How many times have you been called into a meeting only to spend the first half trying to figure out why everyone was called there and what you should be talking about? Too often we find meetings a waste of time and would rather work alone and try to relay information through email and messaging platforms.
Regardless of our opinion, hopefully we can all admit that there is certainly a time and place when meetings are necessary. Don Spear, Founder and CEO of OpenSesame, holds five reasons why you should call a meeting. Stick to Don’s reasons listed below, and coworkers will begin to view meetings as a necessary part of work productivity.
-
Report Results
Whether it be quarterly earnings or how well you were able to develop sales leads at a recent trade show, the main idea behind this meeting is results, numbers, figures, or anything tangible that can be shown.
There is no reason that you cannot simply send out an email showing this report. In fact, sending out an email or sharing a document prior to this meeting is a crucial first step. The purpose of the meeting is to allow everyone to openly dissect and analyze what exactly these results mean for the company.
-
Look to the Future
An organization will only last as long as it is planned out to last. A fundamental part of any organization is constantly looking to the future and planning which direction to go in. This needs to be a collective goal or direction, so setting up a meeting for a time like this allows everyone to contribute and the whole organization to know which direction they are supposed to be going in.
-
Ideas for Input
Notify those who are to be involved in this meeting of the plan days or even weeks in advance so that they have time to mull over the idea and are able to provide input once it is time for the actual meeting. Your team should hopefully come prepared with well thought out ideas that can be seriously considered.
A pro tip for this kind of meeting is make sure to ask every person in the room for ideas. More introverted people may have brilliant ideas in their head, but are waiting to be called on to share.
-
Get Commitment
Sometimes you have to call a meeting purely to hammer a plan down and guarantee certain people are going to perform certain actions. This is simply to hold team members accountable that they are going to commit to the plan.
-
Get Approval
This meeting is mostly needed when pitching plans or ideas to your manager or boss. One important thing to take into account when setting up this kind of meeting is that the idea or plan should be completely ready to go if your boss or manager approves. The point of this meeting is not to pitch an idea, get approval, and then say, “Great, let me get started on that”. The point of this is as a final check of approval before actually implementing the plan.
Meetings have unfortunately become thought of as wastes of time in many office settings. This is probably because meetings are being called for the wrong reasons, and when they are being called for the right reasons, people are not prepared. By following OpenSesame Founder and CEO Don Spear’s “Five Reasons for Meetings”, your office will hopefully begin to view meetings as a time for work to progress and not stand still.