The importance of having monthly meetings with your team

Monthly 1:1 and team meetings are essential tools in team management. These regular meetings provide managers with valuable opportunities to communicate with their team members, strengthen relationships, solve problems, and promote collaboration.

I. The importance of monthly 1:1 meetings

Monthly 1:1 meetings are individual meetings between managers and each member of their teams. They allow for the development of a relationship of trust, alignment on objectives, sharing constructive feedback, and highlighting successes. These meetings offer a privileged and confidential space where employees can express themselves freely, take a step back from their work, and address issues they are concerned about. By promoting communication and engagement, monthly 1:1 meetings strengthen team motivation and productivity.

For managers who have weekly 1:1 meetings with their employees, the monthly 1:1 meeting is an opportunity to address different topics and take a little more time to reflect. Discussing the following topics each month between managers and employees is good practice: current workload, status of long-term objectives, achievements, and major roadblocks from recent weeks.

These meetings represent a good opportunity for managers to take a step back and receive feedback on a number of topics: collaboration and task distribution within the team, structural roadblocks and difficulties, quality of communication within the team, and why not feedback on yourself as a manager. Finally, it is a good time to identify best practices, wins, or issues that can be put on the agenda of a team meeting.

II. The five steps to plan monthly meetings effectively

1. Define the objective: Before planning monthly 1:1 meetings, it is important to define the main objective of these meetings. Whether it is to review ongoing projects, evaluate individual performance, or solve problems: it is important that the objective of these meetings is clear for both you and your team members.
2. Set a regular schedule: The regularity of monthly meetings is essential to establish an effective dynamic. Set a specific date and time for each 1:1 meeting and stick to it. This regularity promotes discipline and demonstrates the importance placed on communication and collaboration. For managers who have 30-minute weekly 1:1 meetings, the monthly meeting can differ by having a 45-minute time slot, for example.
3. Prepare the agenda: Before each meeting, prepare a detailed agenda by identifying the topics to be discussed. This saves time and structures the discussion. Try to dedicate part of this meeting to topics that you address less frequently to take a step back and listen to your employees on less operational topics. To simplify and automate the preparation of these monthly meetings, activate the monthly reflection ritual in the Popwork tool; you will then have a complete overview of the feeling, workload, and progress of your team's objectives.
4. Take notes and establish follow-up: It is essential to take notes during monthly meetings to keep a record of decisions made and actions to be taken. Share these notes with your team member and make sure to follow up regularly on the actions defined in previous meetings.
5. Improve the meeting: from time to time, think about asking your employees what they think of these 1:1 meetings. By hearing the topics they like to discuss, what helps them, and conversely the topics they would like to discuss but are rarely addressed, you can adjust the format of these meetings and evolve them over time.

III. The importance of monthly team meetings

Monthly team meetings bring together all members of a team to exchange as a group on team objectives, ongoing projects, and successes or challenges encountered. These meetings are also a time to share knowledge, best practices, and celebrate the successes of some or the team. This can finally be an opportunity to focus on a specific topic on which the entire team can work together.

These meetings promote team cohesion, stimulate creativity, and encourage collective problem solving. They also allow for sharing best practices, aligning efforts, and strengthening the sense of belonging. Make sure to give everyone a voice and encourage an atmosphere of trust conducive to free expression.

These monthly team meetings are essential to establishing a collaborative environment conducive to innovation, continuous improvement, and the desire to achieve team objectives together.

In conclusion, individual and collective monthly meetings are essential management rituals. Whereas weekly or bi-weekly meetings will allow you to follow short-term actions, monthly meetings will be useful for taking a step back on operational subjects and having an overview of medium and long-term priorities and objectives.

To help you identify the different types of meetings to set up according to your team’s needs and objectives, we have written a comprehensive article on the different types of meetings to keep your team moving forward.

If you want to go further, you can rely on Popwork, which will allow you to set up the right meetings at the right frequencies with your teams in just a few clicks!