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Meetings are a big part of our working lives. For many people, they’re the definition of work—running from meeting to meeting or, more likely, clicking “end meeting” then clicking “join meeting” a few seconds later. In the United States, there are around 55 million meetings held each week. That’s at least 11 million per day and over 1 billion per year, according to Zappier. And despite the almost universal disdain for meetings, they can actually be extremely valuable (don’t freak out). That’s because, when done right, they help move business forward, and they can help you move your career forward, too. Meetings:
- Provide an opportunity for interaction, relationship nurturing, forging team connection and amping up cohesion
- Give people a place to be heard and acknowledged
- Provide a forum for problems to be discussed and decisions to be made
- Offer a powerful personal branding opportunity where you can strut your stuff in front of decision makers and other people who matter
Yet many of us groan at the thought of meetings and feel defeated when we see our calendars filled with them—back-to-back and sometimes overlapping! Meetings are ridiculed and even reviled because they can seem like a giant waste of time. But don’t blame the meetings. Blame the fact that most meeting hosts are complacent and don’t care if their meetings are deadly, frustrating, boring time sinks that inspire apathy or even dread. And most importantly, most meeting organizers and participants don’t take into account today’s actual work environment, squandering dazzling twenty-first-century technology on a staid, formulaic experience that looks like something out of Mad Men or Bewitched.
Today, in our hybrid world of work, we rely mostly on virtual meetings, and that presents an extra set of challenges—along with an extra set of opportunities to grow those all-important tech skills and interpersonal skills. Virtual meetings are even less compelling than in-person ones, so we’re tempted to take them less seriously. All the more reason to learn the skills that are essential to overcome these mile-high hurdles. Virtual meetings:
- Are less human, less visceral and less emotionally connective
- Don’t seem as important as meetings that take place around a physical conference table. The less professional and appealing the meeting is, the less we feel we need to take it seriously.
- Don’t provide a truly shared experience; everyone’s environment is different.
- Come with a gold-embossed invitation to multitask. That’s because we’re participating in the meeting on a screen that’s attached to the device that has a thousand other things we could be doing (here’s what people are actually doing in meetings).
I was a guest expert on a Canadian Broadcast Company Radio 1 show talking about meetings. The topic was prompted by Shopify’s decision to cancel all meetings. During the show, we discussed the biggest meeting gaffes and the worst experiences we’ve had with meetings. Then we talked about what it takes to lead a successful meeting—one that people want to attend. The host said, “Wow that sounds like a lot of work.” And it’s true, we need to bring our A-game. When we do, our meetings will no longer be the source of major angst or the butt of jokes. They’ll become productive, meaningful activities that inspire participation and engagement and provide some of the essential human connection we crave that’s been missing since work went virtual/hybrid. That means we need to:
1. Make meetings more potent. More fun. More connective. At the same time, we need to make them less time consuming, less frustrating and less boring. The actual meeting time should focus on activities that foster interaction among participants.
2. Train our people how to do that. We teach people how to use Excel, manage projects and negotiate contracts. Leadership development needs to create and build programs to help their talent master meetings as both participants and leaders. And because of the hybrid workplace, an extra focus on the elements that are unique to those dual environments is vital. Many people have never even learned the basics like:
- Where to position themselves on the screen
- How to establish an appropriate background
- How to use the tech to engage participants
- (and even) Whether they are on or off mute
3. Measure the effectiveness of meetings. All meetings should include an opportunity for constructive feedback on the topic, content, format, tech, etc. What’s the meeting’s VAR: value to annoyance ratio? What worked? What didn’t? How can it be improved?
Despite the frustration and the stress that come from having too many of them, meetings are vital. They’re truly integral to business. And they should be seen as a great investment of time and talent, not a waste. Best of all, when you become a maestro of the methods that make meetings mesmerizing, you’ll stand out and make a giant deposit in your personal brand bank.
William Arruda is a keynote speaker, co-founder of CareerBlast.TV and co-creator of the Personal Brand Power Audit - a complimentary quiz that helps you measure the strength of personal brand.
