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Webinar report: Avoiding the meeting groan

Too many meetings. Too many attendees. Too little focus on purpose or outcomes.

Sound familiar? If so, you’re acquainted with meeting bloat, a phenomenon long in the making and accelerated by the pandemic.

 

Meeting bloat is not solely restricted to Teams and Zoom, etc, though online platforms do bring the challenges of meeting effectiveness into sharp focus.

No surprise then, that a high number of you joined the third of Joanna Gaudoin’s 2024 CLL webinars examining The Four Vital Skills Needed for in-House. It tackled meeting bloat head on.

Joanna’s background in marketing and consultancy with large corporates has given her a deep understanding of the importance of communication skills in business. Having founded Inside Out Image in 2011, Joanna now helps organisations and individuals build great workplace relationships through skills rarely taught in formal settings. Her clients include HSBC, RPC, Mastercard, Irwin Mitchell, Ashurst and Willis Towers Watson.

Running meetings

If you’re running a meeting, give attendees a clear idea of what to expect. Meeting tone setters include:

Purpose – the ‘why’ of the meeting, for example:

  • To present information;
  • To gather information;
  • To collaborate and ideate; or
  • To arrive at a decision.

Attendees – will it be a high level meeting or are people of all levels of seniority invited? Does it involve multiple departments of the organisation? Will external stakeholders such as suppliers, customers, etc be there?

Objectives – from solving a problem to getting understand people, objectives for meetings abound. Setting out your objectives will help your attendees prepare for the meeting; and 

Venue – your choice of venue – from online platform, through office meeting room to a coffee shop or even a walking meeting - your choice of venue will indicate how formal your meeting will be and help people decide how they need to show up.

Once the meeting is underway, be aware of who the extroverts and introverts are - and which attendees are task-focused versus relational. Be ready to manage the meeting so all attendees get to speak and that no individual dominates the event unduly. This means consciously looking for cues indicating that someone is looking to speak. It can be tricky in large online meetings where not all attendees are visible on screen. In this scenario, encourage attendees to use the ‘hands up’ and similar features of the online meeting platform.

Give your attendees a clear agenda that reflects your desired meeting outcomes and aim to close the meeting in under an hour. Allotting a full sixty minutes for a meeting gives attendees little or no time to switch to later commitments.

Participating in meetings

If you’re an attendee as opposed to the owner of the meeting, see it as an opportunity. It’s your chance to not only contribute ideas or raise concerns but also to increase your visibility across the organisation.

Make the right impression

Maximising your personal impact at a meeting goes beyond what you say when you’re there. Other big factors include:

  • How you prepare – find out as much as you can about the purpose, objectives and attendees of the meeting in advance. Also, ask the owner of meeting exactly what they’re expecting of you;
  • How you appear – are you dressed appropriately? If the meeting is online, does your screen background reflect the impression you want to create? Aim for your person to occupy around 50% of your screen. In large Teams meetings, the attendees visible on screen are the most recent speakers – worth bearing in mind if you’re looking to leave an impression;
  • Emotional intelligence (EQ) – according to Doctors Travis Bradberry and Jean Greaves, authors of Emotional Intelligence 2.0, 58% of your professional performance is due to EQ; and
  • Your body language – up to 70% of communication is non-verbal in an in-person meeting. Use your body language to enforce- not contradict - what you say. Similarly, when looking to speak, show your intent with gestures such as moving your body forward (or where the meeting is online, through the ‘hands up’ or similar signalling function).

Be comfortable pushing back if people interrupt you. It’s quite acceptable to say, “Sorry, I haven’t finished yet. Please give me another minute.” Remember, you’re at the meeting because your contribution is sought and valued.

Blocking out meeting bloat – five top skills

To summarise, there are five top skills you can develop to help you maximise the effectiveness of the meetings you attend - whether as the chair or an attendee.

  1. Preparing – knowing (and communicating) the purpose to the meeting, who’s going and what’s expected of you
  2. Making an impact – how you look, how you speak, how you project yourself and how you engage with others using EQ and body language.
  3. Understanding what you can contribute – bringing your skills, insights, experience and unique vantage point to bear on the discussion.
  4. Speaking up – building your confidence to speak assertively and push back on interruptions.
  5. Managing time – being concise, staying focused on the single meeting objective and wrapping up ahead of schedule whenever possible.

Effective meetings are about far more than simply turning up. A one-hour meeting involving eight people swallows up an entire working day in total person-hours. So don’t be passive. Make your time in meetings count.

Further reading

You’ll find more relationship-building tips and insights from Joanna in her book, Getting On: Making work work, which is currently discounted to £12.50 on Joanna’s website for CLL delegates who are UK based (usual print price £14.37) using code 9SKILLS until Friday 18 October 2024.  

See you next time

The fourth and final webinar in The Four Vital Skills Needed for in-House with Joanna is at 10.00am on 26 November 2024. Titled The face of your work – presenting and delivery, it looks at ways to leave a positive impression when delivering your work. Register here.

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