5 Tips to Running a Great Team Planning Session
Hello and welcome to Episode 150 of the People Powered Business Podcast.
Today I’m sharing with you 5 tips for running a successful team planning session.
Back in Episode 147 we spoke about the importance of having a clear team vision for the year, and one thing I recommended was to articulate this vision to the team via some sort of strategy or planning day.
Today I want to unpack why they are so important for our people, how often you should run them, and I’m sharing my 5 tips for running a successful session.
Tip 1: Align your planning session with the personality of your culture. If you have a team who loves fun and doesn’t take themselves to seriously, do not kill the vibe with PowerPoint slides filled with boring detail. Conversely, if you have a data driven and analytical culture, you need to make the data sing and be front and centre of the process;
Tip 2: Make it about more than business targets. Yes the targets are important to articulate, and the vision is important to share, but what’s in this for them? I love to include some team building activities, games, a dinner afterwards or just something fun. This really amps up the engagement in the process;
Tip 3: Be clear on your vision, articulate it and anchor everything to it. If anything you plan in this session does not directly align to the vision you have for the next 12 months, then you’re not going to get to where you want to go;
Tip 4: Mix up the format. Having people sitting still in the one spot for hours on end is exhausting! Especially if they are simply listening to you speak. This shouldn’t be about you just presenting for a few hours. Break into small groups, do some individual reflection, have someone else running a section, move to different locations (even if it’s just another part of the building) or even consider an external facilitator to help;
Tip 5: Have clear plans of actions and a follow up plan. Nothing undermines the benefits of these sessions faster than your team thinking it was all hot air and no actual action is taken to put the plans into place. Delegate the actions out, make people accountable, and lead by example in ensuring all the great ideas get implemented.
An Invitation:
If you’d like to connect with other business owners and leaders who are running successful team planning days, I’d love you to join us inside our free Facebook Group, HR Support for Australian Businesses, so I can learn more about what’s working for you and any challenges you might be having.
Join Here.
