Back to back virtual meetings are causing me stress!

Last week I, and the rest of the team at People Collective, offered our time to help people across our network that may need it. In addition to that, we’ve been having ongoing conversations with clients, ex-colleagues, families, friends etc.

Working from home, or ‘at home trying to work’ as I saw somewhere on Twitter, means that our normal work schedules are out the window. Home is now an office, school, gym, playground, pub, cinema etc. We’re adapting to this being the new normal.

Some of the pertinent things I’ve discussed with people:

• Remote working
• Managing teams remotely
• Internal communication
• Physical and mental wellbeing
• Diversity & Inclusion (now everyone needs to be included!)

I’m going to focus on Internal Communication and meetings and going to share some practical ideas that I’ve learned through my experience. Hopefully, there’s some food for thought for you and your teams.

The wider context

Being isolated has meant that we’ve lost all those underappreciated ‘soft’ communication points with people, not just in our day-to-day lives, but in a work context, with our colleagues around the office — chit chat walking past people’s desk, talking about what we watched last night, deciding what to get for lunch together and wandering over to get it, a game of pool, making a cup of tea/coffee etc.

From the conversations we’ve had, a regular occurrence is a massive increase in the number of virtual meetings (Zoom/Hangout/Microsoft Team etc.) everyone is having…or having put in their diary. Understandably, people are trying to compensate and ensure that people aren’t out of the loop.

People have been late for our Zoom conversations: ‘sorry about that, my diary is manic…I’ve got back to back Zooms’ or words to that effect being a regular occurrence.

So we fall back to a problem that existed in the ‘old normal’ of ‘death by meeting’ but with a new spin of those meetings being virtual.

The problem we’re facing

So many meetings can feel like a drain and an antithesis to productivity and focus, minimising the chance to finish our to-do list or tackling our inbox. Couple that with our new distraction of trying to work from home (and all the added distractions) and it’s a big strain.

Sometimes meetings are creative, productive and maybe even fun. They are also sometimes unproductive, low-energy, meandering, broadcast transmissions and start to kill decision-making and creativity.

Characteristics of a bad meeting:

• There is no clear objective.
• There are no agenda items.
• There’s no lead or the lead is low-energy.
• No one is taking notes and agreed actions.
• Key decision-makers aren’t involved.
• Attendees haven’t had context or a chance to prepare.

Understanding meetings

First, it’s important to understand the different types of meetings that exist:

A general update — an update for all on what’s happening in the company or department right now.

A project/team update — more detail-oriented and focused on the project/team.

A planning session — to plan out a project or a set of tasks or events, or assign roles and actions.

Group work — A small group of people together working on a task or action.

A presentation — done well and with a Q&A this can be really informative and be one that engages people and they remember key information.

One-to-ones — between a line manager and team member. Discussing things such as wellbeing, work tasks and help needed, feedback or career development and goals.

Practical solutions

The best starting point is knowing your team and understanding what type of communication a) they prefer and b) are most productive with.

Then if automatically going to schedule a meeting ask ‘does this need to be a meeting? will a well-written document/email work instead?’. A twitter thread on it here.

If it is to be a meeting then start by addressing the characteristics of bad meetings, ensuring there is ‘meeting hygiene’ and introducing structure:

1. Clarify what meeting type it is.
2. Set a clear objective for the meeting.
3. A bullet point list of agenda items.
4. Designate an engaging leader who will drive the meeting forward towards the objective.
5. Designate a notetaker who will record meeting notes and agreed actions.
6. Clarify why you have invited each individual, their expected role and what you expect from them in terms of info or prep.
7. Ask yourself whether it needs to be a meeting…or can this be done via email, Slack, shared docs like Google Docs etc.

There are a few techniques that can be used POST and IDOARRT being just two of them.

Things I do

Generally, people in startups and scaleups don’t love rules but can appreciate structure for a purpose. I explain to people I work with what I’m doing and why.

I value my time and reject meetings that don’t have at least an objective and an agenda or if I can’t immediately understand why I’m involved. Rather than being aggressive and rejecting outright, I go back and ask the meeting organiser to provide more detail, so I could prioritise it in line with everything else I have going on (which they won’t have visibility of).

Non-verbal communication is really important, especially in group (virtual) meetings, things like putting my hand up when I wanted to input allows the person speaking to finish and the lead to recognise I wanted to contribute and bring me in at the right time.

Because everyone has a different workday structure, especially now, I let everyone know what mine looks like by setting out my calendar. It looks something like this:

Naturally, I’m a bit flexible with it but I ask everyone to respect it. Everyone’s day will have different requirements depending on differing roles but hopefully, that gives some ideas.

Do get in touch to let me know if this was useful or if you’ve got any other useful ideas for Internal Communication and meetings.

If you’d like to get in touch directly you can email me at zeshaan at peoplecollective dot io.

Go well!