Everybody loves meetings, right? We’ve sat in just about every chair at the table during a meeting – from farm employee to manager to consultant – and we’ll be the first ones to say that we love meetings … when they are productive and helpful. But that can feel like a high bar to clear, especially when you are looking around the table at diverse needs and desires, and you have expectations of your own.
It pays to get the most out of farm meetings because animal well-being and productivity are usually involved. Whether discussing nutrition plans, health protocols, farm management strategies and more, our experiences point to one overarching factor that maximizes meeting time: preparation. To elaborate on what it means to prepare, we held a meeting! Out of that came the following guidance and tips for ensuring everyone’s meeting time – whether for employees or your advisory team – is well spent.
Pre-meeting prep
For both employee and advisory team meetings, position your meeting to start well by doing the upfront work. It is all about effective communication. With that in mind, do you recognize who is coming to the meeting? Acknowledge the diverse personalities at the table and understand that people communicate differently.
Usually, recognition comes naturally over time. For employees, you can also get there faster with help from personality assessments. Have you used them to help you identify personality types? For example, the DiSC model describes four main personality types, including dominance (assertive, focused on results), influence (outgoing, optimistic), steadiness (patient, empathetic) and conscientiousness (analytical, disciplined). Better knowing the people in the meeting enables you to tailor communication to suit different personalities. For instance, you might use direct communication for task-oriented individuals, while analytic types may require more detailed discussions.
Also adapt your style for extroverts and introverts. For the former, encourage open discussions and brainstorming sessions. For the latter, provide opportunities for written feedback and one-on-one time.
Agendas
A clear agenda goes without saying, but we’ll say it nonetheless because we’ve all experienced ambiguous agendas. Also, make sure your agenda isn’t too ambitious for the time allotted. An agenda item you don’t get to because of poor timing might be the very one your team couldn’t wait to talk about.
Here’s a short list of typical agenda topics.
- Define clear, actionable goals for the upcoming period.
- Highlight key accomplishments and progress made and celebrate team and individual successes.
- Discuss any ongoing or potential challenges and brainstorm solutions with the team. Use these meetings to address issues and allow your employees to voice their thoughts and suggestions at that time or encourage them to think more about the issue and come back to you at a later date.
When discussing challenges, begin with the why behind the challenge. Get to the root cause. Seek input from the people affected and let them problem-solve it first. It is common for dairy producers, just like many business owners, to put their heads down and bull through a problem on their own. When you have a team, you should work as a team to figure things out together.
Meeting length
Keep your meeting length from becoming the butt of jokes. Respect everyone’s time, stick to the schedule and demand precise presentations. As an example, when reviewing a protocol, don’t write an entire book for what could be covered on one page. However, don’t let the clock rule the discussion and forget to include time for questions and suggestions. It is vital that you clearly communicate why you are addressing the topic and how expected outcomes will be achieved.
Meeting leaders
Make sure the manager or supervisor directly responsible for what is being presented is the one presenting, even when a translator is involved. If that is not possible, you must ensure that your support of this person and his/her role is evident to the team. Leaving employees with any doubt about the source of the message can harm your buy-in and create lingering doubt.
Navigating advisory team meetings
While employee meetings should focus on continuous training, safety reminders and group communications, advisory team meetings should have more “me” in the meeting. This is about your farm and working with your nutritionist, veterinarian, management team, ownership team, financial adviser, etc., to ascertain whether the farm is on track to achieve its immediate, mid-term and long-term goals and objectives.
Make sure these meetings have a facilitator who can stay on task and a detail-minded note-taker (or record the meeting). Set expectations ahead of time and review your agenda at the outset and stick to it. Conclude by summarizing who will do what by when.
In these meetings, you likely will determine financial goals, plus establish key performance indicators (KPIs), track and discuss KPIs, and adjust them to meet expectations. Also, farm transition plans and progress can be communicated during these meetings after agreed upon by the ownership. You also might review and create new SOPs and job roles and write new job descriptions.
Ask presenters to be prepared with data or any other information to support their points and to propose a solution. Allow members with the most knowledge, influence and interest in the matter to take turns asking questions. While not everyone has to participate on each subject being discussed, give everyone that opportunity.
Close with a summary of decisions made, action items from management or ownership or both, and set deadlines.
Universal meeting tips
To help you maximize your efforts, here is a list of tips to reacquaint yourself with before each employee and advisory team meeting.
- Make it your mission to restate the farm’s mission and vision. This will help you instill a sense of togetherness and a common cause.
- Meetings should be something your group looks forward to. Employees want to hear about recent learnings and new ideas.
- Try starting employee meetings with an engaging ice-breaking activity. Team members can share a fun fact about themselves or talk about a hobby.
- Include meals or at least refreshments and snacks, and keep it casual.
- Remind your team that they are doing important work. Every day, they are responsible for producing food for people while also taking care of the animals that make it possible.
- Prioritize. Don’t leave milk technicians on the bottom of your agenda. If no one milks, no one gets paid.
- Encourage employees to take care of themselves. It is good for them and for the animals in their care.
- Avoid addressing personal failures or weaknesses; save them for one-on-one reviews.
- Praise individuals who went out of their way to help others, while keeping in mind your introverts may not want public praise. Private praise can be just as motivating.
- Follow up. Set deadlines and follow through because if the team senses you don’t have a sense of urgency or genuinely don’t care, they might not either.
- Encourage bilingualism within the team to ensure everyone feels included.
- Be aware of cultural differences and how they may impact communication and team dynamics.
- The end of a meeting can be a good time to schedule personal reviews because people will be thinking about their own goals and desires.
These meetings shouldn’t be stressful, for you or for the attendees. By incorporating these strategies, you can create more effective, inclusive and productive meetings that cater to the diverse needs of your team –nd ultimately, result in less stress and improved well-being for your cows.
