Knowing how to train and organize your staff is a big part of what makes your business run smoothly and without a hitch. It also gives you the ability to be able to be a leader and depend on them to get things done when they are supposed to be done. It all starts with communication!

If you don’t communicate effectively people will either end up upset or feel like you as the owner or manager let them down, because they didn’t know or weren’t warned. Our communication comes in a few forms, starting with digital.

Slack has been an incredible app for us to be able to communicate internally. In our slack system we have different channels for each aspect of our business. General, fitness, youth, social media, schedule, event ideas etc

Slack allows our team to communicate in a searchable way, gives us the ability to plan and strategize and send reminders to the team about anything we have coming up in the future. We can also share content in there for posting on social media and integrate with google docs to be able to share blogs posts for feedback. I highly recommend using slack for your team communication!

Next up are your staff meetings where you get everyone on track and prepared for what’s to come and what has happened. Before our meetings we prepare an agenda that everyone gets a copy of and I recommend holding bi-weekly meetings as it gives enough time for the information from the last meeting to soak in.

The agenda should have the following on it:

• An outline of the meeting

• What’s due for the next meeting

• Necessary social media content for the month or the week and who is assigned to do it: Blogs, Videos, Pictures, etc

• Upcoming events

• Goals for the next month: How many leads?, How many new clients? Revenue targets

• Follow up from end of month goals: Did they make their goals? Why or why not? How will they improve next time?

• Client feedback: Good?, Bad? Why?

It’s important to be the leader in these meetings and keep everyone accountable and on track for 1. Showing up and 2. Hitting their targets and getting their necessary work done, because if you don’t hold them accountable and to a standard you will create a culture where no one ever gets anything done and you have no control. Thats a bad management position to be in and a recipe for disaster.

At the conclusion of the meeting I always go over our key objectives and what we need to focus on. Saying it at the end keeps the most important pieces in their mind. Now the meetings will quickly turn into something everyone dreads if you don’t have a little bit of fun before or after.

Because we don’t want to have the most boring meetings in the history of the world and because we have a serious culture of fun we always start the meetings off with food at a good local restaurant (where we can make some new connections), a workout or both! The meetings are also pretty goofy and lighthearted and our slack channel is off the hook.  

It comes down to being an effective and organized leader who understands what their people need and how to tell them what they did well or didn’t do well and lastly it takes leaders who understand that if your staff love you and look forward to your meetings. You won’t have to even ask them to come in!