Last week, we talked about how crafting the ideal meeting invitation can prepare everyone involved and make meetings more effective. But does every meeting need to happen? No one wants to meet for the sake of meeting, but we sometimes fall into the trap of meeting as the default way to share information. Before planning a meeting, meeting leaders should ask themselves these questions:

• What is the objective of the meeting?
• Is there another or a better format to meet that objective?
• How long should the meeting be?
• Where and how should the meeting be held?
• How many people need to be there?
• What are the expectations for attendees?

Today, we'll focus on the first two questions about meetings' objectives. Think about the last meeting you attended or planned. What was the meeting's primary purpose? Was it to share information, discuss and gather/provide feedback, brainstorm, or build camaraderie? Would the meeting have been more effective in a different format?

 

Some meetings have multiple objectives; consider which need synchronous engagement and which might work better using other means. Also keep in mind the culture of your team: Are you populated by introverts who may engage more in an asynchronous setting? Will your participants speak less freely if they know they’re being recorded? Do you trust the participants to read e-mails/notes in the absence of synchronous meetings? If not, why not?

Below are some ideas for deciding the appropriate format for meetings arranged by objective...

 

Meeting Objective: Top-Down Information Sharing:

There are times when information is best shared face-to-face (or webcam to webcam), but often information-sharing meetings in which one person talks and everyone else listens could benefit from another format. Why make a group of people attend a synchronous meeting when little to no interaction is expected or desired? Unless it is crucial that all attendees hear the information at the same time (e.g., with a major personnel announcement), consider other methods (in order of effectiveness):

• Video: Record a video with the pertinent information.
• Audio: Make and share an audio-only recording.
• Yammer: Updates, Announcements, and Notes in Yammer can all be used to share information easily with a select group of people.
• PowerPoint: Many meetings (for better or worse) rely on PowerPoint presentations to share information. If a meeting is going to involve reading PowerPoint slides without much or any discussion, consider sharing the slides via email in lieu of meeting.
• Email: Nearly everyone wants to cut down on the amount of email they receive, but another email is more time-effective than another meeting that could have been an email.

 

Meeting Objective: Top-Down Information Sharing with Q&A

If participant interaction is expected following information sharing, consider the following:

• Be sure all participants can engage in the same manner. For hybrid teams, this means a Skype meeting, preferably with chat.
• Chat can be a great tool for participant feedback and discussion, but someone needs to monitor the chat and be sure questions and comments are raised to the group.

 

Meeting Objective: Round-robin information sharing

The "round robin" is another type of information-sharing meeting that may be more effective in another format. While it is often important that people know what everyone is doing, they don’t necessarily need to hear it in real-time. In live round robins, there may be pressure to share only a short, important item due to time constraints, omitting other useful updates. There is also subtle pressure to say that you are working on important things, and really busy!

Share the information ahead of time, and bring topics that have interest to the meeting.

Unless it's necessary for all participants to hear every person's update, individual updates can be shared asynchronously and the meeting time saved for attendees to work on other things. If a meeting IS necessary, having people contribute their updates asynchronously ahead of time can better prepare all attendees to discuss them in the meeting.

Alternatives to live round-robins:

• Email updates to the meeting leader, who collates them and shares in the meeting notes
• Use a Yammer group thread for everyone to respond with updates
• Post updates to a shared Sites folder

Read more about alternatives to information-sharing meetings.

 

 

Meeting Objectives: Discussing and gathering feedback

Discussion and feedback meetings can be the most challenging type to hold, particularly with large groups, as they require back-and-forth conversation.

• If discussion with a large group is required, strongly consider whether the meeting could be broken down into multiple smaller meetings with fewer participants.
• As with some of the alternatives above, consider a Yammer thread, which prevents one or two voices from dominating the conversation and ensures that everyone has an opportunity to participate.
• Choose a method to identify and prioritize how questions and comments should be raised (e.g., in the chat box), and clearly communicate it to the group.
• Meeting leaders should introduce parameters for discussion at the beginning of the meeting and stick to it. For instance, if attendees are to indicate in the chat box when they have a question, avoid taking questions that are voiced without this indication.

Read more about how to effectively hold discussions in a meeting.

 

Next week we’ll continue talking about planning meetings, focusing on planning for working meetings such as project or brainstorming meetings.

Anne, Lisa, Amber, and Erin

Remote Experience Working Group