Not Every Conversation Should Be a Meeting

Today I was very busy. 15 phone calls, over 30 online meetings, replied to 50 emails… we often encounter such situations during the day. Some of these forms of communication have lately started to be called meetings. But is that correct? The development of communication tools and the spread of online platforms make us more easily reachable in corporate life. We may even face complaints like "Can't you spare 2 minutes? 10 minutes of work would be enough."

Communication and meeting inflation increased much more with the pandemic. We started to miss our face-to-face meetings. I am sure most of us agree that better preparation is done for face-to-face, physically attended meetings. However much we digitalize and live with online meetings, we must not lose our meeting culture and we must not see every conversation as a meeting. For a conversation to become a productive meeting, we have responsibilities before the meeting, during the meeting and after the meeting.

Before the Meeting

• Goal and Purpose of the Meeting: What should our outcome be for the meeting to succeed? We should set objectives such as new decisions, consensus, new ideas, contract signing, commitment.
• Necessity of the Meeting: Is a meeting necessary for our purpose and goal? Is it the best method for the solution? We should consider alternative communication methods (email, phone, presentation).
• Identifying Participants: Who should be at the meeting to achieve the goal? Who should we invite at a minimum? Who is essential for the meeting to happen? We should define this well.
• Platform Selection: We should choose the right platform to make the meeting as productive and comfortable as possible.
• Preparing the Agenda: Is the agenda ready and has it been sent to all participants?

During the Meeting

• Early Preparation: We should be ready before the meeting time.
• Agenda Check: We should ensure everyone has received and understood the agenda.
• Presenting Purpose and Agenda: We should present the meeting purpose and how we hope to achieve it at the opening, linking it to the agenda.
• Encouraging Participation: We should encourage those who participate little and rein in those who talk too much.
• Outcome Notes: We should ensure that meeting outcome notes are taken.
• Summary and Approval: We should summarize the outcomes, decisions and commitments at the end of the meeting and have participants approve the meeting outcome report.
• Thanks: We should thank all participants.

After the Meeting

• Sharing the Outcome Report: We should share the meeting outcome report and summary with participants.
• Responsibility Follow-up: We should follow up with participants who took on responsibilities after the meeting to ensure results are turned into action.
• Participant Review: We should review participants who stayed silent or expressed reservations about the outcomes and assess the impact.

Looking at what I have listed, does every conversation have the character of a meeting? Not every communication is a meeting! I invite you to reflect on this.