In today’s episode of the Leader Fluent Podcast, I’m talking about “Five Parts of an Effective Team Meeting.” No matter where you are in the organization, you likely lead meetings with staff members or volunteers. In this episode, you’ll learn how to lead effective meetings by incorporating five practical parts. 

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The longer you lead, the more you’ll find yourself in meetings. They might be staff meetings, departmental meetings, board meetings, one-on-one meetings, or meetings with your volunteers, but there is never a shortage of meetings for leaders to attend. 

At the same time, we’ve all found ourselves in meetings that were poorly led and a total waste of our time. And if we’re honest, we’ve probably led a few of those meetings as well. I know I certainly have. So, what does an effective team meeting look like? I believe it includes five parts. 

The first part of the meeting is focused on celebrating wins. Celebrating wins will remind your team of the value and meaning of their work. Think about wins in four categories: 

• Stories – What stories of life change, connection, or transformation can we celebrate? 
  

• Stats – In what areas of our ministry or organization are we seeing numerical growth? 
  

• Steps – What progress are we making with our goals and priorities?
  

• Success – What team member can we celebrate for modeling our team values? 
  

These four areas—stories, stats, steps, and success—provide a framework to help your team think more wholistically about wins in your organization. In general, this part of the meeting usually lasts 5-10 minutes…maybe longer if you’re coming off a really big church-wide or organization-wide win. 

There are usually a few housekeeping items that need to be communicated during a team meeting. For example, you might do a quick review of the calendar, or you might provide a few quick details on an upcoming event that are relevant to the entire team. 

The communication part of the meeting is usually no more than 10 minutes, but it can eliminate confusion and keep everyone on the same page. The key to remember about communication is that it’s not a discussion. Instead, it’s providing simple bullet-point updates. 

Collaboration is the part of the meeting where you dig into items that require concentrated discussion. For example, you might collaborate on an upcoming event, discuss a staff-wide goal, or brainstorm a new initiative. In general, the collaboration part of the meeting is roughly 20-40 minutes long. If it’s going to take longer than that, I’ll usually schedule a separate meeting for it. 

We have a high value for personal growth, and so we’ll often include coaching in our team meetings. By coaching, I’m referring to any kind of training or reading that’s focused on staff development. For example, we might read a book together as a staff, and then discuss a couple of chapters each week during our meeting. Or we might watch a leadership video from a great speaker and then discuss it as a team. Or I might do a leadership teaching with our staff on a topic that would be helpful. The coaching part of the meeting is usually 20-40 minutes, depending on what approach we’re taking to staff development. 

This part of the meeting can play out in two ways—spiritual connection and relational connection. Spiritual connection is where we take time to pray as a team. Relational connection is where you take a few minutes to add a fun or relationally focused discussion to the meeting. You might even do a team lunch following the meeting to facilitate greater connection. 

Celebration, communication, collaboration, coaching, and connection are key parts to an effective team. If you are meeting weekly, you may choose not to include all five elements, but in general, these keys keep the meeting productive and fruitful. 

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