Bad meetings are an unfortunate experience that many of us have to go through more often than we would like to.
Following a recent piece on how to make meetings more productive, I wanted to share a few more ways to save yourself and your fellow employees from constant bad meetings at your workplace.
If you want to make meetings more enjoyable, useful and less of a drag, try out the 3 tips outlined in this video and article.
- Avoid MAS (Mindless Accept Syndrome)
Many people accept meeting invitations without looking over the content twice.
While it may seem useful to attend as many meetings as possible, it is actually counterproductive and a waste of time to attend meetings where you are not actively participating.
A simple memo can save you and other non-needed participants the wasted time of taking part in an overstuffed meeting.
- Keep it Focused
Having a specific goal for meetings before holding them seems obvious, but many people fail to make the purpose of a meeting clear in an invitation.
If people in your workplace make a conscious effort to sum up the purpose of a meeting within 5 or less words, you will find that people will be much better equipped to avoid MAS in the first place.
Additionally, this will make the content of the meeting much simpler to condense into a memo/email that might follow.
How do you encourage people to keep things focused? Read the next tip for one tactic.
- Be Vocal About Useless Meetings
When you receive a poor meeting invitation, either press the maybe or tentative option and ask the person to clarify on the goals of a meeting.
If you do this, you can avoid meetings that will waste your time.
With a more thorough explanation of what is going on in the meeting, you will be able to successfully and professionally avoid a meeting by articulating in a clear fashion why your time could be spent better with another task or agenda.
By implementing these three tips in your day-to-day work life, you will be prepared to slowly weed out burdensome meetings that kill your valuable productivity.
The more you constantly press your colleagues about the content of meetings, the more aware they will become as well about the usefulness (or uselessness) of the meetings they are proposing/preparing for.