For all of us in favor of getting rid of those meetings that could have been an email. These are tips will help you combat zoom meeting fatigue and get the most out of your meetings.
- Because Productive meetings=less meetings.
Remote work isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. So even if you’re itching to get back in the office chances are your team isn’t going to be all in one place. After working from home for more than a year, these are the best meeting tips for getting the most out of remote work and are the tips I use to run meetings at a FAANG company.
1. Take Notes
Whew! In the spirit of having receipts always take notes! I’ve pulled up notes from 2+ years ago to reference and honestly sometimes be petty. Either establish a note taker at the beginning of the meeting or if your team uses a collaborative tool like google docs make sure everyone contributes to the notes. Your future self with thank you.
2. Have an Agenda….before the meeting
Ever just show up to a meeting and everyone’s just talking in circles? The topic you were discussing 10 minutes ago is all of a sudden back on the table for discussion. At the end of the meeting you’re wondering what got accomplished if anything? Before even log into your zoom meeting it’s important to establish what is going to be talked about. A simple bulleted list sent out to attendees at least 24 hours before will get everyone in the same frame of mind and each topic can be tackled.
3. Prioritize Topics
It’s tempting to just go down the range of topics. But I think we’ve all be in a situation where we spent way too much time talking about a low priority item only to run out of time and have to book an extra meeting to talk about something that probably should have been talked about first. If you have multiple team members contributing to an agenda, have everyone establish high, medium, and low priority to their items.
- high- it has to be talked about this meeting
- medium-we can wait till next meeting but if we have time we can discuss.
- low-this is more of an fyi or an item that doesn’t have to be talked about right away
4. Track Actions AND Follow Up
I would argue that the main purpose of a meeting is to establish action items. Work shouldn’t happen in meetings. Work should happen outside meetings and the actions establish the work that needs to be done. If there are no actions coming out of a meeting I’d say that’s coffee chat, brainstorm, or collaboration….useful but not really a meeting. Actions should be attached to target dates and should be tracked at the top of your notes. Actions should be the first thing reviewed in a meeting. As a result, the rest of the meeting will discuss work that was done and what works needs to be done next.
5. Dates
Dates! Alluded to above…everything should have a date. The meeting took place…date! task got done…date! Task didn’t get done….date! They said they would have this to me by this date!
6. Don’t have a meeting if it could be an email
A meeting should always be a last resort. If your team is dealing with people in different time zones be a good teammate and ask yourself if you really really……..really need that meeting. No one wants to wake up early or stay late for any meeting, let alone a meeting that could have been an email. So before booking ask yourself could you take 10 minutes to craft an email. Does your team use Slack or Workplace and could you collaborate there? If you can, do that instead of booking a meeting.
Hope these tips help you for getting the most out of your next zoom meeting!
