggests a four-step plan for a staff team-building event—built around a “Book-of-the-Quarter” exercise. Plus: I sneak in a review of a phenomenal biography I read this summer. And this reminder, check out my Management Buckets website with dozens of resources and downloadable worksheets for your staff meetings.
$50 Fine for Boring Meetings!
After 30 years of CEO work, I turned in my keys and credit cards at the end of 2005. I’ll start my tenth year of consulting in three months and, I must say, from what I’ve learned in recent years, there are days I wish I could rewind the video—and get a do-over on my leadership years.
For example, I would institute a $50 fine for every boring staff meeting—and I would double the fine for myself if anyone caught me leading an uninspired, ho-hum meeting.
Here’s one thing I would do—at least quarterly: deliver a book, article, DVD, or TED Talk as a catalyst for corralling the creativity of the staff.
Pearson’s Radical Wall Poster Team-building Exercise: 4 Easy Steps
Step 1. Read or Listen to a Book. Distribute Amazon gift cards to every team member, and based on their preferred learning style, inspire them to order the book, audio book, or the Kindle edition of your “Book of the Quarter.” (If they already have the book, or can borrow the book, let them keep the gift card.)
My recommendation: Start with a book that doesn’t add to your organization’s “Management-by-Bestseller Syndrome.” (See the Book Bucket chapter in Mastering the Management Buckets).
For example: If your staff, spouse or colleagues think your reading diet is too heavy on leadership and business books, start with a novel or a gripping biography. I got hooked on one this summer, Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption, by Laura Hillenbrand.
Wow! Unbroken may be on my year-end list of Top-10 books of 2014—and I’m sure, many of my readers have already recommended this amazing book to friends.
The movie version of Unbroken (view the trailer), directed by Angelina Jolie, will be released on Christmas Day 2014. (There’s another idea: get the popcorn and show the movie to your staff next year).
On the New York Times bestseller list for three years, this page-turner chronicles the life of Louie Zamperini: tough Italian-American kid, distance runner in the 1936 Berlin Olympics, and Army Air Corps bombardier in 1941. After heroically surviving an unprecedented 47 days in an open raft in the Pacific, he was reported missing in action for two years while enduring WWII Japan’s most brutal POW camps.
Yet…there’s redemption! While early reports suggest the movie will not include this segment of his life, Zamperini was converted at Billy Graham’s historic Los Angeles evangelistic crusade in 1949 (scheduled for three weeks, but extended to eight weeks). According to the book, his life changed—literally overnight!
2 Corinthians 5:17 in The Message:
“The old life is gone;
a new life burgeons!”
Good news/bad news. Zamperini was welcomed into heaven on July 2 of this year at age 97, but he will miss the movie premiere on December 25 (easy choice!). He had also been named 2015 grand marshal for the Tournament of Roses in Pasadena, Calif. He will still be honored, in absentia, as the headliner for the January 1 parade theme, “Inspiring Stories.”
Yikes—I got side-tracked with this stunning story. (You gotta read it!)
Step 2. Create a Team-Building Exercise. This is a new version of the ho-hum inspirational wall poster idea—but with a relevant twist. Admit it. Your lunchroom has at least one motivational (ha!) poster. Been there for how many years? So…here’s the drill:
• Pick a word, or phrase, or a concept from the book that will inspire our team. There are zillions in Unbroken:
Endurance. Persistence. Discipline.
Hope. Faithfulness. Guts.
Initiative. Forgiveness. Redemption.
Leadership. Servant. More Guts.
• Each team of three or four people will create a poster, a video, an art piece, performance art, a poem—something that describes your emotional experience when reading the book…AND…leverages the unique giftedness and creativity of your team members.
• Our “Show and Tell” day will be in two weeks. (And if possible, try to invest at least the majority of your time on your day job!!)
Step 3. Celebrate Your Team’s Creativity! Inexpensive awards, old trophies from your local thrift store, or gift cards make great gifts to honor the work of your teams.
Step 4. Plan the Next “Book-of-the-Quarter” Event. Keep it going—and delegate the fun stuff to the Expressives on your team!
So…if I were still a CEO and leading a team, I’d work really, really hard to make every single staff meeting both meaningful and memorable.
To order the book from Amazon, click on the the title for: Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption, by Laura Hillenbrand.
Your Weekly Staff Meeting Questions:
1) How many weekly (or otherwise) staff meetings have you attended in your career—and what are the ingredients that make some stand out over others?
2) In the chapter, “Running a Meeting," in Rumsfeld’s Rules: Leadership Lessons in Business, Politics, War, and Life, by Donald Rumsfeld, the former CEO and U.S. Secretary of Defense (twice) notes, "The first consideration for meetings is whether to call one at all.” Is the frequency of our staff meetings about right or not?
WOW Meetings for the 4 Social Styles
Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets: 20 Critical Competencies for Leading Your Business or Nonprofit
In my cycle through the buckets, here’s one more idea from the Meetings Bucket, Chapter 20, in Mastering the Management Buckets:
Caution! Routine meetings quickly spiral into boredom and sheer agony. Each of the four social styles (Analyticals, Drivers, Amiables and Expressives) has different expectations for your meetings. If you are not a skilled meeting facilitator and you “don’t know yet what you don’t know,” ask two or three people at your next meeting to quietly evaluate the “WOW Factor” of your meeting.
Click here to download the “WOW Factor Checklist (Welcome, Organized, Warm)” and check out the resources and books in the Meetings Bucket.
Here’s just one of the 16 items to evaluate at your next meeting: “The meeting facilitator was prepared and relaxed, ready to greet the first person who arrived.”
Rumsfeld again: “As drill sergeants are fond of saying, ‘If you’re five minutes early, you’re on time. If you’re on time, you’re late. If you’re late, you have some explaining to do.’”
P.S. Check out my latest ECFA blog post on governance, “Board Member Getting: It’s Time to Demystify Fundraising.”
Show up to every meeting with a pen and a notepad. When you arrive empty handed, it's your way of telling the host that you don't think they will be discussing anything important enough to write down.
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Posted by: Free Advice | October 10, 2014 at 05:07 AM