Plan Your Meeting

Running a successful meeting requires a fair amount of groundwork. Set yourself up for a meaningful, engaging conversation with the right players by thinking through your goal and deciding who can help you achieve it, what materials they’ll need to contribute in an informed manner, and when and where you’ll best assemble everyone.

Decide if you need to meet

Remote collaboration can exacerbate our tendency to plan needless meetings. Because we’re measuring our working relationships against traditional office life, where coworkers see each other every day, we feel like we should be in contact with our counterparts more frequently than we are. Our team is dispersed, so group conference calls are our only way to interact, right?

But the cost of these interactions is invisible to us. We don’t see how harried or bored our collaborators are during an ill-conceived meeting or how it can throw off the rest of their workday.

What are you trying to achieve?

To avoid wasting your colleagues’ time—and your own—figure out what you hope to accomplish. Push yourself to be specific. For example, “My goal for this meeting is to make adjustments to our current project timeline. I want to gather input from the team about their schedule constraints, so that I can make a new timeline that people are able to commit to.” As you’re framing the goal, ask yourself:

• What do I want the outcome of this meeting to be?

• Why and how do other people need to be involved?

• Which people or points of view do I particularly want to hear from?

Are you ready to meet?

Now that you’ve articulated your goals, assess them critically. Will holding a meeting right now really accomplish what you want? Dig down on several key questions.

Do I have everything I need to discuss the situation? Do I have all the information necessary to make the meeting work? Am I clear in my own mind about my concerns and priorities—and those of the work? Perform a short thought experiment, where you put yourself in the place of key participants and imagine the questions they’re likely to ask. Can you answer them? If not, postpone the meeting, and do some more research or independent strategic thinking.

Does moving forward require back-and-forth with collaborators in real time? If you simply need to get information from someone else (“What’s your project status?” “Can you give me feedback on these documents?”), e-mail might be a better option, since colleagues can get to it on their own time. But if you need to discuss a complicated problem, get multiple perspectives on an issue, make a sensitive group decision, or do anything else that requires complex human interactions, plan for real-time talk.

Will our group dynamic benefit from a real-time interaction right now? Meetings matter for morale as well as efficiency. People feel more connected when they can see each other’s faces or hear each other’s voices. Even trading messages on chat can motivate, since the quick give-and-take builds rapport. If your collaborators seem disaffected or distrustful, try moving business you’d normally conduct over e-mail or through document sharing to a meeting.

After running through these questions, you may realize that you’re not ready to bring in other people on this issue—or that you can take care of it on your own. But if this review confirms the need for a meeting, it’s time to map out the plan to meet your goal, starting with a well-crafted agenda.

Create an agenda

Your agenda outlines the items you want to accomplish in a logical sequence, with a time limit and an owner for each order of business. As with a traditional meeting, break down complicated issues into component parts that build on one another. For example, if you need a plan for shifting team members’ responsibilities, start by giving a relevant update (an agenda item might be “Review team members’ roles on the project”); then get people’s input on various ways to shift these roles (“Discuss potential approaches” and “Vote on approaches”); and, finally, make a decision (“Review votes, and decide on approach”). The lack of face-to-face stimulation shrinks people’s attention spans, so plan the bulk of the meeting in 5- or 10-minute segments. If the meeting moves along at a good pace and people believe they’re making progress, they’re less likely to become distracted by their physical environments.

Factor in participant time zones and availability —if someone can join for only part of the meeting, schedule the items that matter to them in that window of time. Technology also influences your agenda. If attendees must use an onerous tool to view a presentation or access a database, group these activities together so that you don’t lose momentum (or attention) as people log in or toggle between screens.

Include any information that folks will need to join the meeting on your agenda—where it’s being held (conference room, chat channel), dial-in information, and so on. Add the backup plan details, too, so that participants have everything they need in one spot. Figure 1 shows a sample agenda.

A few days before the meeting, distribute your agenda with a packet of information about the meeting (see the section “Send Your Invitation and Materials” later in the book). To make sure people really read the information, pick a format they’re likely to use. For example, if some participants are calling in from the road, make your packet mobile friendly.

Identify the participants

As you’ve been noting what topics you’ll cover, you’ve probably also started jotting down people’s names beside various items. To build the guest list, invite only essential contributors. Attendees should fall into one of these four categories:

• Key decision makers

• People with information about what’s under discussion

• People who have a stake in the issues

• Anyone who will be required to implement the decisions you make

The number of participants matters almost as much as their identity, especially in a virtual environment. On the one hand, communication technology allows you to gather large groups together with minimal logistical inconvenience. You don’t need to book a massive conference room or pack your guests in cheek to jowl. You just need a platform that can support your audience size (some tools have a headcount cap). On the other hand, it’s hard to moderate a discussion between static-filled voices or postage-stamp-sized faces on your computer screen. The following 8–181,800 rule can help you finalize your invite list:

• If you have to solve a problem or make a decision, invite 8 people or fewer. If you have more participants, you may receive so much conflicting input that it’s difficult to deal with the problem or make the decision at hand.

• If you want to brainstorm, your guest list can go as high as 18 people.

• If you need to provide updates, invite however many people need to receive the information. However, if everyone attending the meeting will be presenting, limit the number of participants to no more than 18 people.

• If you need to rally the troops, go for 1,800 people—or more!

Pick a platform

If your goals and your guest list fill the criteria for a successful meeting, it’s time to decide how to hold it. And there’s one piece of advice that experts agree on here: Use video.

Video

Sure, sometimes leading a virtual meeting using video technologies is impossible—when a coworker’s calling in from their car, or when poor internet service on one end means that you’ll all be subjected to a choppy connection. But where it is possible, you’ll want to choose video over phone or chat for a couple reasons. Body language and facial expressions give you important information about people’s reactions and moods. Everyone in the meeting will benefit from this extra layer of detail, and you’ll be more likely to avoid misunderstandings and hurt feelings. And if you can see other participants’ faces and peek into their lives a little bit, rapport and empathy will grow stronger: “Deborah’s at an airport gate, and she looks pretty tired. This business trip must be grueling.”

Video also discourages multitasking. It holds attendees accountable for their participation (yes, we see you making lunch), and the visual stimulation makes it easier to pay attention. When there’s social pressure on all attendees not to appear distracted—and when you back up that norm by calling out bad behavior—your coworkers will be more engaged and your meetings more productive.

Nevertheless, video only works when all the participants have a strong, fast internet connection (at least 25 Mbps download speed and 3 Mbps upload speed). They also need a decent webcam—a standalone unit or one that’s built into their device. And they need to be willing to turn it on. Some people feel deeply uncomfortable showing their work spaces to colleagues, and others freeze at the prospect of being on camera.

Other meeting channels

If you’re working with people who can’t engage with the content of the meeting because they’re so unhappy about its format, you’re better off choosing another medium. But which one? Broadly speaking, your options are phone (mobile, landline, or a teleconference app like WebEx) or chat (via mobile phone or computer). Let’s assess them.

Phone. Good for small-group discussions, simple information-sharing, and check-ins with small groups. It’s your best bet for participants who lack reliable Wi-Fi or a place to set up their computers. Use it if you anticipate a lot of back-and-forth between participants, or if you’re discussing something emotionally charged. If you share documents ahead of time, attendees can follow a presentation or review a report.

Chat. Good for any meeting with small groups, for casual check-ins with large groups, and for directed Q&As that require little discussion. It’s convenient for people on the go, especially if you pick an application with a good mobile interface. But mobile keyboards will make it difficult for these people to participate in an extended conversation. This is not the ideal medium for emotionally charged material, although a less formal vibe may let people show their personalities a bit more, for example with emoji or GIFs. In general, user IDs help clarify the discussion, but without strong moderation, the sequencing of comments can quickly become unmanageable.

As a meeting platform, each of these tools has its drawbacks. You’ll need to decide which user needs are the most important for your meeting and how to work around each mode’s deficiencies. For example, if you’re hosting a large meeting on a conference call, consider setting up a chat thread where participants can queue questions without interrupting the meeting. We’ll cover setting up supplementary communication channels in the next chapter.

Set a time

Picking a time that works for everyone is especially tricky when you’re in different time zones. Send around a poll (for example, with Doodle), or e-mail the team to find common availability. If your meeting is urgent, you might just need to wedge it in and hope people can rearrange their schedules to be there. But if you have a little wiggle room, find a time that works for the majority—and when people can really concentrate on the discussion. If you have access to invitees’ calendars, check which days are packed and when major deadlines loom. Otherwise, ask up front about their schedules when you invite people: “I’d like to find a time to meet in the next two weeks to dedicate an hour to this issue. What looks best for you?”

You have a plan for when you’ll meet and what you’ll discuss with whom, but you’re not ready to send your invite just yet. First you’ll learn how to find the right combination of tools to connect and what to do if they don’t perform the way you expected.