Learning Environment: Do your team meetings encourage learning?
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What can you do to encourage learning in a few minutes at a team meeting? Here are some great places to start:
- Use your meeting as a time to reflect. At the start of a meeting, allow two minutes thinking time for people to consider the big successes they’ve had since the last meeting. For example, what projects or pieces of work have they moved forward or what have other people in the team done that you’re proud of or that make you proud to be part of the team? Once their two minutes are up, ask them to share their thinking with the rest of the group.
This is a great start, which makes your team feel successful. They’ll then be much more open to learning, including discussing problems and setbacks. - Use your meeting to discuss progress. As we explored in the last article in this series, using your meetings to discuss progress is really helpful. Give people an update on what you’ve delivered and how you’ve delivered it – and anything you’d like their support with. Then get others to do the same. This makes everyone accountable for making progress, and also makes it easy to ask for help and ideas. Finally it allows the rest of the team to see how they can support that individual with their role.
- Use the meeting to invite speakers and guests. Every few meetings invite people external to your team in to help push your team to a greater level of understanding. You could invite people from other areas of the business to help understand what’s going on in other places, or invite an expert in to talk on a particular subject, or ask a member of the team themselves to deliver a presentation on something new that they’ve learned. In a previous role one of the things that I really enjoyed was team site visits – seeing the many sites the company was operating is a very active and practical way of learning. What could work for your team?
- Finish the meeting with development. Before your meeting closes, make sure that you spend the last few minutes reviewing all the items on the agenda to identify learning opportunities. What aspects of what you’ve been discussing could provide a learning opportunity for someone? By putting development at the beginning and end of your meeting, it really shows your team that you’re committed to their learning and development.
Developing your team doesn’t always need to be about training courses. Weaving development into the routine of working life can pay dividends both for you and your team members.