Why You Should Be Preconditioning Your Meetings (and How To Do It)
Not every meeting could have been an email.
There. I said it.
While there are MANY pointless meetings on the calendar, there are also meetings that are critical to move projects and priorities forward in business.
The missing ingredient of those pointless “this could have been an email” meetings is effective communication. Being able to effectively communicate the need for a meeting and then running the meeting productively is a skillset that is often overlooked in the workplace.
Being in a client facing role my entire career (sales and entrepreneurship) I have always found value in face to face meetings. It is a chance for people to build relationships and see humanity outside of just a computer screen or a project plan. Meeting new and interesting people from all walks of life is one of the benefits of being a working professional!
That said, my first job out of college, and what got me started in sales, was filled with pointless meetings. I had to hit a certain meeting quota a week otherwise that week was not deemed a successful sales week. I had to have 20 in person meetings per week, 5 client lunches, and 1 happy hour PER WEEK. I was scrambling to not only find people to meet with my in sales territory but I was struggling to figure out what the heck I could talk to them about in the meeting.
Talk about an ineffective way to run a book of business and a waste of time.
Luckily, I’ve grown in my career since then and I have been fortunate to work for organizations that prioritize efficiency over quantity and I have been offered opportunities to learn from other organizations such as Crucial Learning and Franklin Covey to become a better business professional.
One of the key learnings that has carried me through countless successful client and workplace relationships is the ability to run effective meetings and the purpose of this blog is to help you do the same.
For starters, make sure you are preconditioning your meetings.
What does that mean? It means you are setting explicit expectations and agenda items that will be discussed during the meeting in an email to all attendees before the meeting takes place.
This is an opportunity to -
Confirm the date, time, and attendees for the meeting
Provide the ‘end in mind’ or goal of the meeting
Communicate the agenda
Ask for any additional topics that should be discussed
It can look like this,
"Hey xx, I am looking forward to our call tomorrow! Prior to meeting, I am sending the agenda for you to take a look at. Overall, the main goal of the call is to …
• State of the Union
• Results
• Recommendations
• Timeline
Let me know if there is anything else you would like to discuss.
Talk soon"
Start sending this precondition email before the meetings you are running/facilitating and watch how prepared the attendees show up and how productive the outcome of the meeting turns out.
And if you need more help running effective meetings in the workplace, head on over to the Career Civility Shop and grab the Running Effective Meetings Toolbox!
