How can you use meetings to mentor your team?

1 Set clear goals and expectations

Before you hold a meeting, make sure you have a clear purpose and agenda, and communicate them to your team. This will help them prepare, participate, and follow up on the meeting. It will also show them how to run effective meetings themselves, and what you expect from them as contributors. During the meeting, keep track of the time, the topics, and the outcomes, and summarize them at the end. This will help your team stay focused, engaged, and accountable.

2 Encourage participation and collaboration

One of the benefits of meetings is that they allow you to interact with your team and create a sense of belonging and teamwork. To foster this, you need to encourage participation and collaboration from everyone, not just the loudest or the most senior. You can do this by asking open-ended questions, inviting feedback, acknowledging contributions, and facilitating discussions. You can also use tools like polls, surveys, or breakout rooms to make the meeting more interactive and inclusive. By doing this, you will help your team develop their communication, problem-solving, and interpersonal skills.

4 Share your insights and resources

As a mentor, you have valuable insights and resources that you can share with your team to help them grow. You can use meetings to share your stories, experiences, tips, and best practices that relate to the meeting topic or goal. You can also recommend books, articles, podcasts, courses, or other resources that you think your team will find useful or interesting. Sharing your insights and resources will help your team gain new perspectives, knowledge, and skills.

5 Ask for feedback and suggestions

Finally, you can use meetings to mentor your team by asking for feedback and suggestions from them. This will show them that you value their opinions, that you are open to learning from them, and that you care about their satisfaction and development. You can ask for feedback and suggestions on the meeting itself, on your performance as a leader or a mentor, or on any issues or challenges that your team is facing. You can also use tools like anonymous surveys or feedback forms to collect feedback and suggestions after the meeting. Asking for feedback and suggestions will help you improve your own skills, as well as your team's performance and engagement.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?