Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Cuban, and other famous businessmen blatantly decry meetings as useless, garnering agreement from many managers, lawyers, and other professionals. Yet, here I stand—a natural extrovert—ready to champion the humble meeting.
Why? Because beyond the checkboxes of goals and outcomes, meetings are about understanding and connecting with people. They offer a rare chance to engage with colleagues we don’t often work with, to genuinely listen—something that’s becoming increasingly rare in our fast-paced world, and to develop a common strategy with clients.
Meetings are the place where seasoned professionals can impart valuable insights and real-time feedback to less experienced colleagues, enriching their learning and development within the company or firm. They also serve as forums where diverse perspectives can converge, facilitating more democratic and comprehensive decision-making.
Perhaps the problem isn’t meetings themselves but how we approach them.
Here are some strategies that I found useful to transform meetings from time sinks into productive engagements:
• Be prepared: Walk into every meeting with a clear agenda and objectives. You may not follow all of them, but it’s a good way to start.
• Consider a time expansion in your agenda: Allow for some leeway. It often takes a moment to shift gears and dive into the meeting’s core issues. Building momentum in a short meeting is almost impossible.
• Be on time: Quite obvious, but not so much for most of the professionals I know.
• Draft minutes after: Draft minutes (it can be you or someone else) post-meeting. You can also use AI software to capture discussions (with everyone’s consent), ensuring no detail is lost. Someone would suggest recording every meeting, but my experience with recordings is quite negative. No one looks at them afterwards, and most of the time, useful information is not shared.
• Avoid distractions: It takes 25 minutes to focus, and only a second to lose it. Moreover, and I am speaking to the senior ones, the message you are providing to younger professionals is not ideal.
• Choose the Right Format: Not all meetings are created equal. Sometimes an online meeting is more effective; other times, face-to-face interactions yield better results.
• Rely on visual aids: Use visuals to clarify complex points and keep the meeting engaging.
• Avoid monologues: Meetings are not shows for the audience where actors seek final applause. They are opportunities to listen and discuss.
Of course, this is just a starting point. There could be many more strategies and reasons behind them (maybe I could write an article about it).
However, my goal was to stress the fact that meetings aren’t inherently flawed. Our approach might be. And rethinking the way we meet can reveal that these gatherings aren’t just necessary: they’re invaluable.
