The secret to running team meetings your reps never want to skip.
Observation š§
Managers often mistake ārunning meetingsā as the work. In reality, meetings are just one tool to achieve outcomes: alignment, clarity, and decisions.
A bad manager lets meetings become time drains; a good manager makes them purposeful and energizing.
Leaders must design them: decide who should be in the room, what needs to be covered, and what success looks like when it ends.
Without intentional design, meetings default to updates that couldāve been an email.
Why team meetings matter
I recently spoke to a client who didnāt have team meetings because he didnāt want to burden his teamās calendar with yet another meeting.
However, I challenged him on his approach. I think a team meeting is immensely valuable, especially for new leaders or teams.
Leadership presence: This is your chance to set the tone, articulate vision, and unify direction. 1:1s donāt give you a leadership stage.
Connection: Sales can feel isolating with everyone working towards hitting their individual quota. Team meetings remind people theyāre part of something bigger.
Alignment: Everyone hears the same message, at the same time, no side conversations or misinterpretations.
Culture: Recognition, tone, and energy in a team meeting ripple into how your team feels about working together.
Efficiency: A single 30-minute meeting can save time repeating yourself in individual check-ins.
Team meetings are where leadership shifts from one-to-one influence to one-to-many impact.
How to know if your team meeting is providing value
There are some clear outcomes to strive towards:
People leave with more clarity than they came in.
Energy is higher at the end than at the start.
Stronger cohesion as a team
If none of those things happen by the end of your meeting, you need to rethink the format.
What makes team meetings effective
Keep one way updates short and to a minimum. If you want to review weekly metrics or where youāre tracking, keep it short and succinct. If the update can be done via email, do that and reference it in your team meeting.
Donāt just āgo around the hornā and get ad hoc status updates. If all you do is go around the room and have people list what is on their mind, reps will zone out. If thereās something specific you want everyone to update on, tell them beforehand, set expectations and ensure theyāre prepared.
Center on topics that benefit everyone. Team meetings should cover things that require group input, knowledge sharing, or collective problem-solving.
Use the majority of time for learning and recognition. Use the time spotlighting wins, surfacing challenges, or letting a team member share a recent insight.
Team meetings are essential for building alignment, culture, and momentum. But they only work if you design them with intention.
Run them poorly and they land in the dreaded āthis shouldāve been an emailā bucket. Run them well and they become the heartbeat of your team.
Thought Starter š¤
Love š„°
My favourite format for team meetings follows a 5/20/5 format.
Meet with your team weekly for 30 minutes and your agenda should be heavily weighted to learning:
5 minutes - Key updates. Things they need to know about the product, company, where the team is tracking. These are one way topics where youāre doing the talking and sharing with your team.
20 minutes - Teach. Offer up time to business partners as guest speakers, get AEs to share a best practice, get a customer to share their POV. This is the most critical part of a team meeting, so the team walks away feeling they got something from the meeting. Pro Tip, I always keep a running note of topic ideas for team meetings/ enablement so I always have relevant, timely content.
5 min - Reward and recognition. Talk about wins (big and small). Create a forum to celebrate the team. This helps with morale and culture. It can also just be gratitude where you reinforce effort as much as results.