FULL TRANSCRIPT

00:00 – Show Opening

Are you a professional who wants to become a more effective leader? Then get ready for daily tips from the coach with the experience and inspiration to help you succeed in any leadership situation. Your listening to the Meeting Leadership Podcast with Gordon Sheppard.

00:27 – Podcast content starts here!

Welcome to another episode of the Meeting Leadership Podcast. My name is Gordon Sheppard. And I just want to say thank you for being here. And thank you because if you’re here, it means that you really grasp what I mean when I say meeting leadership. Now I believe that you can’t have a great meeting without being a great leader, and you can’t be a great leader without knowing how to run a great meeting. And every day on the podcast, what we’re trying to do is help you build your leadership skills and actually learn how to be an outstanding leader so that you can pull those things together, and really go forward, and be as productive as possible for yourself, for your team, for your family, for the places where you’re doing this in the community. Honestly, it is great to have you here.

01:11 – Celebrating success in the workplace

And today’s topic, it is critical for all leaders. But so often because we all say we’re too busy, we don’t take advantage of it because today we’re going to talk about how every leader can celebrate success in the workplace. And I know that some of you just heard me say that, and you’re like, “Come on. We are just swamped. We don’t have time to do that kind of thing. We don’t have the budget to do that kind of thing.” well today I’m going to knock down all those objectives. We’re going to talk about how you can do things on a tight budget, how you can really do things if you’ve got lots of money. And we’re really going to help you pull it all together so that you take advantage of this thing that we really should do more often.

01:46 – Celebrating success on a tight budget

And to start things off, here are a few ways that you can celebrate if you’ve got sort of no budget or a very tight budget. The first thing you do is you go to your meeting team and you say, “What are the ways that you’d like to celebrate?” And you take their suggestions. That’s one way to kind of kick things off and get them thinking about it.

Now the next thing you can do is actually during your next meeting, you can all take a moment to look each other in the eye and honestly say, “Thank you.” That may be just the authentic way that you celebrate with your team, and you may not have to do anything else. But really being conscious of that and actually putting that into action it can go a long, long way. And of course, great food is always a way to help you celebrate, so why not just ask your team if they’d like to actually have a potluck and bring in a dish. And then you can get sort of a lunch going maybe before or after your next big meeting.

02:36 – Sending hand-written thank you cards

And another great way that a meeting facilitator can really celebrate everyone on their team is they can actually send handwritten thank you cards to each team member. This is a real chance to personalize, let them know how you’re feeling about what they’re doing, really give them a pat on the back and give them something that they can put on their desk to remember that you’re really impressed with what they’re doing. 

02:56 – Newsletters and testimonials

And to continue on the writing theme, you could actually put good news into a staff newsletter or you could also have someone who benefits from your work write a testimonial letter and then get him or her to read it out loud at your next team meeting. And this works especially well for customer service and nonprofit board meetings.

03:19 – Celebrating success with a big budget

And if you and your team are really lucky, here are a few ways to celebrate with money. To start with, you could actually measure the outcomes that are coming from the meetings that you’re conducting and tie those outcomes to year end bonuses. This will hopefully incent them to have even better meetings. And if you really want to go for it, of course you can go for offsite events like paint ball, bowling, golf, maybe some softball. Or why not take the whole team and their entire families on a vacation? And if it really doesn’t suit your team to do those big getaway activities when it comes to celebrating, maybe you could just get together and choose a charity that you want to support. And then instead of doing your regular meetings that you’re supposed to be going to, you can actually use that time to volunteer for that charity.

04:07 – Don’t wait to celebrate

And regardless of whether you have money or you don’t have money, the big message that I want to get across is don’t wait to celebrate. I can speak from my own personal experience. Listen, my dad died from a heart attack when I was 16 years old. My mom, she died from lung cancer when I was just 24. Do I wish I had celebrated more with them? Yeah, I do. Do I wish I’d taken better care of my staff when I was a corporate manager? Yes, absolutely. And now what I can say with my own business and as a professional meeting facilitator, do I now make sure that my clients include celebration as every part of every engagement that we do? Absolutely. So no, you are not too busy. And yes, you can figure out the most appropriate way to celebrate with your meeting team. It doesn’t really have to do with money. It can of course if that’s the way you guys operate.

05:16 – The benefits of celebrating success

But really, can you imagine if you sort of dialed in the authentic way that you and your team celebrate, how much would that do for morale, for retention, and really for just being a better person in this life? And the results of being able to truly celebrate with your team will be things like a lot more smiles, a lot more buyin, and definitely many more profitable meetings.

05:29 – Episode recap

And now, let me take a moment to recap the key concepts from how every leader can celebrate success in the workplace. Number one, you don’t need money to celebrate with you and your team. You can actually just get started by really learning how to say a sincere thank you. Number two, if you’ve got money, find the right way to celebrate with your team. If they actually don’t want to go out on the golf course for five hours, don’t drag them out there. But if that’s what they love, then why not just really go for it and actually go find one of those old courses and travel down to Pebble Beach, or out to the old course in Scotland and really make it the kind of memorable thing that gets people really, really motivated? And the final reminder, well don’t wait to celebrate. This life is short. Just get out there and do it as soon as you can.

06:16 – How To Inspire Others As A Leader In Meetings – https://meetingleadershipinc.com/62

And if you have been enjoying this episode, you’re going to really like episode 62 on the Meeting Leadership Podcast. It’s called How to Inspire Others as a Leader in Meetings. And you can get that episode by going to meetingleadershipinc.com/62.

06:33 – Meeting Leadership Academy – https://meetingleaderhshipinc.com/academy

And I also want to let you know that this episode of the Meeting Leadership Podcast is brought to you by the Meeting Leadership Academy. Now if you’re looking for great live training options and online training options to help you build your leadership skills and learn how to run outstanding meetings, then visit meetingleadershipinc.com/academy. And as always, thank you so much for listening, and we’ll see you tomorrow on the Meeting Leadership Podcast.

06:59 – Podcast Outro

Thanks for listening to the Meeting Leadership Podcast. Be sure to subscribe for more strategies to help you become an outstanding leader. And don’t forget to rate and review so we can bring you fresh content every day. We’ll see you tomorrow right here on the Meeting Leadership Podcast.