Perhaps one of the least obvious, but powerful, strategies for building a stronger business is having effective team meetings. I’m sure the "visual" that comes to mind of your typical team meeting doesn’t get you very excited. We’ve learned to dread most meetings for lots of reasons:

• There are too many of them.

• They rarely start and end on time.

• They become gripe and moan sessions with discussions that get so far off course, it takes a herculean effort to get back on track.

• Some culprits tend to hog all the oxygen in the room while the rest just miserably sit there rolling their eyes.

The bottom line is that these team meetings are viewed as a waste of time.

It’s unfortunate so many of us have had our mouths soured by these previous experiences with ineffective meetings. However, to just avoid having meetings is also a mistake.

Why? There are business owners and managers out there who try to do everything themselves. They keep too much information to themselves. As a result, their employees end up in silos, left out in the dark about company direction and strategy and have very little, if any input, on systems, marketing, policies, etc.

Effective team meetings can be a vital strategy to turbo-charge a business. That is, so long as some key principles are incorporated. In fact, implementing the one practice of having team meetings could be one of the biggest catalysts to injecting some profit-building momentum into your business.

Here are several important fundamentals for having effective team meetings:

Purpose

Strong leadership

Consistency

Rules of the game

Accountability structure

Agenda

• An update report on progress of the business by the owner/manager.

• Celebration of key wins since the last meeting.

• Reporting on action items, or commitments, from the previous meeting.

• Discussion of current challenges and identifying potential solutions.

• Brainstorming time for business opportunities, allowing creativity.

• Training time on important topics relevant to your business.

• Setting actions, or commitments, for the coming week.

Team meetings can create a powerful rhythm in your business with members focused on achieving priorities.

Effective team meetings open better lines of communication and ensure clear expectations are set. The team will become more "invested" in growing the business, as greater relationships are fostered and team unity is developed.