Meetings at work can be a fulfilling and productive experience provided we are mindful of a few things:
- It makes sense to meet — that is to say a) the problem that the team is meeting on is timely and b) meeting would be more productive than other modes of communication like e-mail and Slack.
- The purpose of the meeting is made clear to a thoughtfully curated list of attendees.
- The time allotted for the meeting is appropriate. Sometimes 15 minutes is all you need, other times you really need the hour. The main thing to avoid is using the default calendar duration — typically 30 minutes — for any and all meetings. (See Parkinson’s Law)
Some meetings are great, others feel like a waste of time — you’ve likely experienced both flavors.
The quality of our gatherings at work doesn’t have to be serendipitous, though — meetings can be consistently valuable.
We just need to be intentional about how we meet.