Staff meetings are a necessary part of growth in education. As an administrator, it is important to do your best to create an atmosphere that stresses the importance of these meetings and conduct them in such a way as to garner anticipation from your staff rather than dread. As an administrator, you must value your staff member’s time. Even though staff meetings are part of the job, after-school meetings become part of the employee’s personal time.
As long as the meetings are informative and somewhat enjoyable, emphasis must be made on time management. Additionally, you do not have to have a staff meeting if you don’t have anything to meet about. Even if you have staff meetings on the calendar you can always cancel the meeting if there is no reason to meet. Please, never meet just to meet. This never shows that you value your staff’s time away from school.
Meeting Preparation and Structure
The administrator must spend time carefully preparing for staff meetings. Additionally, it is your responsibility to be punctual. If you say 3:30 p.m., then start at 3:30 p.m. It does not matter what you start with; it does matter to staff who have just dismissed their students for the day that you start on time. Whether it is at the beginning of the meeting, halfway through, or at the end, if your staff is looking at their watches, you have lost them.
Providing refreshments for your staff at the meeting is always a positive as it shows you value them and want them to be comfortable. Again, even if you provide refreshments, start your meeting on time. The structure of your meeting is important. If you are not prepared and structured, your staff might fail to see the importance of your meeting agenda. You should be well-prepared and concise with your presentation. Be careful to thoroughly review material, but don’t get bogged down in redundancy. If you feel the need to repeat yourself frequently, then maybe your presentation is not hitting its’ mark.
As important as starting on time is, it is equally important to end on time. If you give your staff a start and stop time, they will be more likely to stay engaged with you to the end. Remember, your staff has just finished an entire day, and like you, are probably tired and ready to go home. Also like you, they have a life outside of school that includes things you must do once you get home. Remember that your staff value their time, and they will stay with you much better when they see that you also value their time.
Meeting Participation and Engagement
While there will be times that you will be engaging directly to your staff imparting valuable information, having staff participation is also valuable to having productive staff meetings. Any time you can involve others in the presentation, you give a new voice and perspective to the subject matter at hand. To facilitate this, you must involve staff members in the preparation part of the meeting. Having staff participate also gives you an opportunity to listen instead of doing all of the talking. This will be beneficial to the staff and to you as well.
Additionally, engagement of staff during the meeting also gives your staff a feeling of being a part of the team. Be willing to ask your staff questions during the meeting, and then listen to their answers. You can often find new or better ways to arrive at goals by enlisting the thoughts of your staff. Remember they are the ones in the trenches serving our students every day. You should carefully craft questions geared toward positive answers that will help. “Off the cuff” questions can often lead to “off the cuff” answers that can go more damage than good. This is especially true if you are introducing a new concept that you want the staff to buy in to.
Meeting Culture and Environment
In meeting the culture and environment of your staff can be challenging. Your staff can drive what type of meetings you have. If your staff is predominantly young people with small children, then you have to ensure that they have their little ones taken care of. Again, this goes back to your punctuality and never meeting just to meet.
The teacher has not been born that doesn’t get excited when the announcement is made the staff meeting for next week has been canceled. Also, you might live in an area where many of your teachers drive a good distance to serve your students at your school. You might even have a teacher or two who really struggle with the times that are set for meetings. You could even have coaches on your staff that are in season and are practicing at the time.
Let your door be open and offer alternative times for them to meet with you prior to or just after the meeting. Work with teachers who have long distances to drive or small children they have to attend to. By offering alternatives you garner support and trust from these because they see you as being willing to work with them.
Overall, the culture and environment must be seen as important. Bring information the staff needs and present it well. Ensure that when your staff leaves meetings, they leave feeling like they are better as educators for having been at this staff meeting. Hopefully, your staff never leaves thinking, “What in the world was this meeting for? I could have done more important things with my time”.
As we mentioned earlier, staff meetings are important. But they are only as important as the information we impart, and the way we impart it. If you make the meetings important by presenting what is important, your staff will buy in. If you use the meetings as gripe sessions and droning on and on with unimportant issues that could have been done in memos, you will lose your effectiveness in staff meetings.
Above all, remember your staff is your most valuable resource. Cultivate your staff in every way including your staff meetings. Your staff will love you for respecting their time and striving to make them better educators with each meeting.
As an administrator, you should strive to be open and helpful to your staff in every way possible. If you staff already sees you in this way, they will also be open to your staff meetings and ready to receive the information you have for them.
But, as I have said a couple of times already, if you don’t have anything to say, then don’t have a meeting. Your staff will appreciate the time off and will be more open to listening intently when you do meet. Always, always, always, take care of your staff! They will, in turn, take care of you by taking care of the students you have entrusted to them.
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