In December, I will celebrate 14 years at North Group.  Vocationally speaking, these have been the greatest years of my career.  Our mission, values, and beliefs derive from eternal, immovable truths and provide positive purpose and accountability.  We get to work with, influence, and encourage smart, hard-working, purposeful, and courageous leaders every day.  It is exactly what I signed up for and even better than I expected.

Remembering how I felt in December 2009, my only “concern” about joining North Group was whether I would have the patience and focus to give purpose to the significant volume of meetings that I would likely lead.  Until that point, I observed that most of the meetings I sat in were boring and unproductive.

A simple web search reveals many convicting reasons why teams should meet regularly: alignment, trust building, decision making, problem solving, accountability, communication, learning, and idea collection to name a few.

The author, speaker, and leadership thinker, Patrick Lencioni articulates a leader’s role in meetings with two simple priorities:  team cohesion and organizational clarity.

Beyond these truths, I have learned over the past decade that two leadership mindsets drive successful meetings and organizational results:

1.  I am here to serve my team and our organization.
2.  My role is to move us toward clarity on every topic we discuss.

Absent these mindsets, meetings can feel like a waste of time.  With these two leadership mindsets, time together is likely to:

• Produce stimulating conversation
• Collect a broad perspective of leadership thoughts
• Contribute to well-thought-out decisions
• Clearly inform team members how they can be successful in a way that drives organization-wide success

Don’t give up meeting together.  Double down on purposeful meetings by preparing well both in mindset and priorities.  Let us know how we can help!