Making the most of your meetings.

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Meetings get a bad rap, and I get it: I’ve been in plenty of meetings that weren’t worth my time or didn’t drive a decision forward. We danced around a topic and maybe got some important feelings out in the open, but we didn’t arrive at a decision, so instead people left frustrated. That usually meant a follow-up meeting that would often go the same way. I felt like I was getting pulled away from my heads-down work for no reason.

I’ve also been in some really awesome meetings, and it’s happened enough that I don’t think it’s weird to say. Those were the meetings that felt like they’re supposed to: they were collaborative sessions working with my peers and co-workers. They were energizing or I learned something and I was really engaged with the meeting. This is how the vast majority of them should go, and if you’re not getting that at your current job, it’s time to debug your meetings.

Know your “why” with an agenda.

As the saying goes: No agenda, no attenda. Your time is valuable, and so every meeting on your calendar should have an agenda. I often get push back on standup for folks that aren’t bought into scrum, but standups do have agendas, though they might be implicit. If you think that’s the case, ask your manager to make your implicit agendas explicit by writing them down and setting expectations for how people participate. Otherwise, check the meeting agenda ahead of time and make a final call for topics if there is no agenda.

No takers? Then ask to cancel. You should vote with your feet. Your time is valuable, and if you’re not getting what you need out of the meeting, you can step away, quietly or otherwise.

Introverts, this is your time to shine. A prepared, shared, written agenda items are great for introverts to get opportunities for influence. When I coach introverts who are struggling with their career advancement, the first topic we usually cover is: how are you making your ideas known? If you don’t like speaking up on the spot, you do still need to find ways to make your voice heard, and that’s often in writing or in recordings. Written prepared agendas are great for you to put your name next to your topic and get it in writing that you’re starting the conversation and driving a decision.

Shared Live Notes. Always.

Notes are a great way to coordinate shared understanding and action items. There has been a surge in tools for artificial Intelligence notes that are often just transcripts. Transcripts aren’t skimmable and that makes them difficult for quickly referencing back to. They also don’t actively build shared understanding in the moment, which I think is their most powerful use case. Good shared notes check everyone’s understanding as the discussion progresses. If you go back and forth on a decision, or you find a solution that fits only 80% of your problem, you want to make sure that everyone ultimately agrees on what got solved and what didn’t. You want people to understand the feedback of everyone else in the room.

Shared live notes are also great if you work with folks who have ADHD. If they get distracted, shared notes allow them to jump back in while saving face where they can see where we left off. Shared live notes can also help you to re-engage them by pulling them back to the agenda or written notes. “Hey Connor, your topic is up next. Can you tell us about your agenda item?” Or if they’re hyperfixating, I love asking, “Hey, is this a fair representation of what you’ve said?” as a way to interrupt them to slow down and re-read if they’re struggling with rambling. (I also love it when people do this for me, too!) They’re all common ways to let people save face, refocus, and keep everyone on task. It’s so valuable, even in just a 1:1 meeting, for someone to point to notes and say, “This is what I heard. Is this your understanding?” It forces people to discuss when the answer is no until you get the clarity you need, which is usually a key goal behind any meeting.

The active shared understanding notes also make it easier for folks who have to miss meetings. I don’t have time to go watch recordings of all the meetings I miss while I’m out sick, even if I watch them at 2x speed. However I can certainly skim the notes of the decisions in minutes. It’s not the same as being in attendance and participating, but it gets me caught back up a lot faster than if I’m only reading transcripts or watching videos.

Well-defined Action Items.

A good meeting has follow-up because people understand who, what, where, when, and why. They should read like an invitation: who, what, where, when, and why.

• AI: Jonathan will get numbers from finance by Friday (Jan 19) for the presentation to leadership.
• AI: Steph will talk to Lauren about a prioritization decision for Project Ranger before next week’s meeting.

At the start of each meeting, you should be able to pull up the previous meeting’s action items and go through and see what’s done and what’s not. If something is undone and carries over, make sure you mark it as a carry-over. Too many weeks with a carry-over means it’s not happening and someone needs feedback or the task wasn’t that important.

• [carry-over x2] [Mia] Discuss budget for summer picnic.

Make it easy for those to stand-out from the rest of the notes through bolding or highlighting or calling them out in their own section. You’ll need fewer meetings overall if everyone is remembering what follow-ups they owe each other.

Are you engaged in the meeting?

I’ve managed or coached plenty of people who would come to 1:1s and say, “I only got X amount of time to do any ‘real’ work today.”

That’s always worth pausing on. Why do you think your meetings aren’t “real” work? Are you tuning out or not contributing? Because being in a meeting is work. If a leader is asking you to all come together for something, that’s an expensive investment. It’s worth it to first check if you’re putting in the effort to make that meeting successful. Do you know the goals? Is it the wrong audience? Are you contributing to the topics and the agendas? Are you helping your co-workers succeed? Or is there something bigger at play here? There are definitely cases where there are too many or too-frequent meetings, but 0 meetings is typically the wrong number, too.

For a truly bad meeting, do you give specific/actionable/timely/kind feedback about the meeting? I’ve privately messaged people in the meeting to say “Hey, this isn’t going well and it’s off track, can we try something else?” or I’ve followed up in a 1:1 afterwards (by adding an agenda item) about how we can better use our time or get people to engage.

Be a good collaborator by trying to make the meetings successful before you cancel them. Actively show people that you’re trying to make this work by responding to what they ask, contributing to an agenda, and finding a way to get the most out of your time together.

I’ve seen this be part of what’s driving return-to-office mandates (even if I still think they’re misguided). If your camera is off in every meeting, as a meeting runner or a manager, I have less information on how much you’re engaging with the material. Having your camera off can mean meeting disengagement. It can also mean video fatigue, not wanting to be recorded, or maybe needing to eat during this meeting and feeling uncomfortable doing so on. I think keeping your camera on is good for a lot of aspects of career and growth development, but I’ll tell you right now there is never a single week where mine is on 100% of the time.

The important part is if you can’t stay camera on- regardless of your reason!- find other ways to stay engaged and to visibly demonstrate your engagement to the other participants. People will feed off the energy that you give the meeting, too. It’s a group effort to make it successful. If one person shows they’re participating, others are more likely to join in, and it will make for a more productive experience for everyone.

As a manager, my longest meetings are often performance evaluation meetings, for example. They’re often several consecutive hours long with high emotional stakes which can make them quite stressful. It really helps to have someone come in and set the tone for the meeting. “Hey we’re here to make the whole organization better, here’s how we’re going to do that today” rather than “Hey everyone we’re going to successfully simply endure this.” Those are the meetings where I leave the discussion a better manager, not just a manager who checked something off of her to-do list.

If you’ve tried to participate, provided feedback, and still think the meeting is failing to meet its goals? Then heck yes, it’s time to vote with your feet and decline to attend.

Change it up before you cancel.

Humans thrive on routine but just like anything else, there’s too much of a good thing. If you’re trying to get people to participate in a meeting again, try switching it up. Even useful meetings can go from beneficial structured routine to getting in a rut, and something as simple as revisiting the purpose of the meeting, seeing if it’s still useful, or trying a different format can ensure the right conversations still happen. Once you’ve done your due diligence, you’ll have confidence for when canceling a repeated meeting is truly the right move.

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