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In “How To Run A  Great Team Meeting” I take you through 9 tips on how to running effective meetings, saving time, and even more importantly, creating better more useful and valuable output from those meeting. 

 We have all been in meetings that wasted our time and didn’t seem to achieve anything. The average person attends 10 meetings or more per week and spends 31 hours in unproductive meetings per month. 

 How to run a meeting effectively can be learnt quickly and put into action quickly too. Try these tips on a small informal meeting and build from there to gain confidence and practice. 

 How to run a team meeting starts with having an agenda which is clear and circulated in advance so attendees can start thinking how they are going to contribute. 

 When thinking about how to run an effective team meeting, get the team involved, particularly with setting the behaviour rules for everyone to stick to. This step helps engage peer pressure. I run through some of the popular rules I have come across. 

 Plan who will facilitate the meeting, informally or formally. This really helps in how to run a meeting, particularly if there are a lot of attendees or everyone is very opinionated. 

 Next when planning how to run a team meeting effectively, is think about what the meeting is going to be for. What is the output you are seeking or is the meeting an information sharing meeting?

 If you are looking for a meeting with discussion, debate and decision making, then keep the number of attendees to a smaller number. 

 I also cover how to run a meeting with minutes, which is very helpful if keeping as many people fully engaged in the meeting. 

 Practice running effective productive team meetings! It does not take long and your team and career will thank you for it!

How to Set a Meeting Agenda to get the best out of the meeting and not waste attendees time takes a little bit of thought. The average person attends 10 meetings or more per week and spends 31 hours in unproductive meetings per month.

 I have 7 actions that you can take to create meeting agendas that work, keep everyone engaged and produce useful output. These cover meeting agenda best practices and I have tried and tested these in 25 years of working in work class companies through to SMEs.

 The first step in how to plan a meeting agenda is to think what you want to get out of the meeting or the meeting’s purpose. If you are not clear on this, creating the meeting agenda and then having effective meetings is that much harder. 

 To help you with how to plan a meeting, we have included some examples of what time to allocated to different types of meetings and give you some thoughts on meeting agendas. 

 The meeting agenda format will depend on what you want to cover. We suggest that you keep it to a small number of agenda items and give sufficient time to each rather than cramming as much as possible into the meeting agenda. 

 Make use of pre-reads – information sent out before the meeting starts – to share information which frees up time during the meeting for discussion, problem solving and decision making. This will ensure efficient meetings and keep the attendees engaged. 

 It is useful for a person to take minutes during the meeting, saving everyone getting distracted writing their own note and then you can share with the wider team meeting agenda and minutes afterwards to promote an open working culture. 

 Providing a meeting agenda format with specific agenda items allows each attendee to start mentally preparing before the meeting. This helps in running efficient meetings where everyone is able to participate from the start. 

 How to set a meeting agenda is a great skill to develop and will make your job as a manager of the team that much easier. 

Running effective one to one meetings at work - I think - are one of the most important things to get right if you want to:

·        Develop your team members

·        Improve team effectiveness and happiness

·        Retain your best staff

·        And get promoted as a manager

 In “How to Run Effective One to One Meetings at Work” we take you through 9 tried and tested tips to improve the effectiveness of your one-on-one meetings with your team.

--- Resources

 
One-on-One Meeting Booklet (13 pages)
Learn exactly how to run brilliant one-on-one meetings for better relationships, increased development and improved indiviudal performance - all of which helps you improve team performance. Learn more here: https://enhance.training/lm-lp/one-on-one-meeting-agenda-ulp030/

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 Learning how to run one to one meetings is a great way to develop your team members, which in turn improves their effectiveness at work, the team improves and you get credit as a manager of that team. One on one meetings are time set aside from a busy schedule – use them to coach and mentor.

 One on one meetings with direct reports is a great way to build professional and personal relationships with those you rely on to drive the team’s performance. Building trust is a critical starting point for effective 121 meetings. 

 It is super important that you don’t cancel or move you one on one meetings so you signal to your team members that these meetings and they are important to you. Stick to a set time each week or every other week for your 1 to 1 meetings with staff. 

 Ask your team members to bring their agenda to the one to one meeting. That way both parties can discuss what is important to them. 

 1 on 1 meetings are a great time to review progress against objectives, praise what is going well and help your employee with progress on any challenging areas. Reviewing objectives leads easily into performance conversations – take the time to praise great work and discuss areas for improvement.

Setting objectives with your manager can be an easy process if you have prepared well or it can be a real challenge if you have not. 

Learning how to prepare and propose objectives to my manager helped me get better, easier and more useful objectives for me and my career development. 

 It should be no surprise that setting goals with your manager is a lot easier when you are supporting reaching the managers goals or objectives. This, or the company or department strategy was always the first place I started when setting objectives with my manager. This approach also makes a lot of business sense.

 Put yourself in the driving seat by preparing objectives and goals that align with your manager goals and objectives rather than wait for your boss to give you a set of goals. Taking this step means you set expectations and the starting point with your manager first. 

 Having more realistic objectives and ones that will help your career development helps when you come to have your appraisal meeting with manager. You are more likely to have achieved your goals, which makes this meeting a lot easier. 

 Having goals is useful but having a rough or detailed plan of how to achieve those goals is a lot better. Before you think about objective setting for appraisals, go through how you might achieve the objectives. How long will it take? What resources will you need? Can you achieve the objective by yourself, or do you need your team to deliver it?

 Think about all the assumptions you are making when planning how you are going to achieve your goal. I always found using assumptions is a great way to manage my manager’s expectations of what could be achieved. 

 Setting objectives with your manager gives you a process to follow that creates the foundations for how to set goals and achieve them and is a useful approach for objective setting for managers.

 Towards the end of “Setting Objectives With Your Manager” I share 5 tips to help you manage the meeting to your advantage. 

 Good luck with your objective setting meetings. 

Setting goals for the finance team that support the business growth, strength and performance can be a challenge, even for experienced finance professionals. In “Setting Goals for the Finance Team” I provide examples of 7 different areas for goal setting and provide plenty of example finance team objectives. And WITHOUT using lots of financial or accounting terms.

 Setting finance team goals, like setting any goals, helps create focus for the team and improve the financial management of a business. What you expect from your finance team and its capabilities are a great starting point. Do you need basic financial reporting? Or are you in a more complex business that needs its finance team to help run the business, provide financial information, manage systems,  all the way through to provide financial strategy? What are your expectations of the finance team?

 One of the key tasks of any finance team is managing and improving the financial health of a business – both its profitability and its cash generation. Creating both require strong business management skills among many others.

 What plans should you have in place for team development? How will you measure finance team performance? These and other questions are answered in “Setting Goals for the Finance Team” along with many example of the type of objectives and goals you could set a finance team. 

 Financial reporting and visibility of performance at all levels: the company, department, function, team and even down to the individual drive improved business performance. We give you suggestions on the types of goals you might want to include to improve your financial reporting. 

 Systems and the tools the finance team use the help manage the business are vital for the speed and accuracy of information to support decision making, the control of spending, and the efficiency of many parts of the business. Do you have enough focus on what the finance team is doing to improve the systems and process used in the business?

 And finally, what have you tasked the finance team on with regard to financial strategy? How should the company be funded? What improvements can be made to the business model? What levels of cash should be help to mitigate business and financial risk?

 Set objectives and goals for the finance team that reflect the business needs, the business complexity and the capabilities of the finance team.

Getting your first management or team supervision role is very exciting and a little scary. Firstly congratulations and welcome to your new career of managing people. 

 In 8 Tips for New Managers I share 8 very useful tips for those new in the manager role. We all have a preconceived image of what a manager should be like and when we start, we want to do a good job. The pressure is on yet we should remember to just be ourselves and not be someone we are not. If I had to chose tips for new managers, this would be the most important.

 The next of my new manager tips when starting at a new job is to get to know your team. Your key job is helping others do their best and to do this you must get to know them on a personal level.

 The next of new manager tips is to remember you are a boss not a friend. This is a hard transition, particularly if you are now managing your old peer group. Without some emotional distance, people management is a lot harder in my view.

 These tips for new managers and supervisors give you a lot of points on how to understand what is now expected on you and also how to set expectations of those you manage. Being in the middle is hard work.

 I am a huge believer in developing my teams and I think it is very important step in how to be a great manager. This takes time, effort and thought on the part of the manager yet is paid back many times over at a personal and team level. 

 It is just as important in terms of developing your people management skills that you keep learning and developing as a manager. You really need to practice what you learn as often as you can to get better.

 Enjoy 8 Tips for New Managers and enjoy managing your team!

Creating a good relationship with your manager is pretty vital if you want to be happy at work, get a bonus, get promoted and progress your career.  In 10 Great Tips to Manage Your Manager I share practical tips I have used to build and maintain good relationships with wide range of managers and indirect “bosses”.

 When thinking about how to manage your boss’ expectations, a great place to start is to ensure you are doing a good job or at least average compared to peers. That way, when managing your boss, they already view you as an asset to the team. Delivering what you need to is a great way to start building relationships at work.

 Every manager is different, so when learning how to manage your boss, ask them how they like to be managed. How you manage up should be tailored to your specific manager.

 As you plan how to manage your manager ask them what they expect of you. If you don’t know what good or okay looks like in their eyes, meeting that expectation is harder. 

 It is in your interests, when managing up, to take responsibility for managing relationships at work and particularly with your manager. Your boss influences so much of your working life therefore it must be a no-brainer to be proactive in creating a positive professional relationship.

 A key part of expectation management at work is to reduce the number of surprises for colleagues and particularly your manager. Surprises, both positive and negative, hinder planning and impact how your manager in turn manages their boss’s expectations. 

 How to manage your manager is well is not as hard as it might seem at first. Think how you would like to be treated and replicate this for your manager. How to manage your boss effectively requires a little planning and effort on your part and taking some or all of the steps outlined in “10 Great Tips to Manage Your Manager” will make a significant positive different to your relationship with you manager. Make the effort – it really is in your best interests if you want to be happier at work, get interesting projects to work on, get a bonus and get promoted. 

 Good luck in practicing how to manage your boss!

In How to Set Objectives for the Team, I take you through a tried and tested 5 step approach to set clear, actionable, objectives which have team member buy in.

 If you are going to put the effort into objective and goal setting, you want to ensure that your objectives help drive accountability and deliver improving team performance. There are many elements that go into how to improve team results. Setting employee goals and objectives is an excellent place to start. 

 Objective setting for managers will involve some effort on your part but the time taken to set objectives will be repaid in benefits to you, your team, and the company. I view how to set goals and objectives to be an essential part of good team management. 

 When you are thinking of how to set goals and create an action plan it really helps to start with the end in mind. Think about what you are wanting or needing to achieve. The company, function or department strategy is a good place to start. 

 Setting objectives from the top down helps co-ordinate activities particularly when you are thinking about how to improve teamwork effectiveness across the company and within your own team.

 Get the team involved in setting objectives. This significant improve buy-in to the objectives and goals. I think this also helps solve the how to improve teamwork and communication challenge when working through the goals and objectives in the different parts of the team. 

 Make sure the objectives are specific and everyone knows and understands exactly when we have reached the objective. Make your goals and objectives SMART.

 And finally, plan how you are going to measure your progress and create visibility of progress with all team members and stakeholders. This helps drive accountability and engages peer pressure to support the overall team performance. 

Enjoy managing and leading your team!

In “How to Price a Product for Retail” you’re going to discover what retailers really want when it comes to pricing. Your retail pricing strategy should be focused on what the retailer wants and needs and not simply what you want. So “How to Price a Product for Retail” explores 5 key retailer wants that will make all the difference to your product pricing and your retail pricing strategies.

 Increasing your retail sales is a lot easier when you have your product pricing strategy right for both you and the retailer. Product pricing that is too low means you will not make enough profit to survive. Product pricing that is too high means that you may not even get a listing. 

 Knowing what retailers want will help you determine how to price a product. We take you through lots of tips making pricing retail products for your ideal retail partner that much easier. 

 In “How to Price a Product for Retail” we touch on various pricing strategies in retail as well as many of the metrics that retail buyers are personally measured on. What do retailers want are often guided by how the retailer assesses its buyers. Understanding this will guide you on how to price a product for profit. 

 Think about how you are able to help the retailer gain new customers and keep those customers and how to help the retailer attract customers to their store thus increasing their footfall.

 The more relevant your product to the retailer’s store, the more they will want it and therefore pay for it. Think through the value of your product to each retailer you want to approach while help set your retail pricing.

 Focus on delivering value to the retailer as well as keeping enough benefit for you. Both are needed to increase your sales over the long term.

Why we should set objectives for our team may seem obvious to some, yet many teams I started working with didn’t have objectives or specific goals to achieve. 

 Why set objectives?

 Setting objectives or goals is a great place to start improving team performance at work. Setting goals for a team helps everyone. Objectives provide direction and focus, helps create accountability, and I think must be one of your team management techniques.

 Setting objectives for a team does take time and effort yet gives a massive return on that investment by improving performance in the workplace. Delivering better results or improved performance of your team and achieving goals reflects well on your own team management skills. 

 For me, why we should set objectives for our team is a no-brainer – performance and happiness of the team improves. We all like to know what is expected of us, and in my experience most team members want to do a good job. Setting objectives and setting employee goals is a great tool to allow them and the manager to know when they have done a great job.

 When you are managing a team within a larger business, setting objectives through the functions and teams helps improve business co-ordination. Each team supports the activities of the other teams rather than not-support or even hindering them. Objectives and goal setting help co-ordinate activities. 

 Setting goals and objectives are part of team leadership. To get the most from the work you put into setting objectives, you must keep reminding the team and individuals about their objectives, track progress to reaching your goals and coach and mentor the team members to help them achieve their goals. 

 If the team does well, the manager of that team usually does well. 

 If you haven’t set clear, specific objectives with your team, why not start now.