I was in a meet­ing this morn­ing with a few of the part­ners at a great com­pany here in Port­land. The pur­pose of the meet­ing was to assess how coach­ing might help them to improve their cul­ture and their results. They already have a good thing going, and have been the gold stan­dard in their indus­try for the niche they serve.

Like many CEO’s and busi­ness lead­ers today, they are feel­ing a bit battle-weary. The last three years of eco­nomic chal­lenge forced them to make many of the dif­fi­cult busi­ness deci­sions that many of us faced, includ­ing down­siz­ing, cost cut­ting, and fight­ing for sur­vival over the short term. Today, they find that they have weath­ered the worst of the storm, and are now buried with too much busi­ness and too much oppor­tu­nity for their maxed out team.

I know many of you can relate to this story.

In speak­ing with them today, I noticed that they had stopped doing some of the very things that made them suc­cess­ful dur­ing the nine years prior to this eco­nomic storm. One of those miss­ing pieces was their weekly team huddle.

As I men­tioned in my pre­vi­ous post, How a Big Com­pany Can Feel Small, it is crit­i­cal for us lead­ers to com­mu­ni­cate dur­ing the more chal­leng­ing times. But this is when most of us feel like com­mu­ni­cat­ing least.

Dur­ing dif­fi­cult times, we may not be exactly sure what to say. We buy the lie that every­body expects us to have all the answers. The truth is that most of our team­mates already know that we don’t have all the answers, and they are hop­ing that we know that, too!

This group of part­ners used to have a weekly hud­dle, and they let that dis­ci­pline slide. Now, many of them don’t know what is hap­pen­ing in the other depart­ments of this small firm.

One Action Plan I gave to them — and I now share with any of you who need to improve the health of your team — is to have a weekly Mon­day morn­ing team hud­dle. Spend 15 to 30 min­utes right as the week kicks off to con­nect, to share vic­to­ries from the past week, and to dis­cuss what is hap­pen­ing in the week ahead.

The good news for you lead­ers is that you don’t have to pre­pare a 16 page pre­sen­ta­tion. The pur­pose of the Mon­day morn­ing hud­dle is to help your team to be engaged and pre­pared for the week ahead. Every­body on the team can and should par­tic­i­pate. You just need to lead by exam­ple, and to facil­i­tate this group action plan.

Your cul­ture and results should improve,

Related posts:

1. I Love a Good Vaca­tion in the Morning
2. Sharpen Me, Please!
3. Goal or Discipline?
4. Play­ing Like a Kid, Long After Recess
5. Sorry is Not Good Enough

Tags: Communication, Disciplines, Executive Team, Meetings, Teamwork

This entry was posted on Friday, May 28th, 2010 at 6:31 am and is filed under Self-Development. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.