Practise green meetings. Schedule them in your diary.
You have meetings. Planning meetings. Strategy meetings. Analysis meetings. Review meetings. Numbers. Powerpoints. If you are an acolyte of Bezos you might have replaced powerpoint with word.
Meetings have colours
Red Meetings are crisis / action meetings. I am sure you have enough of these. Tough and draining.
Blue meetings are analysis meetings. Annual board meetings. Long presentations. Dive in deep. Can become slow. Sometimes boring.
Yellow meetings are brainstorm meetings. Ideas. Creativity. What else can we do ?
What about green meetings ?
Green meetings are with people, for people. The goal is to cultivate people, build relationships and strengthen bonds. Most leaders plan for red and blue very well. Yellow can happen. But green – very rare to see planned green meetings which are actually the key to the growth of the people in your organisation.
Here are 5 ways you can have green meetings
Invite colleagues for coffee or lunch– Every week pick a day to have a chat with someone. Co worker, colleague in the same team, reportee, boss, potential collaborator at worker. 1-1 or 1-many. Purpose get to know each other, ask how you are feeling and how can I help you ?
Mini Team Celebration – any small or big milestone crossed invite the team for a lunch / dinner / drinks. Again no work agenda. people agenda – how are you? how are things ? how can I help you ?
Training / Coaching Workshop –take out time to develop the team. Leadership / coaching / functional training. If you can hire an outside trainer do it. if you cannot find someone in house who can. If neither available turn it into an open session with a simple agenda – what is going well? What can be better ? how can we help you ? what do you need ?
People Development Forum – Start one if it does not exist. All senior leaders in a room. Talk about people. About each person. Their goals, dreams and aspirations. What they are seeking and how we can help them.
1-1 chat – you can do this any time. With anyone. A simple hello will suffice. Ask the question about how the person is feeling and doing ? what do they need
1 green meeting will power 10 red and blue ones with energized and motivated teams. Practise green meetings. Schedule them in your diary.