Team Meetings for Success.

Your guaranteed breakthrough to master successful team meetings every time!

You might wonder, why I highlight Monthly Department Meetings as we all have experienced or entertained them forever. Well, I highlight them as in my Spas they have always been the HIGHLIGHTS of the month - for my team and for myself!

When it was time for my first monthly department meeting in one of my previous Spas, I was ready to get the entire team excited in the days prior to it. What faced me were odd regards, question-marks in my team’s eyes and an anxious energy around me … from the line staff employee to our Assistant Manager. At this point, I generously offered to take care of the preparation and entertainment of the meeting - to the enormous relief of our Assistant Manager. You also know this unwell feeling when your department meeting is coming closer ??! I get you, I have been there too but decided to make a change! Here is how also you can overcome this and motivate your team at the same time!

I actively spread the word among the team, shared my excitement, blocked team members on the schedule so they wouldn’t get booked and could join. Big astonishment all around the team - not about what I was doing but my enthusiasm and joy with which I was looking forward to our first meeting as a team.

Was the team ready for what was coming? Maybe not, as most never experienced a joyful Monthly Meeting before … BUT they loved it! As my vision for monthly meetings is all about them, everyone left energized! Everyone had a big smile on their face after 60 minutes spent together!

What has been my vision for our monthly meetings you wonder? For me, it is about giving back to my team. The team is the focus. The goal is to fill their buckets with recognition and love and praise by highlighting their success and sharing appreciation for what they do. The goal is to have everyone be part of the meeting in some way and make them feel special, important and belonging. As with our guests, the goal is to give your team an experience.

Here some corner points how you can achieve this:

• Use a powerpoint template that you reuse every time for a sense of recognition. Invest into the preparation of your meeting, so your team sees you are ready. The preparation can take up to 2-3 hours, even a little more the first times.

• Build the meeting up in three sections - People, Product and Profit

  • People - Here you can celebrate the team birthdays of the month showing their pictures, the company anniversaries, employee of the month nominations, HR updates, introducing new planning committee members and department heads, you can share guest feedback and celebrate the employees. It is also great to have team members present either about a topic, about a Spa they visited, or a meeting they went to. There are no limits literally. Be creative and brainstorm with your Spa Leadership team how you can highlight and celebrate your team.

  • Product - Ideal to share new introductions of your Spa from new services, to new retail products, to new refreshments that your team may taste, new company updates on new projects. There is no limit to your creativity.

  • Profit - This is a section where you can share financial results of the Spa but also highlight the best performers of your team of most treatments performed, best enhancement and retail sellers, … your creativity guides you here. It is extra special to put a picture of the winners there so the team finds themselves being part of this meeting and feel valued. If you have samples from vendors, you may offer each winner a little gift.

• Teams love to have some refreshments there - either from our pastry team or from the supermarket.

• At one point it’s fun to do a little quiz to break up the flow of the meeting, like 4-5 questions about the hotel and your Spa and the winners get some little samples.

• Invite other department heads from the hotel or a member of the planning committee. Always keep in mind to connect the Hotel to the Spa and vice versa.

• You wonder rightly where the famous Q&A is that so often - if not every time - drops the rhythm and energy of a team meeting. Well, the answer is, there is none in my meetings. A Q&A is ideally done daily at the end of a daily briefing, so that frustration does not build up until a monthly meeting and allows you to NOT have to include it into our celebratory team meeting.

I proudly say that Team Meetings can be a celebration. It’s always been THE moment of the month for my teams, the moment to which everyone looks forward to and where we come together as a team again. Like a little team building. A source of energy and motivation that gets us through the next month with bright spirits and intention.

I would love to hear about how you celebrate your team! And my most sincere wish from me to you is, that you leave every of your future monthly meetings filled with joy of what you were able to give back!