When you’re dreading leading team meetings

This is an important day for Heart of Business: the debut of Lincoln Wachtel in our newsletter. Lincoln deserves a little introduction, just so you know who you’re reading.

Lincoln came to Heart of Business when I was burnt out and exhausted. He told me later he was really worried about me. My team had dwindled, and I was treading water, between running the business with a skeletal crew and parenting 3 year old twin boys.

Since then Lincoln has been a major force in righting the ship. He’s been the main person behind hiring/developing the team, and making us all hum together. He’s amazing at implementation, and caring for people at the same time.

What’s more, his background in healing means that everyone here feels so extraordinarily taken care of, as do his clients. Yes, he also does amazing work with clients! I’ve been hearing such glowing reports from the folks he works with.

Lincoln was telling me recently about a success he had with a client, and I said, “Write that up! I want you to share that with folks – they need to know it.” So he did. And here it is.

If you have a team, if you struggle running meetings, or if you hope to have a team, this one is a good one for you.

And if you need help developing your business, why don’t you schedule a conversation with him?

Without further ado… Lincoln Wachtel, Heart of Business’ Business Director:

I was recently working with one of my clients who was struggling with an issue related to managing her small team.

She had been anxious because she was not feeling particularly excited or capable about leading a team meeting. In fact, she was dreading the meetings so much that just thinking about them was causing stress and anxiety. The stress was causing her to feel bad about herself and to make things worse. And then, on top of it all, she was beating herself up for feeling bad.

“What’s wrong with me?” she asked me in a session.

I explained to her that there was nothing wrong with her and there was nothing wrong with feeling bad. “You have a situation in your life that feels overwhelming to you, and you’re trying to change your feelings about it without making a change to the situation. Of course you feel stuck.”

We needed to get clarity around her goals, so I used my “magic wand” question. “If I had a magic wand and we could make this scenario how you wanted it to be, how would it be different?”

She was then able to get clarity about her goal and uncover some obstacles that she felt were in her way.

One of the items that she discovered was blocking her was a lack of understanding of what the team wanted from the team meetings.

I helped her to understand that the best team meetings have some input and buy in from all the members. There’s a time and a place for a leader to present the vision or mission and there’s also a time during meetings for buy in and involvement.

Let me explain. ”Buy in” is when you ask and receive feedback from the team. The reason it is so important to get buy in from the team is that it supports members to be a part of the group. By asking and requesting for input, team members become involved in the creation and provide ideas and solutions to problems. You don’t have to figure it out all on your own!

It’s important to make space and to create a place where input is valued and appreciated. This is especially important when team members might be a little fearful of speaking in front of others.

I can’t tell you how many times the quietest person in the room has come up with the most important piece of information that we all needed to hear. We all view the world through our own unique lens and by encouraging diverse and sometimes opposite view points, we can help to increase our creativity and ingenuity.

The team that she wanted to create included having members who were invested in the success of the business. Her meetings desperately needed buy in and involvement from the team but she had not been asking them to get involved.

I helped her to come up with the following plan that would engage her team members to participate at the next meeting. This plan included 6 action steps, including 5 specific places to invite her team to take an active part, that should create the “buy-in” she really wanted.

• She created an agenda so that she would know exactly what would be covered on the meeting.
• She would allocate the first 5 minutes of the meeting asking each team members to give a quick check to help build more of a team feeling.
• She would ask for feedback from key stakeholders about specific items of the agenda.
• She would ask if anyone had any clarifying questions, concerns or issues about anything discussed.
• She would ask for a verbal agreement (yes/no) in response to any specific tasks, assignments, or to do’s.
• She would ask the group if they had anything that they wanted to bring up or presence with the group.

My client called me the next week and told me that the meeting went incredibly well, better than she could’ve imagined. She told me that having an agenda helped to reduce her stress and that by asking for involvement that the team became very involved, animated, and enthusiastic. Yes!!

What started off as a problem—not feeling confident about leading a meeting—turned into an opportunity to uncover a place in herself where she was feeling inadequate and afraid. As she turned and explored those feelings in a nonjudgmental way she was able to discover roadblocks that were causing her to feel anxious. By taking the time to work together I was able to help her to create a solution, one that resulted in positive results.

From this new place of knowing, she was able to get fired up about her team meetings. She understood that getting buy in and team participation were key elements to achieving her goal of creating a successful and thriving business. By making this simple, yet critical change in their team meetings–having buy in– she made a major shift towards the kind of business she had always longed to have.

Question for you: If you have any team at all, even just a little support from someone, what, if anything, are you doing to create buy in?

p.s. Need hands-on help in your business?

Sometimes you don’t want a course. Sometimes you want something to work with you directly, personally, In which case our Organic Business Development Program is what you’ll want to take a look at.

Lincoln, Yollana, Steve and myself (Mark Silver) are ready to help you.

Check us out:

http://heartofbusiness.com/training-programs/obd-program-basic/

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