Leadership Principle #38 - Running the Business: Where the Rubber Meets the Road

Performance Matters – 2 of 2

As CEO, you are in meetings all day long, focused on the logistics of running the business.  Few leaders give much thought to the structure and nature of these meetings, but I’m going to tell you why you should change how you think about meetings. 

In the previous blog about Leadership Principle #14, I explained how the performance of your business is how you will be judged, and how performance is fundamentally impacted by how you lead and develop your execute team, both individually and collectively.  But what many leaders fail to understand is the meetings that comprise the nuts-and-bolts of day-to-day business are far more important than they may seem.  If you think about it another way, during your regular meetings, you are in fact utilizing the most expensive resource at your company – people.  Meetings are where your success or failures to properly develop your team will show up.  And as previously discussed, failure to lead and develop your executive team will invariably lead to failure to perform and grow as a business. 

If we were to take a deep look at how you organize your meetings, ask yourself a few questions.  Do you have an agenda and a clear purpose for the meeting? How many things are on that agenda?  (Most CEOs I see have far too many items on their agendas).  Are you gathering to solve a problem or make a decision?  What are you committing to, and to what benchmarks will the team be held accountable?  If you can’t clearly answer all these questions, you may be wasting their time, simple as that.

At your next meeting, did you follow up to ask the team if they got things done?  Why or why not?  The team needs to drive results together, so the ultimate question, and judge of how well your team is performing is are they getting things done? 

Furthermore, are they engaged as a group or pushing separate agendas?  Are they functioning as a well-oiled machine, or are individuals distracting the group dynamic?  As I said in the previous blog, and I can’t stress this enough…having a functioning executive team is imperative to your success and the company’s growth.  The team matters because performance matters. 

Treating your meetings as the valuable (and expensive) resource they are will shift how you prepare for and conduct meetings with your executive team.  This is where all the leadership principles are put into action for the ultimate goal of achieving performance gains for the business. 

My CEO coaching program has provided guidance for numerous business leaders.  Contact me if you would like to learn how effective team meetings can help you achieve your business goals.