Weekly Family Meeting
Cutting down on family chaos.
Things were unraveling. We reached a point where too many people were going in too many different directions. Each person was fending for him or herself. One week was bleeding right into the next, with no relief in sight. The semi-disorganized way we had been living for so long was bordering on disaster. We needed to implement a weekly family meeting.
What was going wrong?
My family had lost a basic sense of teamwork — that communal effort of working towards a goal. And, it all seemed to fall apart quickly. It’s worth looking back to name some of the elements that led to the chaos.
Work demands at the time were taking a toll on me (read: us). I was working too much and when I wasn’t, work was on my mind. Our kids were getting older and were starting to get involved in more extracurriculars. So, practices after school became a thing. School itself was becoming more demanding. Homework was taking longer to complete at night, and often required some parental guidance and motivation. Social demands changed. It used to be my wife and I driving our family’s socializing. Now, our kids had social lives of their own.
It’s clear such times that you have no real priorities or goals to help shape family life — to help you navigate the space and time of life in all its demands. And, we didn’t have time to collect ourselves and look at things together. It was like being swept along by a rushing river, with each person swimming for his or her life in this or that direction.
Our culture that’s so focused on productivity and over-activity doesn’t help things.
We were drowning.
Patrick Lencioni to the Rescue
Around this time, I was introduced to the work of Amazing Parish. At the bottom of it, Amazing Parish aids pastors by helping them develop a leadership team. Many of the principles at play come from Patrick Lencioni, a Catholic businessman, consultant, and best-selling author. What does all of this have to do with family life?
Well…
Lencioni has a book for families, too. It’s called The 3 Big Questions for a Frantic Family. I heard about it through Amazing Parish and immediately bought it. The book was a game changer for us. In a nutshell, family life doesn’t have to feel like you’re being swept along through a relentless series of rapids. Answering a few questions can get you started towards calmer waters.
The three big questions are as follows:
What makes your family unique? Here, you list real things, not aspirational ones. It’s a fun exercise. Then, you start to see a few themes emerge and capture those in a few sentences. In the end, the 2-3 sentences should say something about what your family values and how you go about pursuing those values (i.e., strategy). This helps to pull your priorities back up to the surface.
What is your family’s top priority — rallying cry — right now? Really, what’s something we’re all going to rally around for the next two to six months. Basically, you want to swarm a problem: getting the laundry disaster sorted out in our house, getting to school on time, etc. Our first one was: get our life in order. Then, you name “defining objectives” — those things you have to do to achieve the rallying cry and revisit “standard objectives” — those regular, ongoing responsibilities of life that have to be maintained for the good of the whole.
How do you talk about and use the answers to these questions? The most important point here: meetings. You have to have good, productive meetings. They have to be a priority; they have to be on the calendar. You need an agenda, etc. Hence, we were introduced to the weekly family meeting.
While answering each of these questions helped us out, for the purposes of this post, I’d like to focus on that final bullet.
The Basics of a Weekly Family Meeting
A weekly family meeting needs to be brief, especially if you have small children running around. Parents need to be prepared to pull it off well. And, it requires the participation of every member of the family to be successful.
I’ll use my family as an example so you can see what a basic agenda of a weekly family meeting looks like:
Rallying cry assessment: Use colors to help you evaluate. Green means this or that defining objective is being met. Yellow means the objective is being touched, but not with the necessary determination. Red means you’re behind and have to get working. Then, problem solve together by talking through the yellows and reds. (This brings up another good point. Be sure your answers to the big three questions are visibly listed somewhere in your house.)
The week ahead: We give the kids a weather report so they have a basic idea of what things will be like outside. And, we talk through each day — who has what going on. We publish all of these events on a giant calendar we purchased and put in the kitchen. Now, this is not a one-and-done. We talk through each day the morning of. But, the weekly family meeting gives us a primary reference point for the whole week — it helps us to see the big picture and address potential scheduling pitfalls.
Pray: Conclude the meeting with a special moment of prayer. In our house, we say Compline together each night before the kids head to bed. On Sundays, the night of our weekly family meeting, we add to this a Holy Family Consecration prayer.
The Weekly Family Meeting at Our House
The weekly family meeting has been a game changer for my family. It doesn’t necessarily mean that life has slowed down. The river is moving just as fast, or faster. But, we don’t feel like we’re all swimming in different directions anymore. The meeting keeps our priorities in front of us and allows us to collectively catch our breath before heading into another week. It’s good when families function as healthy teams — it’s a reflection of a healthy communal life.