The first four videos in this sequence have all been about getting the best from your team in a range of circumstances. This one is also going to be about getting the best from a team. But it's going to be about getting the best from the team in one particular circumstance. team meetings. I have four very simple tips to help you get the best from team meetings. And the first is to make sure that when you have a team meeting, you generate real pace and energy.
Don't let the team meetings, wallow or dwell on points that can SAP energy from the team and can be quite destructive of your time. Look for ways to keep the meeting moving forward without feeling that you're hustling people into decisions. In order to do that, of course, you need to prepare well and we've looked at preparing well for meetings. You In a previous video The second tip is to structure the meetings to achieve what you need the team meetings to achieve. Quite often organizations have regular team meetings for a particular purpose. Now they can be for relationship building, but they rarely are.
And if you think they are for relationship building and you have the meeting time and time and time again and feel that nothing much gets done, chances are it's become a ritual with no value. There are four common purposes for a team meeting for monitoring progress, for developing plans for solving problems, and for making decisions. decide which of those your team meeting predominantly are or what combination and come up with a structure that allows people to do that. I always find it helpful to end my team meetings with offers and requests go around the room and ask people what requests they have of their colleagues to help them move forward. And then return around the room and ask for people to offer the help and support that's been requested. My third tip for really good team meetings is to use them to celebrate success to praise people who have done well and celebrate not just the success of individuals, but the success of the team.
If you can build in some form of lessons learn process as well, so that what we're doing is focusing on learning from the team's successes, rather than from its failings. Because when we do that, we can move the team from a good base level of performance to a level of excellence. It's also highly motivating for team members to know that their successes are being recognized and that they're marking their achievements. My fourth tip may sound a bit old it's be dispensable, you see a team meeting that relies on the team leader to be there. It's not a team meeting, it's a team leader meeting, you should set up a structure and a cycle. That means that people know what the team meetings are for and how they operate.
And if you're not there for any reason, the meeting carries on regardless of someone else will take the chair. Indeed, one way to facilitate that is to give up the chair regularly when you're there and invite other people to step in and lead the meeting. The advantage of this is that the team will carry on whether you're there or not. And that's for me is the sign of really good leadership. Really good leadership is what happens when the team can deliver the goods without the leader even having to be present. So to summarize, my four tips are firstly generate pace.
Secondly, create a good structure Thirdly, use your meetings to celebrate success. And fourthly, get yourself out of a job become indispensable. Make sure that it's a team meeting, not a team leader meeting. When you do that, you'll have a great set of meetings, the team will make huge progress, whether you're there or not.