How to Make the Best of a Meeting That You Need to Attend

An eight-step guide to productive meetings

Have you ever attended meetings where you wondered why you are part of it! Have you ever felt like leaving a meeting midway! If yes, then you know how many of these sessions are an absolute waste of time and counterproductive.

During my fifteen years of experience in the IT industry, I have lost count of how many meetings I have attended.

Irrespective of the industry you are working in, meetings are an inevitable part of the job.

There are meetings about all sorts of things — to talk to clients about their requirements, to discuss program timelines, to decide the location of next offsite, to plan a schedule for next executive visit, and also to disseminate company policies.

These are just a few of the reasons why we get pulled into a meeting. Sometimes the sessions are beneficial, and other times they are just a waste of time with no real outcome.

If we cannot avoid something, then why not make the best out of it. Over time I have devised my own techniques for attending meetings. These practices have helped me to be more productive in conference calls and meetings.

1. Set an agenda.

Agendas help meeting to stay on track. It allows attendees to know if they need to do any preparation for the meeting and what is the expected outcome.

Based on the agenda of a meeting, I make my decision about whether to attend or not. There is no need to participate in a meeting where I will have nothing to contribute, and it also has no value add for me.

Always ask the meeting organizer about the agenda of the meeting beforehand. Request the person who is setting up the meeting to put the topic of discussion in the meeting invite itself.

If you are the one who is setting up the meeting, then always include the agenda to the meeting invite. This will help all the invitees to have prior knowledge about why everyone is getting together and also will help them do any required preliminaries before the meetings.

Without a prior agenda, people just attend the meeting, and then the discussions most of the time end with — ‘Oh, I need to check that and get back to you later’ comment. This just wastes everyone’s time.

2. Respond to the invite.

Always try and respond to the meeting invites with your acceptance or declination. A response helps the organizer know whether to expect you on the call or not.

Check the invite to see if you are set as a mandatory participant or set as optional by the organizer. It becomes even more important to respond when you are one of the mandatory attendees. What it means is — your attendance will make the discussion productive.

In case I am required in a meeting, and I cannot make it, then I make sure I send a decline response immediately with a valid reason why I cannot attend. Many times I propose a new timeslot if I want the organizer to consider rescheduling.

If I am planning to attend the meeting, I make sure I send the explicit acceptance to the invite.

Timely response helps both the organizer and invitees to plan the meeting better. Don’t wait till the last minute to accept or decline a request. Delayed response messes up the plans of all who are part of the meeting.

3. Be on time for the meeting.

Once you accept the meeting request, then please make sure you join the meeting on time. Being late creates a perception that you are not serious about the meeting. It also wastes others’ time while they are waiting for you.

Some people are always late for meetings. It shows that they don’t respect others’ time.

I always make sure I join the meetings on time. I am fine waiting a couple of minutes extra for the rest of the participants to join, but I don’t like wasting everyone else time waiting for me. Starting the meeting on time helps to get the most out of the allotted time.

There will be times where you will be late for meetings due to the previous call running late or for any other unforeseen condition. In such cases, apologize politely for being late.

Being on time also has the advantage of you not missing out on details that get discussed before you join. You start from the beginning and don’t feel lost because you missed the starting conversations.

4. Listen; Speak up when required.

Listening is essential in deriving the maximum value of any meeting you are going to attend.

Do more listening and less talking. That will help you stay focused on the meeting. Speak when you are asked to provide your opinion.

Talk when it is required, and when it adds value to the conversation.

Many people keep talking in the meeting without getting to the point. These people have the least idea on the topic of the discussion. They just beat around the bush and add no value to the subject matter. Such people consume most of the duration of the meeting, and then everyone else has to rush through their point of view due to a shortage of time.

I prefer to keep quiet and listen patiently. I like to hear everyone’s opinion about the topic before I start giving my point of view. It helps me in understanding others’ perspectives and form an informed viewpoint.

5. Pay attention.

Many people attend the meeting without paying attention to the discussion. Their thoughts wander around daydreaming, or they start doing something else on their gadgets.

Putting effort to focus is even more important nowadays when everyone is working from home due to the COVID-19 situation.

Physical meetings have the benefit of everyone being in the same room, which helps in keeping people better focused on the discussion. We don’t have that advantage anymore.

Meetings are now conducted over teleconferencing. We are all joining the calls from our laptops or cellphones. So, it is easy for us to get distracted by a blinking chat window or an email notification popping up on the corner of the screen.

If you are already committing your time, then pay full attention to the discussion and be an active participant. By focusing, it will help you not to miss significant points concluded in the meeting and the reason why they were decided. This will also help you raise any question you want to put forth.

6. Take notes.

I see many people attend the meeting without taking any notes during the discussions. They just sit there and nod to everything.

It is alright as long as someone else is going to send a consolidated meeting note. Make sure, when the meeting starts, you confirm who is going to take the meeting notes.

Without you taking notes and at the same time, there are no Minutes Of Meeting sent out — there is a high chance that the group will return to the same discussion after some days, without making any real progress.

I prefer noting down important points discussed during the meeting and also any action item assigned to me. At the same time, if I am providing an action item to any participants, I request them to note it down before we move on with further discussion.

This helps later in avoiding any ‘Oops! I forgot about it’ moments.

This helps later in avoiding any ‘Oppsss! I forgot about it’ moments. It also helps in tracking all the action items in one place. So, do yourself a favor and note down your action items and important points discussed. It will undoubtedly increase your productivity.

7. Send meeting notes.

Meeting notes are incredibly vital for the success of a meeting. Without meeting notes, there is neither any reference about what decisions were made during the meeting nor what action items were assigned to whom.

If you are the organizer of the meeting, then you need to take notes. It will help you to have a written form of agreement about what was discussed. You can refer them later if there is any confusion among attendees.

In case you are an invitee, and no one in the meeting is taking MOM (Minutes of Meeting) — offer to take the notes and send them out later. Clearly outline the decision made during the discussion and the action items with the assignee names against them.

Just last week, we had a high severity defect during the testing phase for an upcoming release, and there was confusion about who should be fixing it and how. The design was discussed and agreed upon between applications in a meeting a few weeks back. I had to pull out the meeting minutes that I had sent out previously to highlight what was the agreement on the requirement.

That saved the day — the issue was fixed and deployed within hours as there was no more contention about who should own the defect or what exactly should be done to fix it.

8. Follow up.

Follow up, post the meeting. It is not only the meeting time that is important, but, following up after the session is also necessary. Too many people set up meetings without following up on the action items. That just makes people set up a new meeting and discuss the same topic again, and a lot of time is spent on repeating the discussions.

If you are assigned a task as part of the meeting, then please do it as agreed. That will help build people’s trust in you and also will build your credibility. If you have assigned a task to other attendees of the meeting, then follow up with them within an agreed-upon timeline.

I know, following up with someone might be a tedious job — especially when the other person is not very responsive, but in such a situation, it becomes even more crucial to follow up. Otherwise, the task will be pending for long and forgotten after some days. The result is everyone needs to attend another meeting to rehash the same points again.

Save yourself from wasting tons of time in repeated meetings by following up on your action items and also with people whom you have assigned any task.

Meetings are a necessary evil. Do yourself a big favor and wisely chose which ones to attend.

Make the best out of every meeting you decide to participate by using the methods mentioned above. These techniques will help in increasing your productivity and also make the meetings more effective and useful for you.