Work Blog: Making Meetings Work For You
This post originally went up on July 28, 2021. A few notes:
- I love the Gia Storms quote. I had to remove the link to the class where I watched it since that's in one of our internal systems.
- My Outlook Categories section originally had a screen cap of my personal categories. I've switched it to a text-only version and removed a bunch of work specific terms.
- I talk about us having three buildings, which isn't a secret since you can see it on Google. I linked to the post for back when I moved into Building 3, a staggering eight years ago.
- Late in the post I talk about how I think we had a speaker come talk to us to do a presentation. After I posted this at work, someone pulled out of their own notes that the author had come to my employer in May 2012. They even had a nice little graphic they'd saved from the meeting.
- If I learned anything from fraternity chapter meetings, it was how to have a more effective meeting. This put me FAR ahead of my coworkers. The presentation and follow up in 2012 ( 10 years into my employment!) helped a great deal to get other people up to speed, but one of my work super powers is still running very effective meetings.
A few months back, I wrote about Taking Time For Yourself in Outlook, which used an entire blog post to essentially say "schedule time for yourself in Outlook so that you have focused time to get done what you need to get done." Implicit in that post was the idea that we all have a lot of meetings during the week that we have to attend, and that blocking off time would protect you from meetings so you can get work done. While I think it's always useful to block off time for yourself, you're never going to avoid meetings altogether, so there's a LOT of value in learning to deal with your meetings effectively. In this post, I'm going to teach you some tactics to help you avoid meetings you don't need to be in as well as to make the meetings you do attend more effective.
Block Off Time to Review Your Meetings
I know, I know, it feels like all of my advice starts with "block off some time on your calendar", whether it's trying to get focused work done or dealing with your out of control email. What can I say, when you've got a winning tactic you should use it wherever it is relevant. In this case, block off a little time on Friday to review your work calendar for the next week. Look at each and every meeting on your calendar and decide whether you're going to attend or not.
Gia Storms says "Good leadership is about deciding who you're going to disappoint and letting them know ahead of time." In the context of meetings, that means declining the invite and explaining why you won't be there. Maybe you're out of the office, maybe you're double-booked, or maybe you know the meeting just isn't your most urgent priority that day. Whichever it is, the organizer of the meeting would much rather hear that you won't be there in advance than wonder if they should wait a few minutes for you to show up.
What If You Need to Be There But Can't Make It?
If you are double-booked for a meeting and both are important, try suggesting alternate times. This may not work so well for recurring group meetings, but for smaller meetings it certainly can't hurt to try. At worst the organizer knows that you can't make it.
If you're double-booked and can't decide which meeting to skip, consider these helpful questions:
- Is this a one-time meeting or part of a series of recurring and regular meetings?
- How difficult was it to schedule or book the meeting in the first place? Is it likely you’ll be able to reschedule the meeting in the near future?
- Is the meeting time-sensitive? Is there a specific decision that will be made during the meeting that will decide how you work or make a decision in the near future?
- What is your relationship to the people involved in the meeting? While all of your relationships are important, which relationship at this very moment in time must take precedence?
Answering these questions can help you determine which meeting should take precedence.
What If You Don't Need to Be There?
Did a member of my team schedule it, particularly me? Then you clearly need to be there! Seriously though, there will be times when you have other urgent priorities and can't make it to a meeting, and other times when the meeting just doesn't look that important to you. Look at the meeting in question to evaluate your next steps:
- If it's a big group meeting that gets recorded or that at least has extensive notes published afterwards, and you aren't personally on the agenda, you can probably skip it. Decline the meeting. Then make sure you follow up by scheduling some time to watch the recording and/or review the notes.
- For those of you who are managers or in a leadership role, is there another team member you can send to cover for you? Maybe they have the same information you do or maybe they just need to report back to your group. Perhaps this is a growth opportunity for them. Whatever the case, when you send someone to cover for you make sure they are briefed on what the meeting is about so they can prepare appropriately, and set expectations with the organizer as well.
What If You Never Need to Be There?
Sometimes you will be in a recurring meeting where you aren't getting any value from it and you don't feel you're providing any value to the other attendees. If this happens many times in a row, it is worth discussing it with the organizer.
If this seems really difficult to you, take heart! I myself have managed to recuse myself from two different recurring meeting in 2021. In both cases, my role in the effort had been significantly reduced over time, and I felt I was providing little value to the meeting. After a conversation with my manager and the meeting organizer, I dropped out. In both cases, at the last meeting I attended I had an agenda item explaining that I wouldn't be attending further meetings. I think it was the right call; both meetings are still ongoing and they haven't reached out to me for help yet!
A good indicator that the meeting may not matter to you any more is if you find that you aren't attending it and aren't reviewing the recording or notes, and it doesn't seem to matter. If this is happening, it's time to talk about why you're in there.
Are you a meeting organizer, especially for a larger group meeting? I suggest tracking attendance, and if somebody routinely misses the meeting it is probably worth initiating a discussion about whether they are still the right person to be in the meeting. I've done this many times, and usually it either leads to that person rededicating themselves to the meeting in question, or acknowledging that it simply isn't a priority anymore and removing themself. Either way, this is an improvement for all involved.
What If You Do Need to Be There?
Step one of meeting preparation is confirming that you can and should attend the meeting. Step two is doing your part to make sure the meeting will be valuable, because the only thing worse than a meeting is a meeting that doesn't help anyone. Do your part and make sure you review the agenda ahead of time. Make sure you are prepared to discuss the agenda items you need to give input on, and add any new agenda items you feel are needed as far in advance as you can.
Before I go farther, let me be clear on this: if the meeting is important enough to block off time on the agenda for multiple people, it's important enough to have an agenda. That agenda might look very different depending on the type of meeting, but any useful meeting will have an agenda. For example:
- Most Agile standups don't have a written agenda, just agreed upon expectations about what is in scope for discussion.
- 1:1s tend to have a less formal agenda, such as a few notes on items to touch upon.
- Committee and work groups often have a very formal agenda that is written down with attendance taken.
Regardless of what kind of agenda you have for your meeting, you should be able to prepare appropriately for the meeting ahead of time.
While I personally review my attendance for all meetings on Fridays, I usually review agendas the day before the meeting in question. This typically gives me adequate time to prepare for a meeting, especially as agenda items are often added comparatively late in the game. Of course, more formal meetings often have guidelines on when agendas need to be finalized, so take those into account as you block off your time.
Other Pro Tips
The Outlook "Categories" tool is a great way to effectively color code your Outlook Calendar. You can label each color as needed, which means that when you assess all your meetings for the week you can tell at a glance what the meetings are for. For example, here is what my categories look like today.
GREEN is any 1:1 meeting I have, whether I'm the host or the attendee. I also use this for when I'm helping conduct interviews.
YELLOW and TEAL are for two major projects I worked on that merited their own category due to the sheer volume of meetings.
BROWN is for any meeting for my team.
MAGENTA is for another long running project.
DARK RED is a FYI for things I don't need to attend but want to know are going on, like our user conference.
PURPLE is all the time I've blocked off for myself to get things done.
ORANGE reminds me when my team members are going to be on PTO or sabbatical.
DARK BLUE is when I have to travel for work. Remember travel for work? Yeah, me neither.
GREY is Vacation/Personal time, and is just what it says on the tin.
Having a consistent pattern for these makes my calendar much easier to understand. I occasionally dream about having my entire team use the same categories, or at least a few common ones, but even I haven't been quite able to get that level of organization. Yet.
Also, true story: I used to have a category specifically for "meetings in other buildings" so I knew I had to get up and walk to Building 1 or Building 2 from my seat in Building 3. Wow, that feels like a million years ago.
Credit Where Credit Is Due
I have to admit that I didn't come up with most of these myself. Many years ago, we had the author of Boring Meets Suck come here and do a presentation (or maybe we didn't, because if you think I can remember 19 years of employment perfectly I've got news for you), and almost everything I discuss above originally started from that book. In particular, our meetings got dramatically better once we started having agendas. With all that said, if you'd rather think I'm a genius, I can live with that!
Mash the watch button in the top right-hand corner to make sure reading this blog is on your agenda!
- I love the Gia Storms quote. I had to remove the link to the class where I watched it since that's in one of our internal systems.
- My Outlook Categories section originally had a screen cap of my personal categories. I've switched it to a text-only version and removed a bunch of work specific terms.
- I talk about us having three buildings, which isn't a secret since you can see it on Google. I linked to the post for back when I moved into Building 3, a staggering eight years ago.
- Late in the post I talk about how I think we had a speaker come talk to us to do a presentation. After I posted this at work, someone pulled out of their own notes that the author had come to my employer in May 2012. They even had a nice little graphic they'd saved from the meeting.
- If I learned anything from fraternity chapter meetings, it was how to have a more effective meeting. This put me FAR ahead of my coworkers. The presentation and follow up in 2012 ( 10 years into my employment!) helped a great deal to get other people up to speed, but one of my work super powers is still running very effective meetings.
A few months back, I wrote about Taking Time For Yourself in Outlook, which used an entire blog post to essentially say "schedule time for yourself in Outlook so that you have focused time to get done what you need to get done." Implicit in that post was the idea that we all have a lot of meetings during the week that we have to attend, and that blocking off time would protect you from meetings so you can get work done. While I think it's always useful to block off time for yourself, you're never going to avoid meetings altogether, so there's a LOT of value in learning to deal with your meetings effectively. In this post, I'm going to teach you some tactics to help you avoid meetings you don't need to be in as well as to make the meetings you do attend more effective.
Block Off Time to Review Your Meetings
I know, I know, it feels like all of my advice starts with "block off some time on your calendar", whether it's trying to get focused work done or dealing with your out of control email. What can I say, when you've got a winning tactic you should use it wherever it is relevant. In this case, block off a little time on Friday to review your work calendar for the next week. Look at each and every meeting on your calendar and decide whether you're going to attend or not.
Gia Storms says "Good leadership is about deciding who you're going to disappoint and letting them know ahead of time." In the context of meetings, that means declining the invite and explaining why you won't be there. Maybe you're out of the office, maybe you're double-booked, or maybe you know the meeting just isn't your most urgent priority that day. Whichever it is, the organizer of the meeting would much rather hear that you won't be there in advance than wonder if they should wait a few minutes for you to show up.
What If You Need to Be There But Can't Make It?
If you are double-booked for a meeting and both are important, try suggesting alternate times. This may not work so well for recurring group meetings, but for smaller meetings it certainly can't hurt to try. At worst the organizer knows that you can't make it.
If you're double-booked and can't decide which meeting to skip, consider these helpful questions:
- Is this a one-time meeting or part of a series of recurring and regular meetings?
- How difficult was it to schedule or book the meeting in the first place? Is it likely you’ll be able to reschedule the meeting in the near future?
- Is the meeting time-sensitive? Is there a specific decision that will be made during the meeting that will decide how you work or make a decision in the near future?
- What is your relationship to the people involved in the meeting? While all of your relationships are important, which relationship at this very moment in time must take precedence?
Answering these questions can help you determine which meeting should take precedence.
What If You Don't Need to Be There?
Did a member of my team schedule it, particularly me? Then you clearly need to be there! Seriously though, there will be times when you have other urgent priorities and can't make it to a meeting, and other times when the meeting just doesn't look that important to you. Look at the meeting in question to evaluate your next steps:
- If it's a big group meeting that gets recorded or that at least has extensive notes published afterwards, and you aren't personally on the agenda, you can probably skip it. Decline the meeting. Then make sure you follow up by scheduling some time to watch the recording and/or review the notes.
- For those of you who are managers or in a leadership role, is there another team member you can send to cover for you? Maybe they have the same information you do or maybe they just need to report back to your group. Perhaps this is a growth opportunity for them. Whatever the case, when you send someone to cover for you make sure they are briefed on what the meeting is about so they can prepare appropriately, and set expectations with the organizer as well.
What If You Never Need to Be There?
Sometimes you will be in a recurring meeting where you aren't getting any value from it and you don't feel you're providing any value to the other attendees. If this happens many times in a row, it is worth discussing it with the organizer.
If this seems really difficult to you, take heart! I myself have managed to recuse myself from two different recurring meeting in 2021. In both cases, my role in the effort had been significantly reduced over time, and I felt I was providing little value to the meeting. After a conversation with my manager and the meeting organizer, I dropped out. In both cases, at the last meeting I attended I had an agenda item explaining that I wouldn't be attending further meetings. I think it was the right call; both meetings are still ongoing and they haven't reached out to me for help yet!
A good indicator that the meeting may not matter to you any more is if you find that you aren't attending it and aren't reviewing the recording or notes, and it doesn't seem to matter. If this is happening, it's time to talk about why you're in there.
Are you a meeting organizer, especially for a larger group meeting? I suggest tracking attendance, and if somebody routinely misses the meeting it is probably worth initiating a discussion about whether they are still the right person to be in the meeting. I've done this many times, and usually it either leads to that person rededicating themselves to the meeting in question, or acknowledging that it simply isn't a priority anymore and removing themself. Either way, this is an improvement for all involved.
What If You Do Need to Be There?
Step one of meeting preparation is confirming that you can and should attend the meeting. Step two is doing your part to make sure the meeting will be valuable, because the only thing worse than a meeting is a meeting that doesn't help anyone. Do your part and make sure you review the agenda ahead of time. Make sure you are prepared to discuss the agenda items you need to give input on, and add any new agenda items you feel are needed as far in advance as you can.
Before I go farther, let me be clear on this: if the meeting is important enough to block off time on the agenda for multiple people, it's important enough to have an agenda. That agenda might look very different depending on the type of meeting, but any useful meeting will have an agenda. For example:
- Most Agile standups don't have a written agenda, just agreed upon expectations about what is in scope for discussion.
- 1:1s tend to have a less formal agenda, such as a few notes on items to touch upon.
- Committee and work groups often have a very formal agenda that is written down with attendance taken.
Regardless of what kind of agenda you have for your meeting, you should be able to prepare appropriately for the meeting ahead of time.
While I personally review my attendance for all meetings on Fridays, I usually review agendas the day before the meeting in question. This typically gives me adequate time to prepare for a meeting, especially as agenda items are often added comparatively late in the game. Of course, more formal meetings often have guidelines on when agendas need to be finalized, so take those into account as you block off your time.
Other Pro Tips
The Outlook "Categories" tool is a great way to effectively color code your Outlook Calendar. You can label each color as needed, which means that when you assess all your meetings for the week you can tell at a glance what the meetings are for. For example, here is what my categories look like today.
GREEN is any 1:1 meeting I have, whether I'm the host or the attendee. I also use this for when I'm helping conduct interviews.
YELLOW and TEAL are for two major projects I worked on that merited their own category due to the sheer volume of meetings.
BROWN is for any meeting for my team.
MAGENTA is for another long running project.
DARK RED is a FYI for things I don't need to attend but want to know are going on, like our user conference.
PURPLE is all the time I've blocked off for myself to get things done.
ORANGE reminds me when my team members are going to be on PTO or sabbatical.
DARK BLUE is when I have to travel for work. Remember travel for work? Yeah, me neither.
GREY is Vacation/Personal time, and is just what it says on the tin.
Having a consistent pattern for these makes my calendar much easier to understand. I occasionally dream about having my entire team use the same categories, or at least a few common ones, but even I haven't been quite able to get that level of organization. Yet.
Also, true story: I used to have a category specifically for "meetings in other buildings" so I knew I had to get up and walk to Building 1 or Building 2 from my seat in Building 3. Wow, that feels like a million years ago.
Credit Where Credit Is Due
I have to admit that I didn't come up with most of these myself. Many years ago, we had the author of Boring Meets Suck come here and do a presentation (or maybe we didn't, because if you think I can remember 19 years of employment perfectly I've got news for you), and almost everything I discuss above originally started from that book. In particular, our meetings got dramatically better once we started having agendas. With all that said, if you'd rather think I'm a genius, I can live with that!
Mash the watch button in the top right-hand corner to make sure reading this blog is on your agenda!