Founded by passionate small business owners, the Alliance of Independent Entrepreneurs (AIE) addresses the unique challenges that independent businesses face. The founders discovered a need for more representation and resources for small business owners. Creating an organization that provided support, advocacy, and networking for independent businesses was a necessary endeavor.
AIE handles policy representation, provides legal assistance for members, hosts educational workshops and mentorship programs, offers networking and conferences for the community, and much more.
Since establishing the nonprofit, the AIE team had been facing issues in the workplace that greatly affected productivity and output.
Co-owner Elizabeth was determined to find training tools for her team to resolve the issues that had grown over the past year so that her team could function smoothly and with enthusiasm.
The Challenge of Governance and Stakeholder Management
Elizabeth’s biggest concerns with the business were leadership roles and governance structures. Quality communication and decision-making suffered at AIE due to disputes about roles and responsibilities, obstacles with leadership transitions, and ineffective board governance. Elizabeth’s team had trouble understanding their roles, old or new, which affected efficiency and board meetings.
Stakeholder management was also a struggle for Elizabeth and her team. Managing diverse stakeholders and their expectations proved to be a real challenge. Interests among stakeholders often clashed which led to disputes and an unclear path forward.
Elizabeth needed to find training for her team to equip employees to step up to their roles, support their coworkers, have a healthy dialogue, and learn to put the community first when making decisions and managing expectations.
Why GettaMeeting?
Elizabeth needed the training to be easily accessible as most of the team works remotely, some in different time zones. She also wanted her investment to be worthwhile, meaning content that the team won’t quickly forget but will remember and utilize for weeks to come until the knowledge and skills become a natural part of AIE'swork.
GettaMeeting was the best solution for Elizabeth as her small budget went far with her purchase of the Build Relationships: Breaking Bread meeting module from the Employee Empowerment series. The comprehensive meeting modules aligned perfectly with the topics that the AIE team needed help with. Because all of GettaMeeting’s modules can be downloaded or streamed, Elizabeth was excited about how easy the meeting would be to host.
Elizabeth shared: “What ultimately sold me was the fact that I could download everything and distribute it to my team. The video was instantly ready to go, and the meeting enhancements all came in a PDF, which gave me a sort of agenda and to-do list to prepare for the meeting.”
The Process: How Elizabeth Used the Build Relationships: Breaking Bread module
After purchasing the module, Elizabeth instantly had access to the meeting video, Enhancements PDF, and word cloud. She downloaded the video and enhancements so that she could easily access them during the virtual meeting.
Next, she crafted an email invite to send to all of her employees in advance. In the email, she briefly described the module and the main topics that would be discussed. She included the date and time of the meeting (about two weeks out), then added additional content for her team. She included links to the 3 book recommendations from the Enhancements PDF along with the book club questions, inspirational quotes, and word cloud. She also inserted the link to a Spotify playlist she made using the curated playlist from the module.
After the invitation was sent, Elizabeth worked on utilizing the rest of the Enhancements. Because most of her employees work remotely from home, she wanted the meeting extras to be minimal yet impactful. She picked the team-building game that worked best over an online meeting platform and purchased one of the prize suggestions to send to whoever won the game.
Lastly, Elizabeth chose two take-away item ideas to purchase and send to each employee. She timed the online order so the prizes would arrive to each employee about a day before the meeting. These small items would help remind the team members of their new knowledge and to apply it daily at work.
Elizabeth felt relieved after scheduling and preparing for the meeting. “This search for training that I had been stressing over and trying to figure out was suddenly taken care of in less than an hour. And I feel great about the value that this meeting will bring to the team...I just know it will finally engage them and help them with the challenges they face every day.”
Facilitation
The day of the meeting went smoothly as Elizabeth started the online meeting early while playing the curated playlist to greet members as they virtually joined. Once everyone joined, Elizabeth quickly ran over the purpose of the meeting and began with the team-building activity to get everyone engaged and excited. She took note of who won the game and sent the prize to the winner after the meeting.
Then the team watched the video via Elizabeth’s shared screen and paused to complete the icebreakers throughout the video. Lastly, Elizabeth reminded members of the book recommendations, book club questions, word cloud, and takeaway items that could be used to help the team reflect on and use the meeting content.
The weeks following the meeting boasted incredible progress. The AIE team started working more efficiently as they were able to talk through and clarify roles and responsibilities. With this improvement came greater confidence among team members and higher productivity and output. Employees’ communication was enhanced and the team grew closer. Together, the AIE team was able to better communicate expectations with stakeholders and lead every decision-making meeting with the well-being of the community as a priority. When disputes arose, employees worked together to honor expertise while practicing healthy dialogue. Decisions were made quicker, communication became efficient, and relationships among coworkers and other stakeholders grew more respectful and reliable.
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If you want to experience similar results, discover our many meeting modules at gettameeting.com. Use code FIRSTORDER2024 at checkout for 25% off your first order!
Need help choosing modules for your team? Read our article or contact us at customercare@gettameeting.com.
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