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The Value of Effective Meetings
in Leadership
The best argument against holding regularly
scheduled effective meetings finds support in one of
the highest rules of leadership. That rule, simply
stated: Never waste people time-not with unnecessary
meetings or memos or reports or committees or busy
work. If you waste their time, you steal a chunk of
their lies. They’ll resent you for it, and rightly
so.
Why have meeting? You could buy a lot of goodwill by
never scheduling a meeting. People get a sense of
what’s going on in other areas of the operation.
Meeting put a human face on supervisors and
colleagues with whom employees might not otherwise
get a chance to interact. They help develop and
maintain a sense of solidarity and shared mission
and a spirit of cooperation. In an Effective
Meeting:
- Everyone hears the same thing at the same time,
removing some of the possibilities for
miscommunication when information gets repeated.
- People ask for clarification.
- The speaker can read non-verbal clues to determine
the level of interest and understanding in the
group.
- Most important, when people interact, they get
ideas they wouldn’t have gotten otherwise.
Not seeing a lot of energy and interaction at your
effective meetings now? Then let’s look at when you
call those meetings and how you lead them and the
effect that has on motivation.
There are two schools of thought about holding
meetings. (Well, three schools, if you count
“Never!” as a school of thought.)
One school says regular meetings are a good idea,
even if you don’t have any pressing business to
discuss. If you schedule regular meetings, this
argument goes, folk gets used to the idea.
Once you start getting the group to work together
toward common goals, however, you’ll discover plenty
of good reasons to have regular meetings. You
shouldn’t just respond to crises, after all. You
should meet to conduct your business openly, with
full participation by everyone.
So, schedule regular meetings. If you find a meeting
date approaching and no real reason to meet (or
compelling reasons not to), you can always cancel
the meeting. Every time you lead a meeting, make it
worth your co-workers’ time and energy to be there.
6 Highly Effective Ways to Motivate Your
People
Throughout the centuries people
have been interested in what motivates others to
carry out behaviors as well as how to motivate
themselves. Abraham Maslow, Frederick Herzberg and
Douglas McGregor to name just three gurus all had
their own ideas of what enabled people to become
motivated.
However, these gurus were operating in a world very
different from that in which we live today. However
basic human nature has not changed and if we combine
the thoughts of the great thinkers on motivation in
the past we can identify six key issues that
managers and leaders need to get right if they are
going to motivate their people.
The first four factors relate to issues which must
be acceptable to the individual in order to avoid
that individual becoming demotivated. However, no
matter how much effort and resource is put into
these four factors, they will not tend to motivate
the person but simply to avoid that person becoming
demotivated.
The first of our 'demotivation avoidance factors' is
connection. People like to feel part of something
and to interact socially even if only by e-mails,
telephone calls and social networking. How can you
make your people more connected to your
organization?
Secondly people like to feel significant, that is to
be respected as a person rather than simply a number
on the payroll. What actions can you take daily to
enable your people to feel more important?
Thirdly people like to feel that there is a sense of
certainty about where the organization is heading.
Most people react very negatively to uncertainty and
ambiguity and a key part of leadership is to enable
people to feel that there is a sense of direction
and that those managing the organization have some
idea of where it is heading. Mission, vision and
values statements have a large role to play in terms
of managing uncertainty as does ensuring that the
organization has a sound awareness of the trends
that are developing in the business context in which
it is operating. Have you created a shared vision
with your people for the future of your organization
and do your constantly reinforce that vision?
Our fourth factor is variety. People tend to get
bored doing the same task for hours on end as
industries such as the banking industry and the
aviation industry have found out. The individual's
vigilance tends to wane after a while and as
Hawthorne discovered early in the 20th century
whatever stimulation is applied to a group of
working people their productivity tends to increase
simply because variety is introduced to the group.
What are you doing to ensure that your people have
an interesting and varied work life?
However, these four factors will not necessarily
guarantee that you have motivated people who are
passionate about their job. They simply guard
against demotivation.
There are two main factors which seem to
characterise highly motivated people and leaders can
do much to promote these issues.
Factor five on our list of motivation issues is that
people need to feel that they are growing as
individuals. This year they are more competent and
capable than last year. Personal development and
training programmes are vital in bringing this
factor to life in the workplace. Does everyone in
your organization have a personal and professional
development plan?
Our sixth, final and perhaps most important
motivation factor is that people like to feel that
they are making a valued contribution to something
worthwhile. That's why you often find highly
motivated people working for relatively low
salaries, for example in the charity sector. Some of
the least happy people are those who are earning
large amounts of money where they feel that they are
simply turning the handle on a money generator
rather than making a valid contribution to society.
What value does your organization create for society
in general and do you ensure that they feel that
their contribution to that value is appreciated?
All six of these factors can be addressed by leaders
and managers and will do wonders to develop your
organization. They all relate to developing the self
esteem of your people. Some of the most motivated
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