Hi, everyone, hopefully you're having a wonderful September, I
can't believe time flies. But what I really wanted to talk
about is just meetings in general, oof, like I have so
many meetings. And fortunately, I was able to cut a bunch of
meetings out of my teams in my days, because it was just
getting too overwhelming. So first, I wanted to talk about
the fact that I know a lot of companies have gone to affording
probably in other countries, not in the US as much. But that's
one thing that I would recommend, just have a day where
there's no meetings for my team is today, we have no meeting
Fridays, I tell everyone, hey, can we reschedule? Can we move
it, sometimes I'll go ahead and go for meetings. So my team
doesn't have to if someone says that they really can't move it.
But other than that, today, I just have no meeting Fridays,
gives us a time to relax, focus on other things, instead of just
being in constant meetings all the time. So I would definitely
recommend having a no meeting. The other thing too, and you've
probably already heard this a lot of times is when you're
scheduling a meeting, a make sure you're looking at the
scheduling assistant, it drives me nuts when people schedule
meetings, and you already had a meeting scheduled, and then they
expect you to be in the meeting. And so you didn't already have a
meeting that you had to be part of. So just be respectful of
people's times and make sure that you're checking the
scheduling assistant, try to make sure that you're not
scheduling it right after they finished another meeting, if
possible, move it 15 minutes. That is really something that
people appreciate. The other thing as well is make sure you
have an agenda. You don't ever want to go and I remember I used
to do this when I was starting out my career, I would just
schedule meetings, and then I would have a bunch of the
meeting invitees be like, Okay, what is this about? So instead
of getting all these questions as to what the meetings about,
just putting the agenda and in, make sure that everybody
understands what's going to happen in the meeting. And then
it also helps you prepare, because then they know what is
the reason for the meeting, and they're able to get the
information needed for that meeting. So it really helps for
many reasons to have an agenda. So definitely have an agenda.
And if someone on your team does not have an agenda, just ask
them for one. Another tip about meetings is don't invite
everyone that was a mistake that I used to make, when I first
started off as well is I would just invite everyone because I
wasn't sure who needed to be there. Learn what your people
do, learn what others do, and just invite the people who need
to be there. A good way to have the people who need to be there
who you didn't invite be part of it is just put a note in the
meeting body and just say, note, please forward to anyone you
feel will bring value to this meeting, and then let other
people decide who needs to be part of the meeting. But that
definitely helps is to reduce the number of people who are
there. And then also helps because then you don't have
people who feel they need to talk and then they start talking
and talking and have no idea and bring nothing to the meeting. So
just make sure that you
just reduce or limit the number of people who are part of the
meeting, who are people who are actually going to bring some
value to the meeting or are going to be able to move any
thing along that comes up. The other thing as well is make sure
that you're tracking action items. meetings should be to
have something come out of the meeting, whether it be an
outcome, or now everybody knows a way forward. So usually with
that there will be action items, make sure you're tracking those
action items. And then after the meeting, make sure to send them
off. If it's something that people have not completed the
action items, you're able to send, you know, in a consistent,
timely fashion like hey, reminder, hey, just checking in
on these action items. So then you're able to complete them all
and then move whatever you're trying to move forward. For me
it would be a project. So definitely make sure that you're
tracking those action items you pick when it should be
completed, when it was opened, who owns the action item. And
then also the status if it's completed and not started, or in
progress. So definitely, those are the fields that I would
recommend when you're trying to track those action items. Do you
think as well as sad now that more and more people are moving
to video conferencing apps like teams zoom Google meet, is, if
it's something that if let's say that some people were not able
to join, see if it's okay to record the meeting, that really
helps. Because if you're having meeting minutes that someone has
to transcribe, if you record it, they don't have to sit there
stressed out, but they're capturing everything during the
meeting, they can go ahead, listen to the meeting later and
transcribe it. If someone's not able to be there, they're able
to listen to it later and get some value from it. Or if it's
something that is more of a knowledge transfer session or
something like that, you can have additional people who
onboard like let's say, a new employee, you can actually have
that as part of your training package when that person
onboard. So there's multiple reasons why you want to record a
meeting, if you're not able to record a meeting due to the
sensitivity. Also, let's say in the beginning of the meeting,
you asked like, Hey, can I record the meeting and someone
says, No, then make sure that you do try to capture the point.
So you don't have to verbatim write everything that person has
said, but you can at least like capture the notes. When the
thing is send it out right after the meeting and say, hey, please
validate, add, modify whatever I have here, and then have people
contribute to the meeting notes, that really helps us well,
because it isn't just on you. And if let later let's say
someone's like, well, that you didn't capture this in the
meeting minutes, you can say, well, I did send out a follow up
email with the meeting minutes and ask for people to add,
modify. So that helps it not just fall on you is is a
collaboration effort. So I definitely think that
transcribing or recording, preferably recording a meeting
is so valuable. And I think the last thing to note is make sure
that people understand what, like the formality of the
meeting. And the reason I say that is if it's like a very
informal meeting, people can just like chime in. If you
prefer people raising their hands, then just say that in the
beginning, so people understand how you want the meeting to go.
Because I know I've been in some meetings, and people prefer
people to raise their hands. I've been in more informal
meetings where people are just like, Hey, cut me off, if you
have a question or a statement or anything, so just make sure
you set the guidelines of the meeting before it starts. So
then everybody understands how you want the meeting to go.
Yeah, and those are some of my tips on just making meetings
just run smoothly. I will say that I am so glad that I've
instituted this no meeting Fridays, because meetings were
killing me. And that has also helped and also being very
mindful of what meetings I should be part of, if I see that
I'm optional. I decide if I want to go to the meeting or not. I
have been in the nest one thing actually, make sure you use the
optional
feature correctly, because there have been a couple of times
where someone added me as optional, and I'm like, I'm not
gonna go to that meeting. And then they're later calling me
and be like, Oh, you're not in the meeting. Well, I was
optional, so I didn't think I had to be there. So just make
sure using that because that drives me nuts. But yeah, just
let me know your thoughts. If you haven't checked out my Etsy
shop and now I have a Shopify store that I created like my own
store. I am starting to add like project management templates out
there. One of them is a meeting minute template and then a
bundle as well. So definitely check it out. I'll have a link
below. But everybody have a wonderful weekend and I'll talk
to you soon. Bye. Take care