You don't have time to do everything, only time to do what matters. What matters to you and your credit union team?
Each day, we are working with teams and members who are overtired, overstressed and overwhelmed. Our role as leaders in our credit unions is to help people focus on what really matters.
A common frustration credit union leaders share with me speaking at conferences and events is that we spend too much time in meetings. People who share meetings aren't well organized, too many people are in the room, they start late and end late, sometimes there is no agenda, and sometimes, we don't even know why we have been invited to the meeting.
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This week, let's challenge each other to save people time and change our approach to meetings in our credit unions.
Here are some guidelines to make your meetings more productive.
No agenda, no meeting
If you can't articulate the reason for the meeting then there is no meeting. Always take a few moments to outline the purpose of the meeting in the meeting invitation before you send to people to respect their time.
Don't steal minutes
You would never steal money so don't steal time. Time is the new currency. Consider every minute your meeting goes overtime or starts late is time someone can never get back. Start on time and end on time.
Assign roles in the meeting
Allocate jobs to people to increase the meeting effectiveness. Consider a time keeper; give someone an iPhone or watch and ask them to keep the meeting on track. Ask for a scribe to record the minutes of the meeting to share with everyone when the meeting is complete and ensure every meeting has a moderator and someone to facilitate the achievement of the meeting objectives.
Implement 'Project Half As Much'
For one of our clients, we created a project where we challenged all the leaders to spend half as much time in meetings. Could you do that? Consider halving your meeting time and still achieve the same results.
Host standing meetings
That's right, consider a 15-minute standing meeting. Everyone stays focused and engaged, shares their thoughts and contributes and the meeting has a higher energy.
Cancel meetings
If you don't have a clear agenda or the right people can't attend the meeting, cancel it. Your team will thank you.
Rotate responsibility
Allow team members to facilitate team meetings to share responsibility, grow their skill set and demonstrate leadership. You don't have to do it all, share the role with others.
Host a tele-coffee
That's where you make a coffee and they make a coffee and you chat on the telephone. These only take 15 minutes and they are a brilliant form of business development, great for one on one meetings for virtual team members and a great way to connect.
Leverage video
Can you use Skype or Face time to see the gorgeous faces of people you want to meet with? People are less likely to multi-task.
Meetings are fantastic opportunities for us to connect with our team, to assist our members and to drive initiatives in our community. Meetings, when run well, can be highly productive and impactful.
What can you do today to create new meeting guidelines for your credit union? Remember, we each get 1,440 minutes in a day. How are you investing yours in what matters?
Neen James is a leadership consultant at neenjames.com. She can be reached at 215-230-0835 or neen@neenjames.com.
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