6 minute read
Meetings Are Your Business Communication Pipe By Lisa Conway
Whatever you do, don’t drop the clinics meeting rhythm, and here’s why. Whatever you do, don’t drop the clinics meeting rhythm, and here’s why. The clinic’s meeting rhythm is your communication pipe, everything is downloaded from a meeting. A great meeting rhythm is like having a 5 connection. And just like a 5G connection, it is so much better than any other connection you had before.
A deficit of structured meetings is like using a pigeon to receive your communication, not at all reliable, and it just isn’t going to cut it in today’s clinics. If you want to attract and keep great team members, it really matters how you communicate with them.
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Meetings are your best chance of surviving the turbulent climate we find ourselves in today. A reliable workplace and workforce is founded on great communication. It is a foundational piece; it’s how you move forward and achieve what you want for the business and for your team members. When you don’t have a solid meeting rhythm, it’s like someone has put their foot on the pipe, therefor communication can’t flow like it should. If you are finding your team members misunderstand you, or get confused easily, you can almost always trace it back to ineffective team meetings. Explaining things over and over is not a good use of your time and could easily be avoided if you work on your meeting rhythm. For every hour of time you spend in a meeting, the value in the clinic is three times.
Over the years I’ve had many people come and go through my coaching program, and one of the things I make them promise when they’re ready to flap their wings and fly solo, is that they keep up the meeting rhythm. Unfortunately, some don’t. The two most common reasons are, they were short a team member, or they were “all good” and things were going well. “We had nothing to fix so they didn’t feel that they needed to keep spending that time in a meeting, when it could have been spent servicing a client”. BaBow!!
My response is always the same; “so now that you have your business in a position that has great communication, and you feel safe, you’ve decided to give away the very thing that got you there? The meetings are why you got there, great communication! How’s that working for you?”
Communication is the foundation of all good relationship, how we communicate with our kids, our partners, our parents and definitely the people we work with. All relationships require great communication and the only way that this happens is if you provide a space for dialog. you face, give and receive feedback, praise one another, and spend quality time with the people that are a part of making your business dream coming true. To not offer them optimum communication, in other words the best opportunity to have a voice and to be heard, is a recipe for disaster. It fascinates me that it’s often the first thing that goes when time is tight.
My best advice around meeting rhythms is that you need a combination of both one-to-one, and group meetings and you need to hold them both weekly, yes, every single week!
The private one to one meeting allows your team members to have a voice, to have their say privately. Providing a safe space to explain how they feel without judgement, you will find that they will discuss things that perhaps they wouldn’t have the confidence to say in front of their peers, very important in the process of building trust. Then there’s the group. The group is of equal importance because it fosters community, you’ll become aware of different opinions and behaviour styles, different concerns and ideas, and more heads are always better when it comes to solving a problem. The other wonderful thing about group meetings is you can deliver a message once to 6 people that might take you 30 minutes, compared to delivering it six times individually, it would take three hours so it’s a very efficient use of your time.
More frequent meetings with less on the agenda will give you the best outcome. Go deep on the challenge and nail it rather than skimming over many topics. Often salons have a meeting once a month, because they think it saves time. The agenda is huge and none of the tasks get a fair amount of airtime therefore they rush over them, no one really has a chance to ask any questions and yes you guessed it, the message wasn’t clear, and mistakes occur and so the topic will need repeating again next month. All this pulls the bottom out of the morale. Meet weekly for a smaller amount of time and discuss one topic in depth each meeting.
I also think that you need some paperwork, sign off on the topic. This is simple to do. One sheet of paper that outlines the topic discussed in bullet point. At the bottom, have a list of team members names that says “sign here when you agree and fully understand this communication”. Things like rolling out a promotion, a change is trading hours or a policy change. Generally, people don’t sign things unless they do understand so it’s your best chance at clarity. have a team meeting is or has been a challenge in the past. Well thanks to the lovely people at Zoom and FaceTime, there is no reason why a person can’t be in your meeting. Meetings can also be recorded and shared for those on leave to catch up. No need to repeat yourself anymore.
Team meetings must be fun, there needs to be some wiggle room for silliness, for community and for group banta, the same as it would be if you were all a meeting in person. We are living in uncertain times and so the more community and stability you create the more your people will feel they belong. Sometimes we just need to spend some time together and create a space for community.
I also think that it’s a good idea to let other people in the team “chair” the meeting and deliver content, rather than it just always be you. Sharing of the load helps salon team members understand the responsibility that you have as the leader. They will also share the frustration of people who are not always focused during discussions, and you will find that they have a newfound respect for your position. It appears that shutdowns aren’t over any time soon. I suggest that during shutdowns you still have all your meetings. Maybe it’s less structured and more of a social gathering to check-in on each other’s mental health. When you signed up to be a business owner you signed up to be the leader, and now more than ever you need to lead. Some days you won’t feel like it, that’s okay. Just do your best, share that you are human too, and ask them to help if you need it. I don’t think I’ve ever met a salon team that didn’t want to help their boss. The trouble is most bosses won’t ask. Being vulnerable is not assigned a weakness, I’d go as far as to say is it’s a sign of strength. It’s okay to be real.
