Introducing "Food for Thought" #19. The formula is simple: three short messages once a week to feed your mind.
Productivity
Optimize your meetings
If five people take part in a one-hour meeting, it's not just a one-hour meeting, it's five hours of work.
Here are a few ways to optimize your meeting time:
- Determine the types of meetings your team needs (daily, updates, brainstorming, etc.). Every meeting must be relevant and important. If it's not, question its relevance.
- Decide who should be present. A debriefing is often more effective than having all the employees present.
- Make sure the person in charge creates and shares the agenda in advance. This allows participants to know what to expect and to prepare adequately. It also eliminates the superfluous and gets straight to the point.
- Clarify expectations. Make sure every meeting has clear objectives, so that everyone feels their time is well spent.
- Make room for people. Meetings can help you understand each other's realities. You can also use them to celebrate successes.
If you want to go further with these concepts, we recommend reading Death By Meeting by Patrick Lencioni.
Teamwork
To strengthen team spirit
"We sometimes forget that life is a little difficult at times. And we have to dare to share that with others. If we talk about it, we'll be connected. It's especially in sharing difficulty that we become very, very close to each other."
-Dirk De Wachter
Book extract Unleashing motivation by Jacques Forest.
Leadership
Ask open-ended questions
Avoid questions such as:
- "Is that correct?"
- "Do you have any questions?"
- "Is that clear?"
Instead, ask open-ended questions such as :
- "What do you take away from our conversation today?"
- "What's the next step?"
- "What's your game plan between now and our next meeting?"
