Most organizations large and small have a certain cadence around staff meetings. Whether they are weekly or some other schedule, there are routine times when key leaders on the team convene to keep the business moving forward.

Regardless of the agenda and flow of the meeting, the personality types (pick your favorite psychology assessment tool) are on full display in the routine staff meeting. Given typical meeting dynamics, not all voices on the team are heard and overtime, individuals fall into place and the routine drives a steady decline in engagement that results in just hammering through the agenda so everyone can move on to their work outside of the meeting.

A technique that has been helpful to me and other leaders in driving improved engagement and reinforcing a critical priority in the business is a practice we called Pass the Baton. Basically, at the start of every staff meeting, we would spend 15 minutes or so with everyone taking their turn to describe an experience around a customer that they or someone on their team had with a customer over the last week.  Whether it was finance talking about collections, operations on some product/technical issue, customer service, or sales, each person (and each key functional area) had the “baton” to speak with an orientation toward a recent customer experience.   

Bringing the customer’s perspective forward from every function of the business reinforces a few key concepts:

1. Sets the tone and priority of the meeting around understand the customer’s perspective and how critical that understanding is to building a sustainable business.
2. Ensures every voice on the team gets some time at the meeting. The extroverts and introverts, the givers and takers, the proud and humble, all get a chance to highlight some key aspect of their experience over the prior week. It is a subtle, but effective way to drive inclusion of different ideas and perspectives.
3. Forces the first step to improving the communication skills of the team; just simply shut up long enough to let another person speak. Step two (listen) and step three (understanding) will come through effective leaders modeling the way.

Thanks to innovations in technology, we all have more efficient work process tools to manage the business today than we ever have had before. Operational dashboards give leaders timely insights that use to take up a great deal of time at routine staff meetings. However, even with the advent of great technologies, senior executives are still responsible to ensure the voice of the customer is heard routinely and they are intentional about creating an environment that ensures the inclusion of different ideas and points of view from all team members.

Passing the baton at routine staff meetings has been a helpful technique to support senior executives improving their leadership effectiveness.

What if I were to ask you, “What is the most difficult leadership challenge you are facing today?” What would you say? 

Here are a few resources to HELP YOU:

1. Download FREE resources, including the 4 A’s of Leadership, at www.harvesttimepartners.com
2. Check out my latest book, Looking Back-What I Learned When I Left a Great Company, for helpful insights on leadership, building a great business, and winning the war on top talent.

David Esposito

Effective leaders spend a great deal of time building an environment where different points of view are valued, diverse experiences are leveraged to drive innovation, and different communication styles are managed effectively to ensure everyone has a voice. It has been proven time and again that diverse teams drive value creation in the marketplace. Intentional effort, not just winging it, is what builds effective diverse teams over time.

Whether it is academic research or our own real-world experience, there is a time-tested truth that value is created by building and cultivating diverse teams. However, there is one common feature that all strong businesses and teams possess. There is one feature where a difference of opinion is not helpful in the long run.

The one common feature that needs to be valued and nurtured is Teamwork. People need to see that serving the needs of the team to accomplish the mission is paramount.

When individuals see a situation in the business that needs attention and have the mindset of “that is not in my job description” or “that is not my department” or “that is someone else’s problem” the business will be on a path toward underperformance or insolvency.

We have all been there when something came off the rails: An unexpected delay on a project at the worst possible time, a poorly handled engagement with a customer, or some critical information that got out ahead of a well-thought out communication plan.

Do individuals run to the problem with the intent to help or do they run away and let someone else handle it?

In well-functioning teams, teamwork is the mindset across its members. There is no room for different attitudes around the commitment to serve the needs of the team.

Below are a few practical examples of how senior executives and the top talent on their teams build a culture that values teamwork:

1. Leaders model the way. They are seen running to the problem to help. They are not making jokes about another department messing up again and creating silos within the organization. They are solution oriented around the challenges throughout the broader organization.
2. Leaders are intentional about catching people modeling effective teamwork and highlight those examples to energize others. They create an environment that puts teamwork on a pedestal.  
3. Leaders have the courage to have the difficult and direct conversation when teamwork is not being displayed. They are timely and direct in addressing gaps in effective teamwork.

Today’s senior executives and the top talent on their teams are responsible to model teamwork and ensure that teamwork is the one common feature among individuals in their organization. The marketplace is too complex and too fast-paced for any one individual to have what it takes to drive sustained success. The marketplace warrants effective teamwork to create value.

What if I were to ask you, “What is the most difficult leadership challenge you are facing today?” What would you say? 

Here are a few resources to HELP YOU:

1. Download FREE resources, including the 4 A’s of Leadership, at www.harvesttimepartners.com
2. Contact me. Email: david@harvesttimepartners.com (M) 269-370-9275
3. Check out my latest book, Looking Back-What I Learned When I Left a Great Company, for helpful insights on leadership, building a great business, and winning the war on top talent.

David Esposito