What is the value of 1 hour a month?

What if you could have one hour a month or a week to get all the important people, your trusted friends, trusted mentors, very close friends, in your life together to discuss your path and journey in life so that you could ask for guidance or advice on how you to get where you want to go? Or simply discuss what is going on in your life right now to see what kind of thoughts and discussion it might stimulate. We would call it a so called “Personal Advisory Board” or a “Personal Staff Meeting”. How awesome might that be?

I had a feedyard client ask me to talk about staff meetings a while back, and this is how those thoughts got into my forgetful brain, but since I had them wrote down, I couldn’t forget! With my leadership posts, I am always thinking business, but work to put a twist on the information for individual personal life use. From a business perspective, I worked at one clinic that never had staff meetings, and I worked at another clinic that had them to “chew rear”. And it was always my goal to hold once a month staff meeting with greater purpose. As we started those back in 2006 or so, with only 5 or 6, they were terrible. I was terrible, meetings were terrible, but in the end, they were better than nothing, and we all have to start some where. I recently worked with two different clinics on how to start having staff meetings when they had none. And it is hard, yet very simple, and it starts with gathering up your people and tell them, “Hey, we are looking to turn over a new leaf and step up our communication with you all, because we care deeply about this place, and we are going to start having monthly staff meetings.” And with that, away you go.

From there, as a leader, you must make them valuable, because just in our place of 15-18 people, we figure that one hour costs us about $2,000 to have everyone in that room. So if you aren’t prepared, have no agenda, no plan, and don’t allow your people to talk, then don’t have them. Your people don’t want their time wasted either. But keep in mind, that one hour a month is the most valuable hour we have each month. It allows us to talk strategy, to think tactically, discuss hotspots, review our failures and wins (we call them Hi’s and Lows), review where we are headed, talk vision and remind us of our purpose, repeat non-negotiable core values, and most importantly, “talk life”. Staff meetings are so important to us, that they must be when the clinic is quiet so we can have extreme focus and minimize distractions, which means 7 am, and attendance is required, or you can’t be a part of our AMC Family.

That talk life part, that is where our real growth occurs. That is where real raw emotional connections are made, and helps make us a tighter knit family. We are family, and we care deeply for each other and their individual success, and we must talk about those things, and how we can help each individual be successful outside of those AMC walls. That is where the “Personal Staff Meeting” comes into play. It has been my goal, going from my poor leadership and poor staff meetings back in 2005 and 2006, to have our meetings take the time to make them “Personal Staff Meetings” for each member of the AMC Family.

Because we must Change People’s Lives!

The only way we do that is through very intentional, scheduled, planned and prepared meetings for conversation, care and compassion, asking questions, celebrating Hi’s and Low’s, and formulating a plan and executing it. Be it personal or business, start today, start the conversation, with someone or your people. It takes a vulnerable honesty, and deep intentions, but the end results will be as you planned! And if no plan, probably no results. Just start!!