Successful leaders develop leaders. High performing team members crave development. But your hair’s on fire.
What if you don’t have time to plan leadership development?
Leadership development in team meetings:
#1. Identify:
Identify the top two or three strengths of everyone on the team. Display your team’s strengths on the wall or create a slide in your meeting deck. It might look something like…
Mary:
- Relationship building.
- Encouraging.
- Communication.
Bob:
- Constructive feedback.
- Listening.
- Kindness.
Sue:
- Persistence.
- Energizing people.
- Asking great questions.
#2. Schedule:
Schedule each team member to discuss one of their strengths. Mary might kick off the next team meeting with a three minute discussion on how to encourage people.
Possible topics:
- What makes encouraging so important to you?
- What is the mindset of an encourager?
- When did encouraging become important to you?
- Who helped you learn how to encourage people? What specifically did they do?
- What are some simple steps to becoming a leader who encourages people?
You can’t answer all the above questions in three minutes. Choose one or two.
#3. Behaviors:
Ask Mary to suggest three behaviors that express encouragement.
Allow time for questions.
#4. Commitment:
Ask each team member to choose one behavior they will intentionally practice before the next team meeting.
#5. Accountability:
Ask one or two team members to report on their experience at the next team meeting.
Final thoughts:
- Limit the time for leadership development in team meetings to 10 minutes.
- Schedule the entire team in one sitting. Get it done or you will forget it.
- Record the names of the people who are giving reports in your notes.
- Set small goals.
- Honor progress.
- Participate with everyone.
- Use an assessment like StrengthsFinders or VIA Character Strengths to identify strengths. (VIA has a free version.)
How could you modify or improve the above plan?