Business 101: Meetings

There may not be a workforce topic with as many strong opinions and hot takes as meetings. 

For all new employees, let me save you some time and effort searching for opinion articles about meetings: some people at work feel all (or most) meetings are absolutely useless and that meeting information can be better summarized and shared in email. They also often express that the time consumed by meetings should be reclaimed for other important business/work activities. For example, Jason Fried once observed that “Meetings are Toxic” and wrote a famous post on the topic.

Others, however, feel that when done right, meetings can be incredibly invaluable for sharing information and aligning teams. The Indeed Editorial team, as an example, offers 6 compelling reasons why meetings are important.

As is often the case, there is no absolute right or wrong answer, and your meeting preferences may vary. Below is some perspective and a few general tips from my career and the thousands of meetings I have attended since I entered the workforce.

Meeting Best Practices

Many smart people have already shared valuable content about meetings and provided helpful advice for all aspects of meetings, including organizing/planning, conducting, and attending meetings. Start with some searches to get a sense of the many practices, habits, and opinions. Below are a few articles to get you started.

Resources:

• How to Run a Meeting (Harvard Business Review)
• 11 Meeting Etiquette Rules You Should Follow at Work (Indeed)
• 6 Tips to Run a Highly Effective Meeting, Backed by Science (Science of People)

Your Time

Your time is a non-renewable resource that is finite and precious. No matter your job or how much compensation you receive, you will never get time back that is wasted. Therefore, given the consensus that many meetings aren’t valuable, you have to do more to safeguard and preserve your work time from unnecessary meetings. 

Tips & Resources:

• Invest the time to update your calendar at least two weeks out and be sure you add hard blocks for important work stretches. Consider recurring Focus Time periods during the work week as additional meeting buffers.
• Scrutinize meeting requests carefully and ask for agendas if one isn’t included so you know what you are committing to attend.
• Similarly, consider instances when an email is truly the better option over a meeting.
• Resist Workplace Meeting FOMO and be comfortable declining and asking for a meeting recap or recording if you’re too busy to attend.
• Try a data intelligence tool, like Viva Insights, that can integrate with your calendar and use machine learning to analyze your meetings over time.
• Internal Communications: Email vs. Chat vs. Discussion vs. Meetings (Reworked)
• How to answer the age-old question: Could this meeting have been an email? (Fast Company)
• To Meet Or Email -- That Is The Question (Forbes)

Scheduling Tools

Part of the hassle with meetings is scheduling, especially when it’s a large group and so many people are booked solid for the next few weeks. Not fun. As possible, use scheduling tools to help you more easily find openings in calendars of co-workers or offer the ability for your colleagues or customers to do the scheduling for you!

Resources:

• What is Bookings? (Microsoft)
• What is Calendly? (CNBC)
• What is FindTime (Microsoft) 

How to Meet

Different work situations and use cases lend themselves to different meeting formats. For example, a virtual meeting works well to share announcements and information to a team while a sensitive matter may be best addressed in person, discreetly. Your preferences may vary.

Resources:

• Should Employees Be Required to Turn On Cameras During Virtual Meetings? (SHRM)
• When Do We Actually Need to Meet in Person? (Harvard Business Review)
• In Person vs Virtual Meetings: Why You Need Both (Trackmind)
• Do People Still Interact Better When In-Person? Virtual Meetings Are Catching Up (Forbes)

The Future of Meetings

If you’re still reading, we hope you’ve found these tips helpful. Of course, like everything in life and work, meetings are not static and will continue to evolve and change. Here is how some think meetings will trend in the not too distant future.

Resources:

• 3 views on the future of meetings (TechCrunch)
• Meetings in the metaverse: The future of work (The Business Times)
• Always On, Too Many Meetings: Is This the Future of Hybrid? (CMSWire)

The above are just a few thoughts for better workplace meetings. What are some of yours?