Check-in
Want a successful meeting? Get vulnerable!
The Check-in is an important part of your meeting. It’s a time for you to build trust, and connect with your team.The fastest way to build trust with teammates is through being vulnerable. Share both the most meaningful personal and professional thing that has occured since your last meeting, the impact each has had on you, and how it left you feeling.
A team that has built trust and remains connected will always outpace a team that does not. Trust is required to share the uncomfortable truths that can avoid future disasters. Share courageously, become vulnerable. We’re all people with desires, relationships, needs, wins, and losses. So breathe in, breathe out! And allow yourself to be known.
KPI’s
If you can not measure it, you can not improve it!
Key Performance Indicators, or KPIs, are your team’s weekly metrics. KPI’s predict future problems and opportunities. KPIs are most effective when they are recorded as leading indicators. For a sales person, KPI’s look like reporting on the number of calls made instead of the number of units sold. Ideally, you would have 8-12 leading indicators. More than 15, and the section becomes overwhelming.
Spend only a few minutes on this page. Your goal is to generate a list of Topics to talk about later. This is problem gathering time, not problem-solving time. Have a robust group conversation identifying the most important things to add to your topics list. Some questions to launch the conversation: Why is this KPI off this week? What can we do to hit our goal? Do we have the right KPI, the right goal, the right owner?
Goals
Setting goals is the first step in turning the invisible into the visible.
The Goals page is a list of your medium-term priorities, usually quarterly or monthly. Goals are projects that must move forward in order for your team to achieve its long-term priorities. The best practice is to set between 1-5 goals per person. Remember: less is more!
A common mistake is to create goals that are simply parts of your regular job. Your KPIs and job description already capture those accountabilities. Goals are special projects that improve the business or the department as a whole. Another common mistake is to only talk about your one’s own goals. Rather, help each other to identify blindspots and to succeed.
Like other sections, the objective is to have a group conversation to gather problems and opportunities. Do not turn this into a status report and do not read the list outloud. It’s not time to make excuses, nor is it time to solve the problems. Take just a few minutes to intently study this page as a team and record any problems or opportunities as Topics that can be addressed later in the meeting.
News
Hey! What’s new?
The news section helps to strengthen communication within the team and company in order to avoid misunderstandings. There is nothing better than taking the time to communicate. The purpose of the news section is to share information to keep your team “in the know” of the good news and the not so good—this can be related to vendors/clients/hires, accomplishments, birthdays, new policies, you name it. Keep it short, aim for around 10 seconds per item. When there’s bad news, add it to the topics list to potentially discuss later.
All these sections are supported by our Meetings.io software!