Team Meetings with Meaning - June 2025

As the academic year slips towards the post-exam reflection and planning space, many of us will be taking stock of what has worked, what needs refining, and where to focus our energy next. This kind of review is critical, but if we stop at the “what”, we risk missing something vital: the how.

How are we making these decisions? How are we making conversations safe and fully participatory? How well are we listening to and showing up for each other?

Let’s talk about making the most of meetings.

Time is a seriously precious resource in schools! And how we use it when we come together - how we show up, engage, and benefit from it - has a huge impact far beyond those 60 or 90 minutes.

Hopefully most meetings have a clear purpose: to get certain things done, to share key updates, to make clear decisions. But if we’re not also attending to the meaning behind these meetings, we miss a deeper opportunity. In the rush, and often overloaded agenda, we may overlook the more subtle dynamics at play: the tone of the conversation, the energy in the room, the sense of connection or disconnection. Without this intentionality, meetings can quickly become another tick-box, draining energy, rather than fuelling it. But when we meet with meaning, we create space not just for action points, but for alignment, belonging and shared investment in one another and our shared mission.

In 'The Power of Teams', Sam Crome challenges us to be intentional about all aspects surrounding our meetings:

• Before – Does this item really require the attention of the whole team?

• During – How do we create space for equal contribution and healthy challenge?

• After – Are we following up? Is feedback sought? Are action points owned and updates shared?

  
  

Starting meetings with connection, even something as simple as a personal check-in or a shared laugh, can immediately set the tone for how people are expected to show up.

These moments build trust, safety, and warmth. They create a sense of shared space, not just shared agenda, thereby reminding us we’re not just colleagues solving problems, but human beings sharing a journey, all with valuable contributions and perspectives to share.

As a leader, it can feel scary to openly invite all thoughts and feelings into the room. What if you uncover things that are really difficult to manage, such as a conflict between colleagues or a challenge on your leadership? This absolutely takes courage. But it lies at the heart of coherent teamwork. It’s in these honest moments that a culture of psychological safety builds, trust deepens and yes, barriers surface, which is necessary if we are to truly address what may be holding the team back.

Brene Brown’s invitation, “Let’s Rumble!” in her bestseller, Dare to Lead, encourages leaders to actively get underneath the issues, ask deeper questions, and name what’s really going on, including people’s often-unspoken thoughts, feelings, and lived experiences of the dynamics at play. She calls this being “In the Arena”: the place you're likely to "get your ass kicked"!

Using the Arena as our backdrop, let’s think about how to “rumble with vulnerability” in our team meetings. One approach that helps teams go deeper is to bring a coaching lens to discussion items. Before diving into transactional problem-solving, pause and ask: How do we want to approach this topic? What do we want to have achieved or understood by the end? What is the reality of people’s current experience? From there, you can explore all the available options and start shaping a shared way forward. This T-GROW structure brings clarity, collaboration and momentum:

• Set the Tone – How do we want to approach this together today?

• Goal – What do we want to achieve or understand by the end?

• Reality – What’s the current picture?

• Options – What are the different ways forward?

• Way Forward – What are we committing to?

This structure turns meetings into shared thinking spaces, reinforcing that meetings are not just about tasks, but about team: creating something greater than the sum of its parts.

There are many other practical tools and frameworks which can help to create a meeting structure to bring everybody’s thoughts onto the same page, sometimes literally! For instance, this Team Balloon model introduced to me by my Coaching Supervisor, Jenny Bird, in her book The Art of Coaching - Bird and Gornall. Here, teams are prompted to discuss their aspirations, values and challenges, giving consideration to the types of thoughts, language and behaviours which will be helpful to “take off and rise to new heights”:

Of course, teams are complex. Each person in the room brings something different. Some are energised by open discussion; others need time to process. Some speak up readily; others may need space created for their voice. Understanding each other’s communication preferences and processing styles helps teams work with each other’s strengths, rather than talking past each other. It also gives leaders insight into what’s really going on in the room, managing meeting dynamics to draw everyone in, not just the loudest or most confident.

If you’ve used colour profiling or similar tools, you’ll know how helpful it can be in building individual self awareness and team functionality. If you haven’t explored this yet, we’d encourage you to find out more here: Colour Personality Profiling.

Individual Profile

Team Map

We’ll return to the wider topic of team cohesion another month, as there’s much more to explore! For now, we offer you these three questions to help you consider how to make the most of your valuable meeting time. Even if your team will be changing in September, thinking now about creating a shared set of guiding values and principles gives new members something meaningful to join. It’s a gift to them, and a commitment to each other.

Questions for Reflection:

1. If I was starting from scratch, how would I design my team’s meeting rhythm: how often, how long, and how focused?

2. Looking at our current structure, what’s one improvement I could make to create more space for connection or meaning?

3. Outside of the meeting time itself, what actions, language and behaviours could I adopt to create a sense of value for the meetings? 

   
   

This is the perfect opportunity to bring your team into discussions. Remember, when people feel heard, involved, and invested, discretionary effort rises. Motivation becomes intrinsic, a sense of belonging forms, and with that comes the real magic of team culture.

As we plan for our what (purpose & outcomes), let’s also design our how (values & behaviours) so that our meetings reflect who we are and who we are becoming. Because when we meet with meaning, we don’t just move things forward, we move forward together.

Warmest wishes,

Catherine Hulme

Owner Director

catherine@leadershipedge.org.uk

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Leadership Edge is a growing team of experienced school leaders who have seen person-centred coaching create high-performing, happy and healthy cultures within our schools. Our mission is to empower other school leaders to create positive workplaces where staff are solution-focused and actively responsible for their own personal wellbeing and professional development.

Our 3-Tier Coaching Accreditation Programme is low-cost and self-sustaining, providing a systematic and structured model for staff across your school to become powerful coaches for each other, enhancing colleague relationships and their feeling of being valued as an individual within a supportive school community.