Do you need to schedule that meeting?
When trying to make positive changes to workplace meetings, a good place to start is to encourage meeting leaders and organisers to ‘Think’ and question whether a meeting is truly necessary in the first place? (‘Think’ is one of our ‘Four principles of effective meetings’ which you can read more about here).
Whilst there are many legitimate reasons to have a meeting, it’s a good idea to take some time to consider whether or not you really need to get a group of people in a room for a face-to-face meeting before automatically scheduling something in the calendar. When you decide to call a meeting, you need to be very clear about its goals and whether or not a meeting is the best way to achieve them. You never know, there might be a better way!
In general, meetings shouldn’t be held simply to share information or provide updates, although there are always exceptions and staff meetings or divisional meetings are good examples of where getting everyone together provides a great opportunity for staff across all levels to hear directly from their leaders and/or each other. Meetings should be a place where real-time, face-to-face discussions are crucial in order to make decisions or collaborate effectively.
So, before you book your next meeting in, ask yourself the following questions in order to help you decide whether or not a meeting really is the best way to get the required result:
Do you have a clear purpose/outcome?
It’s easy to fall into the trap of scheduling a meeting because you think you need one to progress a project or task. However, if you are unclear about the goals or purpose of the meeting then a more valuable use of your time and everyone else’s would be for you to schedule in some thinking time first.
Do you need input from other people?
There will be occasions where you know what work needs to be done and it’s simply a case of getting on with it. We can fall into the trap of over consulting or forcing collaboration on issues which really don’t require outside input. If you do need input from others then think about what that input should look like?
Does moving forward require a real time conversation?
You may need to seek opinion from others but recognising when this can be achieved virtually by sending an email or providing an update on an online system and asking for feedback on something may allow for a more effective and speedy outcome.
Do you need to meet with the whole group face to face in the same place?
If the answer to this is no, then there are several options such as using online chat, video conferencing, telephone, or simply having informal discussions with relevant people rather than gathering the whole group together at the same time.
Use this online tool to determine if you need to schedule a meeting or not:
If the answer to all of the above is yes then it’s probably time to organise that meeting…but in order to have a successful outcome it’s essential that you make time to plan it effectively and be as innovative as you can with the way you schedule and run the meeting.
