You’re losing your team.
“Am I being fired?”
It’s worse than termination.
“How can anything be worse than being canned?”
When you lose your team due to disengagement.
“But I’m fully engaged!”
You may be engaged. However, your team is disengaged.
“How is my team lacking in engagement?”
Team meetings are a good gauge of engagement. You run the team meeting. You do all of the talking. Meanwhile, your team members sit bleary eyed, counting the minutes until their release from meeting purgatory. They may not be speaking, but the thought bubble above their heads says, “Due to unfortunate circumstances I am awake.”
I write from experience.
All of us in technology management positions have experienced unproductive team meetings. Our team members look like they’d rather be watching paint dry instead of being part of our meeting. Bad meetings are gonna happen sometimes. Don’t make the mistake of letting meeting disengagement become the norm.
“But it’s just a meeting.”
You’re blocking off time to pull your team members together. That’s an expensive use of their time. You don’t want to waste such valuable time on “just a meeting.”
“We’ve always run the meeting this way and nobody complains.”
Of course nobody complains. Nobody cares anymore! You’ve allowed apathy to rule. Your team will be doing you a huge service to grumble about the ineffectiveness of the meeting space. That’s feedback. That’s engagement, something you’ve lost.
“Come on, funky T-shirt guy. You’re promoting negativity. I’m a positive leader.”
Are you positive? Because I’m positive you’re doing a disservice to your team by closing your mind to the need to improve your meeting engagement.
“I get it now. I’m failing my team. How can I improve?”
Good! You’re thinking with a growth mindset now.
When I found myself hosting team meetings with low engagement, I took action. I reviewed the meeting agenda for my team meeting. I had been using the same meeting topics for several years. Some of the topics still prompted engagement, while other topics had become irrelevant. Times had changed. I needed to change with the times to reengage my team during the team meeting.
“You made your team meeting topics relevant and solved the engagement problem.”
Sort of. Let’s not lose sight of the team part of the meeting. Your team members have a stake in the meeting agenda. Hold a working session for your team to find out which topics work well and not so well for them. Also, ask for their input on improvements to the meeting format. Combine the findings from that working session with your own ideas and revamp the structure of the team meeting.
“Problem solved!”
Almost. You’ve revamped the meeting agenda with engaging topics. Topics aren’t enough to ensure engagement. You need to drive the engagement during the meeting. Teams are made up of different personalities. Some team members are quieter than others. This is where inclusion is important. As the driver, your job is to ensure that everybody on the team has a voice. If an outspoken team member speaks up about a meeting topic, give your reserved team members an opportunity to contribute to the conversation. Be respectful, too. Don’t shame quiet people into talking.
Due to fortunate circumstances you have been awakened. You’re on your way to improving the engagement at your team meetings.