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 You can tell a lot about the health of a resort and the team that operates it by sitting in on a variety of their meetings. What might an industry professional from another resort notice if he or she dropped in on yours?

At one meeting, the visiting stranger overhears a cohesive senior team that has obviously carved out time to tackle strategic issues head on. They are direct, courageous, and vulnerable enough to challenge each other in lively debate. Their robust dialog is punctuated by easy laughter.

Peeking in to watch another meeting, the stranger sees technically savvy mid-level operational managers who are clearly empowered to try new approaches. They are sketching out potential solutions to tactical issues in bright colors on a white board.

So far, so good.

At the next meeting, a morning department huddle, he can intuit from the bored expressions on the faces of sleepy line-level team members that a Groundhog-Day talking head is lecturing. The speaker is not pausing to ask for questions, presumably for the sake of “efficiency.” This guy feels a need to cover his routine information quickly so he can get the team positioned for “the real work.”

Success is in the Systems

Think about the “systems” that organize your resort. From the morning routine of opening for business, to loading guests on chairs and to preparing signature dishes the same way every time, all the way through sweep at the end of the day—your systems ensure continuity of best practices.

Meetings are the most mission-critical of all systems. They are the lubrication that keeps your operation humming at peak performance. They are where you persuade, inspire and motivate others to greatness. They provide the venue in which people can build relationships, express thoughts and feelings, and exchange information so they can do their jobs, achieve goals, and learn. Meetings are the mechanism that guarantees a consistent platform for information flow.

And that flow goes two ways. Your people crave inside information and want to be kept in the loop about what’s happening and why. But they also want their opinions heard, and to count.

All that makes communication a tough business. Whether you are running a mega destination resort with many layers of management, or a lean and mean day resort with a flat hierarchy, communication takes effort.

Three Types of Meetings

Every meeting at your resort should have a purpose. Defining the purpose, or the type of meeting, before gathering is a good first step.

The different meetings our resort visitor observed above each fall under one of three categories: strategic, tactical, and informational. The senior team scenario was “strategic,” typically held for goal setting, visioning, team building, cap ex planning, etc. The mid-management vignette was for “tactical problem solving,” typically held weekly to empower operating and front line management to get things done. Tactical meetings may also be scheduled ad hoc as needed for specific challenges.

The uninspired, front-line team member meeting was “informational,” a download of always-changing guest and employee information.

These are the meetings that populate the schedule of the resort staff’s annual calendar. They are mechanisms for planning, communication flow, and execution. They are scheduled with consistency, like any other resort system.

Communication is a Two-Way-Street

Of course, great meetings of any type don’t happen by accident. It takes effort to make them energizing and compelling. Too often, we wing it, making the upcoming meeting just another obligation, using a routine agenda with the same personalities leading and dominating conversations.

So take a cue from your marketing, public relations and social media strategists. They have engineered the path to keeping external guests and consumers engaged. They promote the brand with carefully crafted messages. Engaging your internal people needs to be thoughtfully orchestrated as well. Thematic messages that underscore your values, cultural, and guest expectations should flow from the top down to line level each week.

Why do some messages fall through the cracks? Because responsibility for communicating these messages often falls to well-intentioned but heavily burdened managers who are expected to cascade them throughout their functional business units. Some are great communicators, others not so much. All, however, must get your messages across. Your goal is to transform all managers into solid communicators.

Team members want to be the first to know, and to hear it directly from their leaders—way before they see it on Facebook or overhear insider information on line at the grocery store.

There’s a flow to your meeting schedule. The senior team should meet collectively first, and later with additional department head/planning managers, on a weekly basis. This senior team should be quite small: it is difficult to be agile and make decisions with more than six direct reports. Often, mid-week (Wednesday, say) works for senior management to review previous weekend business, mitigate pressing issues, deploy resources, and prepare for the next operating week.

To cascade information effectively, and to ensure that senior-level discussions and decisions are carried out by operating managers, the senior team may choose to meet with department head/planning managers the following day, Thursday.

The working managers of large departments and interdisciplinary teams (often mountain operations departments, profit centers, events/marketing/sales, and snow sports teams) should meet with their teams weekly, for tactical problem solving and to ensure proper planning and execution.

If your resort has 60 or fewer leaders and you have viable space, you can convene a weekly informational meeting where all key management-level communicators hear all the key messages at once. Often scheduled on Friday morning, this one-hour meeting is social, structured so many voices can be heard, and prepares everyone for the weekend regarding all the aspects of resort operations. Leads and supervisors can rotate in throughout the season so they feel like insiders, too.

Working team managers cascade relevant information to supervisors within their departments so that supervisors can pass this along to front line team members on Saturday mornings. Supervisors should make daily huddles interesting, and also ensure information from the line level ascends back to leadership.

How to Be Interesting

Creative meeting leadership is not a deliberately developed management skill in most companies. Still, you undoubtedly have some leaders who are naturals at engaging people. They come up with interesting ways to deliver information. Don’t take that for granted! Consciously or not, these leaders have cultivated that talent. They have learned to structure content, make overlapping points, tell personal stories, use their body language and voices effectively, and incorporate participants’ names into their remarks.

Fortunately, other leaders can adopt these tactics, too.

Some of the best communicators take a story they see on the web or hear on news radio on the morning drive, and draw parallels between that item of interest and life at the resort. They use anecdotes, innovations in and outside of our industry, stories about things our people care about—health, lifestyle, tales of great athletes, adventures, action sports, sustainability, the environment, even family and friends—to energize routine meetings and conversations.

Their best tactic is that when they feel like telling, they ask instead. Instead of lecturing blah-blah-blah and telling team members what they need to do to be ready for a big weekend or to take better care of the guest, they ask them what should be done. They let their people shine.

Best Practices for Meeting Facilitation

While strategic, tactical, and informational meetings each may have different purposes and expected outcomes, they begin with four key steps:

1. State the meeting purpose.

2. Describe the expected outcome.

3. Define the agenda items.

4. Invite the right people.

That last item can be tricky. There are times when only senior team members and decision makers should be at the conceptual stage, but there are also times when both tactical and technical people need to be side by side with senior management at the drawing board.

Recently, I observed a senior team having a discussion about an important initiative. It kept hitting roadblocks because it didn’t have the technical expertise that Tom, the mid-level construction manager, did. Every couple of minutes someone would exclaim, “Let’s run this by Tom.” Or, “Tom’s the go-to guy on this.” If this was the case, and the discussion was a planned agenda item, why wasn’t Tom invited to meeting?

Be sure to secure the best location you have available—comfortable with tools for facilitation (white boards, chart paper, markers). Don’t cut the food and beverage! It’s essential for idea-fueled collaboration and to keep energy alive.

Develop leader/facilitators (titles don’t matter) with strong interpersonal skills and the ability to record/paraphrase ideas on the white board or chart paper for visual impact. Use a variety of creative techniques and problem solving formulas to get ideas flowing. Make sure the participants feel valued, and that all are encouraged and expected to participate.

Now, some participants are by nature more enthusiastic or domineering than others. They blurt out their ideas with confidence. Others are more measured, weighing every word they say. This is just how different people are hardwired to communicate. If you want everyone in the meeting to discuss ideas, send the agenda and define the problem to be solved ahead of the meeting, so people who need time to formulate and articulate ideas in advance can weigh in. Create the expectation that all participants will bring big ideas to contribute.

Ask participants to rotate through the role of devil’s advocate. This will encourage the deeper thinkers to be more spontaneous, and give a break to the person who typically plays that role by default.

Strive for clarity. To that end:

• Reiterate decisions.

• Assign champions and due dates to action items. If everyone is in charge, no one is.

• Take a picture of action items, and

• always check the previous meeting’s action items for completion.

Brainstorming is an ongoing process, so place a bulletin board in a central location and write the problem to be solved in bright letters in the center of the board for all interested parties to see. Anyone with an idea writes it on a stickie/post it. This keeps the issue visible and top of mind, and spurs ideas by association. You can also reward people for their ideas. Leave it up for as long as you like.

Lightning Rounds Look Forward

Keep informational meetings tightly focused. Don’t try to wedge-in time for problem solving and participative conversation regarding tactical issues. Informational meetings are just that—a lightning round of information for and from participants. Topics should be looking ahead through the windshield, not for debriefing what’s now in the rearview mirror.

Tactical problems will emerge in this format, but refrain from attempting to solve them there unless you’ve allocated the time (see “Weekly Meeting Guide”). We’ve all felt that vibe and seen people roll their eyes when someone elongates a meeting by bringing up ideas or issues that need a deeper dive. Ask the interested parties to convene an ad hoc meeting to tackle that one issue, and to be prepared to report on progress at the next meeting.

It’s important to identify successes and areas for improvement so you don’t repeat past mistakes. Plan separate tactical meetings to autopsy what went well or didn’t work for events or initiatives. Don’t shortchange those issues by burying them in another too-short meeting.

How to manage these other issues as they arise in an informational meeting? Pat Lencioni, author of “Death by Meeting,” suggests using a template on which you can record lightning round items and note when they evolve into tactical or strategic issues.

For example, an idea for cap ex emerges. This potential strategic topic can be noted, and then discussed at the next strategic/budget-planning meeting. If you don’t value these ideas and revisit them, people will stop offering them.

Another manager asks for help with an immediate tactical issue. Add this to the tactical list for problem solving at either a regularly scheduled or ad hoc meeting of key leaders.

Note the space for the scoreboard and identified goals. If you haven’t yet developed these, create your template with more space for lightning round topics.

Strategically Thinking

Whether you do an end-of-season post mortem or quarterly or six-month long-term vision meetings, it’s critical for senior staff review the “hits and misses” of each department while the information is still fresh. Ask the staff, “What were the three goals/successes you are proudest of having achieved in your department this season, and which are the areas of opportunity or improvement on which to focus next season?” This is also the time when Big Ideas should be raised and evaluated—prior to budget or cap ex planning.

Getting off-site for high level strategic thinking and teambuilding can be an important factor for the end-of-season review. At every resort, there’s an inherent conflict between the day-to-day operational routine and the larger goals that will move the organization forward. During an off-site retreat, especially a facilitated one, you can come out of the trenches and stretch your collective intellect and management muscle.

What Can I Implement Tomorrow?

Regardless of whether you are the GM, a mid-manager, or individual contributor, you have a voice. Ask your frequent collaborators to read this article and highlight three good ideas for discussion. Send out the agenda and get to “cussing and discussing” how to improve your meetings. Your people will thank you.

And you will knock the socks off that next stranger who drops in on your meetings.

Laura is the president and co-founder of Tahoe Training Partners, a human resources and management training solutions consulting firm located near Lake Tahoe, California. A twenty-year ski industry and resort hospitality veteran, Laura is recognized as a leader who can sustain inspiring and productive business relationships with executives, managers and operating units to get things done. For a catalog of intellectually fresh workshops, to reframe your meetings, upgrade your management team’s presentation skills, or to discuss a customized approach for your next strategic planning session, contact Laura@tahoetrainingpartners.com.