employee management

business team meeting

Quick Tips to Hosting Better Team Meetings

Team meetings are important for catching up with your co-workers regarding your group’s weekly or monthly accomplishments and challenges. It strengthens the communication between employees and designated leaders within the workplace. Being in charge of a team meeting can be daunting to some, especially for those who are doing it for the first time. The following tips can help you get on track and start organising amazing meetings!

1. Enumerate objectives to set the tone

Before starting a meeting, list down your agenda for the whole session. You can dedicate a slide to this at the beginning of your PowerPoint presentation or write in on the board. This gives the participants an idea of what to discuss and which topics are to be prioritised. Anything outside the list of objectives can either be discussed in another meeting or if there’s time left. Having a prepared list also helps everyone stay on track in means of topic and time.

business team meeting
Discuss the agenda beforehand to inform every one of the meeting’s objectives.

Additionally, it’s better to have this agenda list crowdsourced beforehand: ask participating members in advance if they have core issues they want to share in the meeting that can be part of the objectives list. This way, you are giving them an everyone a fair chance of getting their voices heard.

2. Encourage participation

Always dedicate even just a small part of the meeting to hearing out everyone present in the room. Even quiet members can sometimes have great ideas and opinions to share. Keep a mindset of hosting meetings not just because you have something to say to everyone, but rather, making it a platform for everyone to be heard. You can also take the time to ask everyone about their weekend, share a piece of good news from their personal lives, or a short weekly update on their tasks. This can help liven up the meeting or serve as an icebreaker and help lighten up the mood.

3. Find solutions as a team

Though different tasks and challenges are delegated to each member, it’s important to also steer focus on working together to help each department lead or participating member who’s experiencing difficulty come up with action plans. Adopting this into practice further develops communication between employees and provides a fresh perspective in approaching different issues. It also builds a strong sense of camaraderie and increases the probability of having more successful interdepartmental collaborations.

business team meeting
Make every success a team effort.

4. Incorporate something new

Having weekly meetings can get monotonous especially when you keep following the same format. To spice things up, you can try adding something to break up the pattern: show a related Ted Talk, bring in snacks, ask everyone to dress the same colour or have the meeting at a different location. Introducing variety even in the smallest of ways can help make the meeting feel different every single time.

 

Mastering the art of leading an engaging meeting can be very tricky, but we hope that these steps will help turn your reporting into something your team members can look forward to every week.

video call business man

Key Tips For Managing Your Offshore Team

Already got a team abroad working on your operations? If this is your first time hiring an offshore staff, it can be a bit difficult to handle a whole team. You’ll eventually get used to it, but instead of finding your way in the dark, entrepreneur.com shares some vital tips on how to cater to your outsourced team.

One of the crucial things to consider when hiring an offshore staff is ensuring smooth communication. This includes choosing offshore employees with strong English skills and assigning a team leader that will help ease communication between you and the rest of your remote staff. Another way would be to visit your team abroad at least once a year, this is to strengthen your connection with your staff members and engage with them on a more personal level.

To learn more about these tips, you can read the full article here.

happy business woman

The Power of a Positive Attitude

Keeping a positive outlook in life comes naturally to some, but not all. As working adults, we often overlook positivity in favour of being grounded in reality to avoid getting disappointed. When it comes to your career, however, being cheerful and optimistic can actually help you a lot. If you find yourself having trouble thinking more about the good things in life, we’ve listed some of the ways you can change your state of mind.

1. Monitor thoughts by keeping a journal

We all have bad days and go through rough patches in life–it cannot be avoided. When the times are tough, staying optimistic is often the last thing we have in mind. By keeping a journal, you can keep track of your thoughts, feelings, opinions and ideas. You can then look back at what you’ve written and proceed to assess your mental state. Ever seen a Facebook status you wrote years ago pop up on your FB Memories? A lot of people cringe at their older selves for posting such stuff when they were younger, and keeping a journal is exactly like that. You can reminisce about all the good things that have happened, and remind yourself of what you’ve learned from your past mistakes and misfortunes. Some people maintain specific journals, like a “gratitude journal” to remind themselves of what to be thankful for, some people keep a dream journal and so on. Keeping a journal is also a healthy way of airing out your thoughts while still keeping your privacy.

2. Practice using affirmative language

Instead of saying “I can’t”, there are positive ways to approach tasks and situations. You can repeat the following phrases to yourself, or just keep them in mind to help motivate you:

  • “I know I can do it.”
  • “I can beat any challenge.”
  • “I’m one day closer to my goals.”
  • “If I believe it, I can achieve it.”  

Using this as a mantra helps set your mind in working towards your goals and keeps you in focus.

positive cup

3. Dedicate a few minutes to power posing

A new study has revealed that holding a power pose for as short as two minutes can help boost your confidence and performance. In a Ted Talk by Amy Cuddy, body language and non-verbal communication significantly affects and reflects our attitude and behaviour. By tweaking the way we use our body, we can project a stronger character that our brains can later adapt into. As she puts it, “fake it ‘til you make it.” Amy advises that this trick can be easily applied to real-life situations such as getting a confidence boost before a job interview or giving a speech. Power posing can raise testosterone levels by 20% and decrease cortisol levels (a hormone released by the body when under stress) by 25%.

stretch in office

4. Change the way you approach challenges

Whenever you hit a particularly difficult part of your life, or when things don’t go according to what you’ve expected, think of it as a simple detour. To quote Aaron Burr from Hamilton: An American musical, “I am the one thing in life I can control.” There are a lot of things that are beyond our control, but we can always incite changes within ourselves. Re-frame your challenges by thinking of failures as mere redirections instead of dead-ends: when one door closes, another one will open.

 

These are just a few ways on how you can maintain a positive attitude. When practised regularly, it will be just as easy as breathing.

Did you enjoy reading this article? You can check out this one for tips on how to spice up your work life.

leader

3 Key Characteristics an Efficient Leader Must Have

Notable leaders have shaped our culture and history, from legendary monarchs to known heroes and famous political personalities–great leadership has always been rewarded and renowned.  But what is leadership? What are the qualities of a good leader? The answer might be more complex than what we think, but in this article, we will narrow it down on three key characteristics.

work stress

3 Ways to Spice Up Your Work Life

Stagnation and stress come even to the best of us–there always comes a time when we hit a plateau in which we feel we are no longer growing as a person and lacking motivation. As much as you love your job, it can get very dull when you feel like you’ve been stuck in a mindless routine day in and day out. Here at DBOS, we understand the plight of getting into that daily grind and working hard to achieve our goals: which is why we compiled these nifty tips to help keep your mind and body in great shape, so you can look forward to working every day without burning out!