By: Ashley Ahmadi
It’s time to plan a meeting. Easy, right? Not so fast. Before considering meeting structure, attendees, and venues and finally hitting ‘Send’ on those Outlook invites, we must answer a singular question: “Why are we meeting?”
As a compass provides direction to a ship’s captain, effectively guiding a vessel through fogbanks and troubled waters, the answer to this question, “Why are we meeting?” will serve as our most valuable navigational device as we brave the treacherous waters of project management meetings. In other words, as Priya Parker explains in The Art of Gathering, “Let purpose be your bouncer. Let it decide what goes into your gathering and what stays out.”
Do We Need to Meet?
Let us first dispense with the lowest hanging fruit and determine if we even need to meet. We’ve likely all found ourselves with an hour blocked on our calendars for a meeting that took less than 10 minutes.
Recommendation: Confirm the meeting goals and consider the most effective medium. If a phone call, Teams chat, or a few (a few!) quick emails can get us there more quickly and successfully, let’s skip the meeting and pick up the phone instead.
If You Do Need to Meet…
Let’s assume we’ve deduced our purpose does require a meeting and dig into the next round of considerations related to our ‘why’.
Our Meeting Goals: What are They?
Next, we need to scrutinize our meeting purpose and maintain a clear grasp on our objectives. What will our meeting address? For what are we solving? If our meeting were to suddenly look us in the eyes and ask, ‘Why am I here?’…How would we reply?
If we’re struggling to find an answer, then chances are our participants are struggling too.
Recommendation: Develop an agenda that highlights topics, timeframes, and participants. This keeps us on track to accomplishing the “why” of our meeting.
Choose Your Setting
How do we choose if our meeting is to be in-person, or remote? Which option will make our meeting a success? As leadership development consultant Rae Ringel explains in her analysis on meeting-based collaborations for Harvard Business Review, “To get beyond this stressful push and pull, we need to reframe the conversation and focus on what we’re actually trying to achieve rather than where, precisely, we’ll be sitting when we achieve it.”
Remote Meetings
Pros: If our meeting goals are relatively straightforward but require a level of collaboration beyond a quick chat or email, a remote meeting is likely appropriate. Meetings with a task-based focus, such as a monthly committee report-out or a team’s progress update, can often be supported by a remote format. Other considerations for remote meetings include the team’s schedules. In recent years, we’ve found the increased accessibility and convenience of remote meetings yields higher attendance rates. Participants can log in from almost anywhere, eliminating the mad dash across campus or a cumbersome commute. For those in remote locations, or those at critical access facilities, remote meetings enable easy collaboration with many different groups without planning for travel and associated costs.
Cons: While remote meetings can render physical distance obsolete at the click of a button, they can also present an unwieldy environment for assessing nuances of tone and body language. Technical concerns can also rear their heads. As Rae Ringel explains, “You are a content creator, you are a facilitator, and at the same time, you are an AV technician.” Years into the prevalence of remote meetings, we still struggle with undue interruptions (as if on cue, that neighbor fires up the leaf blower during every high-stakes remote meeting) and the eternal mute button tango. We agonize over questions of meeting accessibility, format, and flow, while concerns about audience engagement and inclusivity haunt our dreams.
In-Person Meetings
Pros: If our meeting goals are complex, the nature of that complexity might suggest an in-person meeting is warranted. Does the ‘why’ of our meeting involve intricate team interdependencies? Meetings that involve complex interactions, whether due to organizational structure or interpersonal dynamics, are often best served by a face-to-face approach. Are certain groups more engaged than others? Are decisions not ‘sticking’ because stakeholders aren’t operating with the same information? Meeting in person could alleviate these obstacles.
Cons: Considerations for in-person meetings include time, space, and the ever-challenging task of getting everyone in the same room together. Space is hard to come by, especially in healthcare settings where it’s being value-engineered out or re-purposed with increasing frequency. If our ‘why’ points to an in-person meeting, hearty team collaboration and robust advanced planning must ensure we’re considering the number of people, space requirements, and materials needed to support our end goals.
As Priya Parker shares in The Art of Gathering, “The purpose of your gathering is more than an inspiring concept. It is a tool, a filter that helps you determine all the details, grand and trivial.” Addressing the all-important question, “Why are we meeting?” and referring to our answer whenever a submerged iceberg threatens to sink our ship, will undoubtedly help us stay the course. And if push comes to shove, there’s always Excedrin and Enya.