Nervous about organising your first team meeting as a manager? Worry no more.
First meetings can always be tough.
Much like the very first day of school, you have no idea what you’re signing up for. But unlike the quintessential first day of school, first team meetings come with a lot of weightage - you want to align everyone and build rapport. Most importantly, you want to start off on the right foot.
Yes, we get it. Setting up a first team meeting can seem like a lot of pressure to take up on one’s shoulders, you want to make a good impression and set a positive tone while ensuring that your meeting is productive and delightful.
When a company introduces a new manager, it's important for them to learn about their new team. By learning their strengths and weaknesses, a manager can optimise their team's talents to ensure a successful work environment.
The first meeting between a manager and their team helps establish relationships. The manager understands their employee's experience, goals and preferred work environment. Simultaneously, team members can learn more about their managing style and work ethics.
Getting to know your team is important because it helps build trust. You can’t work with someone without getting to know them. More importantly, you don’t want to work with someone you don’t like working with/for. By letting your team know that you’re interested in building a working relationship with them, you’re creating a safe space to foster collaboration and accountability. So how do you take that first step to getting to know each other better?
It’s simple. You introduce yourself first: why you joined the company, what have you done, your hobbies and your passions. Go around the table and ask everyone to do the same. Repeat until necessary. Clueless about what kind of icebreakers to start off with? We have a few examples to help you get started:
It’s the role of the leader to set expectations and explain processes. In fact, your internal processes and frameworks can make or break the team’s success. Good leaders set lofty goals for their team’s and drive them towards the fulfilment of their vision. Great leaders include the team in the mission planning process and inspire them to collectively find the path to achieve the team's vision. Communicating your expectations is also another way to ensure that new team members know how to act. A handy tip is to ask everyone on the team to share their best and worst work experiences. This helps the team understand good and bad dynamics and ensures that everyone’s on the same page.
Align everyone on the best way to communicate with you (and as a team). Ask them how often they would like to meet for 1-1’s (once a week or once a fortnight) and team meetings (once a week or once a fortnight). Find out how frequently you can review goals together (but make sure it’s a combined decision).
Feedback is how we people can work better, thus, giving your team regular feedback is a very important task as a manager. But very often, we get so caught up in giving feedback that we forget to ask for our own.
If you’re worried that asking for proactive feedback might dissuade your team (no one wants to bell that cat when it comes to their manager), you can ask them do it anonymously. You are more likely to get truthful answers - no one wants to be that person who publicly critiques their superior at work. How do we do that? Hold anonymous polls after meetings where you ask your team on how you can improve your team meetings.
One of the most important markers of a meeting is to allow time for questions. However, this is especially crucial in the first team meeting because you are providing your team with a lot of new information while also setting the tone for future meetings. Let’s face, we’ve all been to meetings where we’re confused about what’s going on and asked ourselves this: ‘If I ask that out aloud, would it sound like a stupid question?’
Remember: there’s no so such thing as a stupid question (just like there’s no such thing as a wrong question). Q&A sessions make meetings collaborative and inclusive. You’re helping the team open up to new perspectives (while also aligning them with yours).
As a manager, it’s vital to provide a safe, judgement-free space for questions. If you don’t want to break the flow of meetings (since you’re following the agenda to the tee), ask your team to send questions in advance. You can then come prepared to the meeting.
End with a quick summary of the meeting (and any insights that might have come out of it) and set up action items to follow through. It’s important to include action items in your meeting agenda because it tells people what they need to do next (yes, this sounds simple but you’d be surprised how many people often get confused).
Sure, more experienced employees might read between the lines and come up with their own action items at the end of the meeting, but newer employees will never say no to some hand-holding. Providing them with as much guidance as possible is important. Plus, sometimes people might forget. By noting down the action items with the right software (like Dive), you’re making them more accountable for their tasks.
Don’t forget a meeting recap (which includes the action items) so that team members who might have missed the meeting can be informed on decisions made and action items assigned.
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