T7. Hold meetings for impact
Design meetings with purpose and clarity. Time should lead to action.
Resources to support growth in this behaviour
Whether this behaviour has been chosen through Step 1. Diagnose, highlighted through reflection or coaching, or identified as a school or trust priority, you can now follow the steps below to develop and embed it in your daily leadership practice.
Step 2. Learn: Read Everyone Succeeds: 54 Leadership Behaviours to Transform Your School to understand what great leadership looks like in practice. Each behaviour is grounded in research and real examples from schools and businesses.
Step 3. Reflect: Use the Everyone Succeeds Workbook to apply ideas to your own context.
Guided reflection, practical actions, and space for planning turn understanding into improvement.
Step 4. Apply: Work through the Leadership Toolkit for this behaviour. Use the Meetings for Impact toolkit to plan purposeful agendas, keep discussions disciplined, and ensure actions lead to real improvement.
Step 5. Coach and practice: Use the Hold meetings for impact Coach and Practise Frameworks to strengthen the behaviour through coaching questions about purpose and outcomes, rehearsing disciplined meetings so time leads to action.
These can be used individually or with colleagues to embed key behaviours.
Step 6. Plan: Set measurable goals using the 90 Day Leadership Planner.
Turn improvement into action by tracking your focus and progress over time, with completed examples for different career stages.
Step 7. Lead: Apply your learning to real situations through the Scenario Finder.
Over fifty scenarios link directly to the behaviours that help you solve the challenges that matter most in your school.
One book suggestion
Death by Meeting – Patrick Lencioni (2004).
This book helps you apply the behaviour by showing how structured, purposeful meetings drive clarity, alignment and momentum. Buy the book.
References from the Everyone Succeeds book
Dutton, J.E., & Ashford, S.J. (1993). Selling issues to top management. Academy of Management Review, 18(3), 397-428.
Lencioni, P.M., (2010) Death by meeting: A leadership fable… about solving the most painful problem in business. John Wiley & Sons.
Rogelberg, S.G. (2022). Make the Most of Your One-on-One Meetings. [online] Harvard Business Review. Available at: https://hbr.org/2022/11/make-the-most-of-your-one-on-one-meetings.