8 Comments
User's avatar
Camila's avatar

What would be your point of view for team meetings that occur weekly where the majority is working remote- would you say it still needs to follow this structure or can 10min of “socializing” be beneficial?

Heather Elkington's avatar

Hey Camila, this a a great question. I’d keep the structure, remote teams actually need it more. A short, intentional 5–10 min check-in can be really beneficial, but only if it’s deliberate. The mistake is letting the social time blur into the whole meeting.

Clear structure plus purposeful connection tends to work best. H

Ryan Carnes's avatar

I'm thankful you went that direction with the Accountability section. I always get nervous when I see "Accountability" expecting people to say something lame like "Hold your team accountable to their commitments!".

Holding others accountable is a myth, you can't do it. You have to enable an environment where everyone is holding themselves accountable to the team, their commitment, etc. and the first step in that is exactly what you mention: modeling it.

Solid write up!

Heather Elkington's avatar

Thank you Ryan, I really appreciate this. I agree, that holding people accountable is usually the wrong framing. Accountability works best when it’s modelled and built into the environment, not enforced from above. H

Liz's avatar

What if your own manager does the opposite of all these things 😭

Heather Elkington's avatar

Sadly, this is way more common than it should be..

The good news is, you can still choose to run your meetings differently, even if it’s not modelled above you.

And if you ever want to influence it upwards, start small, try one of these rules in your own meetings and let the results speak for themselves.

You've got this! H

Katrin's avatar

great advice so thank you!, Rule three is listed twice as a title x

Heather Elkington's avatar

Great spot, thank you for flagging that! Rule three was clearly feeling very important 😅 I will see if I can fix now it's published, and really appreciate you reading. H