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The 1 Hour/Week That Has Transformed Our Family · The Family Teams Podcast

• 0:00
  I got to tell you guys that this is one of those things that for so many family teams sort of tips the scale for them. This is when they suddenly realize, oh, my family is not just a collection of individuals. My family is not just a nest. My family is not just a place where we nurture. My family is a place where we get things done, where we're productive, where we work together. If you're going to do hard things together productively, this is a non-negotiable.
• 0:26
  Hi, welcome to the Family Teams podcast. Our goal here is to help your family become a multi-generational team on mission by providing you with biblically rooted concepts, tools, and rhythms. Your hosts are Jeremy Pryor and Jefferson Bethke, and we can't wait to chat about all things family.
• 0:44
  Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the podcast. All right. We are back to talk about a new theme coming up in the month of June. So coming up, we're going to talk all about team meetings. So April and I are here today. April, how are you doing today? Hello. Hello. Doing well. Thank you.
• 1:02
  Yeah, it's been a full week. Both of us are cruising around, getting a lot done. I have a lot more to get done. We're kind of in the midst of a move. Not a big move, more an internal move. But those are still very complicated. Yeah. Shifting things around takes time to figure it all out. Yes. Yeah, one of our daughters are heading off to...
• 1:27
  her mission for a couple of months. So she said now tomorrow. So yeah, a lot of changes around here, a lot of things to celebrate, but yeah, it's a lot. So it's interesting, yeah, we're kind of in that spot where you have kids and grandkids. Anytime we have somebody in this position, we're always, me and April always like, okay, like, how do you do this? Like, how do you prioritize?
• 1:50
  It's such a cool opportunity. You've got these grandkids and you have your adult kids that have needs, but you also have kids in the house. And so this is something we're trying to figure out. Most of you guys listening to this haven't hit that point yet, but you all likely will. And so we will be sharing with you all of the learnings and mistakes and victories along the way. But today is all about meetings. And I got to tell you guys that this is one of those things that for so many family teams sort of tips the scale for them.
• 2:20
  My family is not just a collection of individuals. My family is not just a nest. My family is not just a place where we nurture. My family is a place where we get things done, where we're productive, where we work together. And every single team...
• 2:35
  You've ever been a part of that has had any success, I guarantee you, has had meetings. Maybe they've been spontaneous, but you've got to gather the people and get on the same page. If you're going to do hard things together productively, this is a non-negotiable. Every sports team has meetings. Every business team has meetings. Very, very few families have meetings.
• 2:54
  regular weekly disciplined thoughtful meetings and that is to me proof that that that they are not a team if you are not currently doing regular productive meetings as a family team either as a couple or as a family if you have a little bit older kids eight and up then i got a question whether you really are leading your family as a team it's likely you are trying to build something else
• 3:19
  Now, a lot of this is like, well, no, I really want to be a team, but like, I don't know how to do these meetings. I've done work meetings and I hate it. Like we bring work stuff into the house. This is like a big objection people have. And but this is, again, a team thing, not a work thing. And so oftentimes we do learn at work some of the best practices for how to lead and teams and how to become productive. And so to sort of overtly label things as work things or family things is important.
• 3:48
  Way too simplistic of categories to create. One of the categories you have to create is productive things. Every productive team meets. Okay, so I want to give you, and April, I'm going to hand you guys through this part of the accelerator, a meeting agenda that will require usually zero prep from you.
• 4:07
  but will bring your family together on one page and will be quite productive for your family. We've been doing this, practicing this format for, I don't know, how long do you think we've been doing this version of a meeting? Probably 12 years. Yeah, it's a long time.
• 4:26
  Under 12 years, yeah. And before we did this particular format I'm going to share with you guys today, we tried many other formats, okay? So this wasn't our first go at it. This was probably our fifth or sixth, you know, real attempt at creating a productive meeting. And once we found this format,
• 4:42
  then I was like, oh, this really is kind of checking all the boxes. So for those of you guys interested in going really deep into this, you really want to implement a family meeting, I'd really encourage you guys to jump into the accelerator. So this whole month of June, coming up, we're going to talk about
• 4:58
  all kinds of different ways of doing team meetings, but particularly the one meeting that we're going to talk about today. And if you want to get a free, like kind of description of the first play of this playbook, the beginning of this, how we do this, then I encourage you guys to go over to familyteams.com slash meetings, and you can download that free one pager. It'll help you kind of guide you through part of this meeting, the part that I think is really helpful for getting this thing started.
• 5:23
  Um, and so we're going to walk you guys through some of the, some of the details, the way the accelerator works for those of you guys who don't know about the accelerator, you can go to familyteams.com, just click on the accelerator. If you're interested, we do every single month. We do another one of these and in the accelerator, the first thing you're going to get is, uh, the playbook. And so this is a much more detailed version of what you guys can get in the free PDF at familyteams.com slash meetings. You get the playbook the second week.
• 5:48
  You will have a Zoom call with community coaches. I am super pumped about this month's community coaches. April and I love the couple you guys are going to get to hang out with in the Accelerator in the month of June. They're good friends of ours, Jeremy and Kristen Netting. If you've been following the podcast for a long time, you might remember Jeremy Netting was the guy who invented the family kickball. Yeah.
• 6:10
  So, um, and many other things, this is one of the most creative family teams that we know of. They have six boys. Now, can you imagine trying to do meetings with six boys? So I did a podcast with them. You guys can jump on that. Um, download that podcast. If that's, uh, that I think that'll come out in next week. Um.
• 6:27
  That one hasn't come out and come out yet, but they will be in the accelerator to help answer all your questions on the second week of June. So you can get that if you're in the accelerator, can't make it to the Zoom call. You can always get the recording if you're in there. Then April and I are going to walk you through our top like six or seven tips for how to lead a meeting on the third week and the fourth week.
• 6:48
  We really love getting to do this with you guys, which is the big town hall Zoom call that April, myself, usually a couple of our kids jump on there and we'll answer any question you guys have about family. We'll talk deeper about meetings. You can ask our kids like, what was it like sitting there having these meetings with your family?
• 7:04
  So anyway, that's the accelerator. Jump in there if you're interested. Grab that free download. But we'd love to have you guys in the accelerator. It's such a great community. We got more and more and more families every month jumping in there. And it's also a great place just to meet people in your area. We were always asked, like, is there any family teams in Dallas or in Kansas City or in Detroit or whatever? And so as we get more and more people in the accelerator, oftentimes you will meet each other. And we're constantly trying to figure out, okay, how can we create these little clusters? Because it's really hard to do this alone. So...
• 7:33
  All right, April. Well, I would love for you to walk everyone here through a Sunday morning in the life of the Pryor family. So about 12 years we've been doing this. And so maybe just like set the stage for somebody who maybe isn't doing a current meeting yet. Are you dragging your kids, kicking and screaming?
• 7:54
  I don't know what people picture when they picture a family meeting. So I always want to like try to give y'all a picture of what life is like trying to pull this off. But we do this every Sunday morning. And so we worship on Sunday night. So that's been made a little bit easier for us. We do go to worship service sometimes earlier on Sunday when we decide to go to a traditional worship service, which is once or twice a month. But we gather as a house church. So just so you
• 8:20
  what you guys do this on Sunday morning? How does that work? So, so that's how that works. But April, what is it like? What happens at a Sunday morning roll? Well, if we're talking for rewinding a little bit and going back where everyone was still living at home and yeah, it's probably me yelling and,
• 8:46
  We said to be down here at this time, and it's five minutes past this time. Where are you? Um, no, you can't eat breakfast. You should have gotten down here before the meeting started to get breakfast. Probably started with something like that. But...
• 9:03
  Ideally, we set a time and like right now it's 11 a.m., but, you know, different times have been at different seasons. And then everyone gathers around, usually in our living room, and sits on the couch and they know that this is a time when we want their attention. So they can have a hand project as long as they can focus. Yeah.
• 9:32
  on what we're talking about and they can't be bothering their siblings, which is also part of the fun of these because sometimes people just can't keep their hands off of each other and have to be poking or pretending like they're going to sit on each other or whatever that keep their, put their feet on someone, you know? So there's the fun part of the dynamics of maybe you have assigned seats and
• 9:57
  for this and put the troublemakers, you know, off to the side or something like that. Yes. Anyway, my point is set yourself up for success if you can. And I'm kind of joking, but I'm kind of serious. Like, we know what it's like to have kids who are, you know,
• 10:17
  They're like just coming to the meeting because it's time for the meeting, not because they're like so excited to be at a meeting. So we've done different things of making it fun and and usually involving food somehow, like before or after. So that's kind of setting the stage.
• 10:37
  Yeah. So get everybody in the same room and that might require some training, some reminding, some cajoling or whatever, depending on what stage your kids are at. We have five kids. And so we've now gone through this when they were little, when they were kind of middle school age, high school and now adult kids. And in the Excel, we're not going to go into detail in this about how our adult kids interface with meetings. We do have meetings with them as well. Not every week with, you know, their them, their spouses and stuff.
• 11:06
  Um, so, but, uh, if you have questions about that town hall is perfect for that. Okay. So there's really, uh, what you guys are going to get in the accelerator. What we've created is these three different, um, plays. And this is what we typically do in the accelerator. So play one, this kind of walks you through a typical team meeting. And this really kind of gives us, you know, gives us an idea of how to lead one of these meetings. So the first play.
• 11:26
  is sort of like highs, lows, buffaloes. The second play is CAV, which stands for Calendar Announcements and Vision. And the third play is One Improvement. Now that...
• 11:37
  Prep free agenda for a meeting. We have found to be really effective. And all three of these elements are critical. So element number one is like we learn to listen and love each other, catch up with each other. It's really hard to have a meeting with people you're relational with and go straight into like super productive stuff.
• 11:57
  If you're wondering how this differs from a business meeting, that's a really good example. We'll spend 15, 20 minutes on that first element. It's really important that we honor the relationships in the room, how everyone's doing, how everyone's week was. This is a really important part of our meeting, and it really causes this to be a team that's a family. Brothers, sisters, mother, father, and not co-worker one, two, three, four. So we do think there's a difference.
• 12:20
  The second part of this is really where we do the getting on the same page alignment work. Right. And the third part of this is how we move forward. How do we how do we improve this family team? How do we deal with issues that are critical? So. So, April, what's your favorite part about the first first part of our family meeting, the highs, lows and buffaloes?
• 12:43
  Yeah, so that is when the kids look back at the week we just had and think of one of their favorite parts of their high and then part that was hard is their low. And then for us, a buffalo is like something they had to persevere through where they had to like really stick to it. Yeah.
• 13:00
  So I think my favorite part of that is just hearing from everybody because you don't always know what's going to stand out. Having so many different people, it's like, oh, yeah, I forgot that we did that this week. But that was what stuck out to you. It's not what stuck out to me, but I had forgotten that that happened, you know.
• 13:20
  And so it's fun to kind of relive the week with them. And you also just get a little insight into their mind and the sibling dynamic of them having to, like, listen to each person. I think we've gotten to know each other a lot through the low part in particular because I think...
• 13:37
  It's easy for you to get to know someone in like the fun, the things you enjoy. But to know what someone's like kind of down about, sometimes we can maybe not be as sharing about that.
• 13:51
  Yep. Yeah. Like it's really important to follow up on some of those things. Like I feel like if, if you're ever surprised by one of your child's lows, that's a very good trigger for a conversation. Whoa. You know, now if you've already catched up with them, talked about it, but a big part of being a part of a family is to not feel like you're alone. Yeah.
• 14:13
  And the way that I know if my kids are feeling alone in a way that I probably could help them is when they talk about a low that they're experiencing that I haven't processed with them at all. And so that's often, you know, a trigger like, oh, well, I want to make sure to ask about that, you know, like what's going on there.
• 14:31
  So sometimes some people like to skip the lows, but the older your kids are, the more important the lows I think become, you know, maybe, maybe you're talking to your seven year old. They, they are so resilient. They like have, you know, some little thing that happened to them three days ago. They can barely remember, but you know, obviously teenagers carry with them sometimes some real heartache, you know, that they're just not sharing. They haven't learned how to share really. And so this is a really good opportunity for us to, to drill into that.
• 14:56
  Okay, so that's the first part of the meeting. We're going to go into much more detail in the playbook and in the accelerator. Second part of the meeting is CAV. Now, this is the magic of what makes this meeting prep free is the order of CAV, calendar announcements vision. So if you keep a good calendar, which April and I both do, we are both obsessive calendar keepers.
• 15:19
  then all we have to do is look forward one or two weeks to discover all the announcements that we need to provide in the meeting. So, yeah, April, what's your favorite part of CAV? Anything that kind of over the years as we've practiced this rhythm of a two-week look ahead on the calendar that generates announcements and vision conversations? What do you like about that practice? Yeah.
• 15:45
  Well, I like how I feel like pretty much anything I want to talk about that I feel needs addressed, where I need everyone to hear me saying the same thing. I don't want to have to say it five different times. I feel like it fits under almost every single thing fits under CAV, calendar, announcements, vision.
• 16:06
  Because, and then like the improvement, definitely. That's oftentimes I have pre-thought that one. But for the CAV section, I just really like how it really does address a lot of the practical sides of trying to function as a team.
• 16:25
  Because you're talking about your time, you're looking ahead. Like Jeremy said, when you're looking at your calendar, you're like, oh, we need to tell them about this or that this is coming up. Then you tell them about the thing. And then you can tell there's either some resistance or some like, wait, what? We're doing what? And then that's when we go into the vision. So I'll be like, so Jeremy, it seems like a vision might need to be cast around this particular calendar event coming up or something.
• 16:50
  And so he'll spend the time like getting big picture. I really like that because it really backs me up because I'm very in the weeds, so to speak, with the kids. And so for Jeremy to kind of come in as the vision caster and say, even I mean, we're not talking like.
• 17:09
  coming up with a family mission where the vision is just like okay guys we're gonna go to so-and-so's house for dinner on thursday night now let me tell you what that's gonna be like and what my expectations are when we go we're gonna prepare we're gonna take a side dish we're gonna work together to make that we're gonna whatever the thing is like you jeremy would take the time to like set the stage help them think about these things ahead of time
• 17:34
  make sure that everyone's going to be home on time so that we can leave on time. Like all of that gets addressed in that. So if you hear a vision and you hear like, it's this huge, massive thing that can be a little misleading. A vision just about like the activities throughout the week. And it helps the kids all get on the same page. Remember mom said, or dad said that we have to help with the thing. So I appreciate it about it.
• 18:02
  Yeah, the vision. So I'm such a huge fan of like an understanding that he who knows why can bear almost any how. And so anytime you have a struggle with the how, oh, my gosh, we have to clean the house again. Oh, we're going to have those people over. Oh, we're going to have to travel. Are we going to sit in the car that long? Those are all hows that need to be attached to a why.
• 18:23
  And like April said, there's sort of like layers of vision, right? So you might say to your kids, oh, yeah, by the way, guys, you know, we are hosting this family or this couple is coming to stay with us for three days. Oh, and we need you guys to make sure you're cleaning the kitchen. Oh, my gosh. And...
• 18:39
  we need your help in like making the beds and now cleaning up and doing the sheets after the, Oh my gosh. You know? So then anytime you hear these, you got like, okay, there's a vision problem here. And there's layers to the vision. And the way you find the vision, you just ask the question of why, um, if you, if in the, where you get to in the vision is how many whys you ask. Right? So if you ask the first, why, why are we doing this? Like, why, why are we having these people over? But because remember our, our family is all about trying to,
• 19:06
  to minister to other families. We want to really help this family, sort of see how our family functions. We want to get closer to them relationally. Well, why do we care about that? Here's the second one. Well, because we're part of this thing called the kingdom of God, and we have been rescued by Jesus Christ, and he has come into this world to do this for us. Well, why do we care about that? Because life is not about you. We live in a God-centered reality. Genesis 1 is in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. You and I are subcharacters in the story that is glorifying God.
• 19:35
  And that when we glorify God through ministering to people in the name of Christ, through being a family team and through helping their family minister now to other families, this is how it works. And so you can't expect kids to really understand that vision, but they may need to attach to different parts of that vision. And so depending on how vision-oriented your children are, they're going to need vision.
• 20:01
  like more deeper and deeper answers. Like I, I'm, I, even as a kid, I was like obsessed with like the deepest why. And so I was like constantly pestering my parents with questions about why. And I really was asking like for the deepest why, like keep going, keep going deeper because I, this confused me, you know, about everything I was doing. Um, some kids are like, you, you just give them a broad explanation of, look, our family team has this mission and this is part of it. And you're on the team and we need your help. And we, um, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we,
• 20:29
  love God and we love each other and we're doing this thing. Oftentimes that's good enough for, for kids. But yeah, you have to kind of connect with what is going on in the hearts of each of your kids so that they are, they're, they're like being propelled by a vision, right? A lover works harder than, than a worker. In other words, if they love the vision, if they, they're attached to that,
• 20:48
  then it's going to their spirit when they're doing this work as a family is going to be different than if they're constantly being drug along. So anyway, that part of the V part of the cab, I think, is take some skill, I think. And that's something I'd love to talk to you guys more about as we dive into this, because I think that that for me took me a long time to learn how to how to vision cast in the moment spontaneously. But I think that is a very important fatherly skill.
• 21:16
  Like the mother can do this too, but dads must do this. Dads must learn how to vision calves to their family teams. Okay, so that's calf. And the last one we do is one improvement. So April, what is that about? And what do you like most about that?
• 21:28
  Yeah, I think, you know, throughout the week, I might be either telling or texting Jeremy this list of things that are driving me nuts, you know. A lot of times it's centered around the kitchen, you know. Like, we can't seem to keep the kitchen clean during the day. I'm always the one tidying up after everybody, or the kids are leaving their stuff all over the house. Or, like, some kind of system failure that's resulting in...
• 21:56
  a certain amount of chaos in the house. And so sometimes it's a behavioral thing, but sometimes it's just like a sloppy way of living. And we just haven't either come up with a system for it or we haven't, they're not adhering to it. Or we did, and it was so long ago that we've gotten really lazy about it. So this is a time of the meeting where Jeremy will look at me and say, what's one thing? One,
• 22:23
  thing, just one thing, that if we fix this, it would make your life, mom, way better. What would it be? It's like, wow, if you really think about it, that that's a pretty epic question to be asked by your spouse in front of your kids.
• 22:41
  And what a gift. And so instead of feeling like, oh, well, there's 10 things I could list right now, we just decide to focus on one. Right. And that allows us to really focus on it instead of saying there's these 10 new things we're going to try this week. And everyone gets overwhelmed. None of it's done well. So we focus on one thing.
• 23:02
  And in that meeting, right then and there, we, with the kids, would come up with a system to combat the problem that I bring up. So, for example, the kid leaving their stuff everywhere or kind of like the tragedy of the commons where the kitchen, the living room, the dining room are just always kind of messy.
• 23:22
  So we came up with this idea of, because we talked about how that's chaos and we want to beat back the chaos. We want to have peace and order. And so we talked about this idea of, what's that? And beauty.
• 23:34
  And beauty. So we talked about this idea of like putting on your chaos detector. So let's everyone pretend that you have these glasses and they're called chaos detectors. And we're going to go around with our chaos. We're going to look for chaos and see if we can detect any. So you have to use language your kids will get into. And, you know, for the older kids, they might kind of be rolling their eyes a little bit, but the little kids are all excited and and that's OK. So.
• 23:57
  Sometimes it's a noise level. Like when our kids started going to bed after us, I remember this. Like I'm going to bed at 10, guys, and our teenagers would stay up to like 1030 or something like that. And the way they would be so loud after I went to bed. So Jeremy trained them on like how to walk up the stairs quietly. We called it elvish stair walking.
• 24:22
  So there are all these things where it just felt, it made it feel overwhelming to me or like just a continued annoyance to me. And if it actually bothered me that much, I would remember at the meeting and then we would address it and come up with some system. And the system would last for like a week or two. And then we would consider them trained. Like we would revisit it the next week and say, do we still need another week on this topic or can we introduce a new, a new improvement? Right.
• 24:49
  Yeah, man, so good. Yeah, there are so many things that I think you can train because there's individual training and then there's team training. And oftentimes as your family's getting a little bit older, team training becomes a lot more effective. It's like, let's all train how to walk up the stairs in a way that doesn't disturb mom. Let's all figure out how to make sure that we are beautifying the house. By the way,
• 25:10
  One of the things I dealt with a lot, and this is kind of my latent feminism, I had a really hard time with this until I just – man, the psalmist says that daughters – specifically, it says daughters –
• 25:20
  are meant to beautify the palace. There's a beautiful verse in the Psalms that talks about daughters. Again, instead of seeing that as like, oh, there you go again, another weird gender stereotype. No, this is a psalmist, and it's a beautiful idea. And so I have four daughters, and I'm like, and so this gave me the courage and the vision to sort of explain to my daughters, you guys, these chaos detectors need to be on all the time because it's not just a matter of,
• 25:46
  like bringing order to the house, you have the power to beautify the house. Like there's something inside of you that wants to live within a beautiful space and you need to let that out and let that come into the common spaces of our house.
• 26:02
  So I hope that you do that in your own room. You know, they go through seasons where they let the room go to pot, which is not great. And then like our own house, like, you know, and so sometimes I'll walk through the kitchen. I'm like, is there a daughter in the house? Like, is there someone here that cares about beauty and is not going to let your mom be stuck with this? Now, oftentimes the problem isn't them. The problem is, you know, me or someone else who's just who's creating too much chaos, you know? And so we have to like be really honest about like what's causing the chaos and
• 26:32
  Um, but man, so this is, but this is the opportunity you have to really set a family vision for the, for the home. Okay. So that's, that is the whole team. Again, go to familyteams.com slash meetings to get that free download. Um, if you want to jump into the accelerator for this month or just jump into for the whole year, um, you can go click on that over at familyteams.com and man, we would love to talk to you guys about meetings. All right. Next week I think is when you're going to get to hear from the nettings and they took everything you heard me in April just talk about to the next level.
• 27:01
  So they took our meeting format and I was shocked at the improvements that they have made to the meeting agenda, how they how they how they use it. There's a couple of things they book. I can't wait for you to hear this podcast. So so we will be publishing that because we didn't have six boys, you know.
• 27:19
  Our daughters were maybe a little bit easier to work with when it comes to meetings than having six boys. But man, the nettings, it's so fun because, you know, having a family of six boys who aren't the most conscientious is all I'm saying. Like, boys don't tend to be like, oh, I can't wait to, you know, follow my father's vision. Like, they're going to test you. Like, and they're going to test you as a group of strong young men.
• 27:41
  Um, they, they have figured out how to, how to really get on the same page beautifully, beautifully. So anyway, make sure to check out that podcast, jump in the accelerator, get some coaching from the nettings. And, uh, we will look forward to talking about this topic. This is, this can transform your family, your family's life so deeply. So any last words, April, you'd say about, uh, about team meetings and the importance of doing this before we close it up?
• 28:03
  Yeah, I would just say, think about getting to do this week after week after week. And then you have 52 or 50 maybe in a year. And then you have another year like that. You have 100 improvements in two years times. You have 100 opportunities to get on the same page with your team. You have 100 opportunities to improve. So I just want to encourage you guys to establish this rhythm and
• 28:32
  Keep it going. Make it something that people look forward to. You can make it fun. You can make it, you know, tasty, but a way to make it attractive to the family. So they want to do this. And I think you're just going to really experience a lot of fruit in a short, pretty relatively short amount of time.
• 28:52
  Yeah, well said. Productivity experts have noticed over and over again that human beings vastly overestimate how much they can accomplish in like one week or one month and vastly underestimate how much they can accomplish in a year or two years. And a lot of it comes down to having these predictable rhythms that create small improvements. That 1% a week will absolutely transform your family in six months.
• 29:15
  So, you know, what people do is because we think, oh, we're going to get all the improvement in one or two weeks. We just so badly underestimate. And so we quit. And then you don't understand how completely transformed your family. And this is just like a one hour thing. So, you know, it could be 30 minutes if you have a smaller, you know, smaller family or younger kids. Do it quicker. But anyway, awesome. So, so excited to get to hit this topic with you guys in the month of June. And April, thank you so much for jumping on the podcast with me today.
• 29:44
  are welcome. Thank you for listening to the family teams podcast. If you're enjoying this content or have learned something new, please make sure to leave a rating and review and share with a friend to stay up to date with our events, new content and products. You can follow us on Facebook and Instagram at family teams.