Many leaders manage their offices around a routine. Often, that includes a weekly or monthly check-in to chart progress, identify next steps and answer concerns that arise over a fixed period of time. There's nothing wrong with these meetings: Quite frequently, they lend structure and stability to the workflow on a team, and create forums in which individuals can speak up about pressing matters. <\/p>\n
However, employees who stick around through dozens or even hundreds of these meetings know that they can become a little stale. With fixed agendas, your subordinates may feel inclined to tune out of the standing office meeting. Managers sometimes conduct standing meetings as a one-way conversation, with occasional input from team members. Here are a few ways to keep employees engaged:<\/p>\n
Ask direct questions.<\/strong> "Any questions?" doesn't count. If you come across a murky area of a project, call on the best person best qualified to fill in the gaps. Opening the meeting as a dialogue will make employees feel valuable, and uncover important information to move ahead. <\/p>\n Assign homework. <\/strong>If employees know they're responsible for bringing intel to the conference room table, they're more likely to prepare and engage in the proceedings. Circulate a memo ahead of time with an agenda and expectations, so that disengaged workers can't phone it in. <\/p>\n Change the lineup. <\/strong>You may be the head of your department, or even your company, which is why it's important to yield the floor to fresh voices. Ask a subordinate to chair the meeting, or a colleague to present the work his department has done in a given quarter. Your employees can't resent listening to you drone on about the same thing each week if you don't drone on about the same thing each week. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" With fixed agendas, your subordinates may feel inclined to tune out of the standing office meeting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1001004,"featured_media":1247,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n