For better or worse, the state of meetings has changed drastically over the past two years. Long gone are the days of stuffy boardrooms with lacquered tables and paper flip charts. Today, we’re rapidly evolving beyond the fully remote world, where everyone was dialing in from their home office.
One of the best ways to develop a new approach is to reflect back on the types of meetings we’ve all experienced (but hope to never see again). From nonfunctioning audio to sleeping colleagues, here are four types of meetings to avoid in 2022 – and tips to make your meetings more effective in a hybrid world.
1. The “Can Everyone See My Screen?” Meeting
The problem: Broken video and muted microphones may have been par for the course at the beginning of remote work, but with video usage 350 percent higher than pre-pandemic days according to Frost & Sullivan, meeting-goers expect more. Nobody wants to wait half an hour for their host to figure out how to share their screen. A speaker who can’t load their own presentation will lose their audience, failed breakout rooms are missed opportunities for participation and everyone will leave feeling like their time has been wasted.
The fix: There are a few steps you can take to resolve this technologically problematic type of meeting. The first is making sure you’re using collaboration applications that effortlessly support the functions you need. Other telegram database users list improvements like adaptive lighting, sound bars for better audio and adjusted camera angles help make it feel like everyone is in the room together. It’s also important to ensure everyone involved can use these tools effectively. Spending a little bit of time training your team means less precious time is wasted during the actual meeting.
2. The “This Could Have Been an Email” Meeting
The problem: Everyone’s been there. The entire with the public and increase team has gathered together to discuss the latest project, only to spend an excruciating hour going over a single document, line-by-line. Or the “update meeting” just to learn that there haven’t been any changes since the last time you met. Meetings like this eat into time that attendees could be using for productive tasks and cause frustration. If your meeting qatar data doesn’t require in-depth discussion and distracts people from their day, it probably could have been an email.
The fix:
This might seem obvious, but sometimes emails really are better than meetings! Emails allow participants to respond at their own pace, provide complete records of the communication and give updates in real time. Of course, nuance can sometimes be lost over text or ideas need to be explained. In cases like these, having the right technology makes it easy to transition to a quick call, but only for long enough to clarify the point. Just be sure to follow up with an email to keep everyone on the same page.
3. The “What Are We Talking About Again?” Meeting
The problem: Absent agendas, rambling tangents and discussions that are more like digressions – these are all signs that a meeting has gone off the rails. If you can’t remember why you’re in a meeting in the first place, it’s hard to feel like it’s worth your time. Meetings by design take employees away from their individual tasks, and without a focused plan and a dedicated leader to guide the discussion, the overall quality of work and satisfaction can suffer.