Meeting Overload: An Opportunity to Lead Well

"Leadership is not telling you what to do but inspiring you to do it." -Jeff Weiner (mushrooms on moss)

Meeting overload is exhausting Corporate America. Meetings have become overused and unproductive mechanisms for team interaction, and they are causing incredible stress and fatigue at all levels of the organization. Strengthening time management skills, considering meetings from a big picture perspective, and exploring other ways to develop and nurture trust are 3 areas of opportunity in regaining control of our schedules.

Meeting overload is an opportunity to lead well; this week’s blog post includes troubleshooting concepts to shift your perspective and help reduce time spent in meetings.

1. Build trust.

You are unable to deliver on the critical projects the business expects, how will you inform your team that you are overwhelmed with meetings and will be resetting meeting cadence and protocols to address? Notifying the team now communicates vulnerability and pre-empts misunderstandings and speculation about the changes.

Participant responsibilities for each meeting have gotten lost along the way, who has disengaged and needs you to listen a little longer to their feedback? Too often team members in back-to-back meetings are attending for self-preservation, and by hearing from you that you need their input and are open to their ideas, they will reengage.

You’ve created a bottleneck by weighing in on every single decision, who needs to know they have your support to make the decision? You may need to clarify how decisions are made and incorporate others in the decision-making process to demonstrate confidence in your high performers.

2. Manage time.

Review the meetings on your calendar for the next month, what recurring meetings are stale and need a reset? Cancel those meetings that you own now and inform the invitees that you will be rescoping the format and cadence of this meeting and you welcome their input.

There are lots of programs and tools to track status updates, how can you shift your meetings to solving challenges as the focus? Meeting minutes and/or summaries to close out meetings shaves time off meetings by helping to eliminate the need to start a meeting by summarizing what happened last time.

Joining meetings simply because you were invited is not reason enough, who needs your permission to decline meetings or send a delegate in their place if they are not needed in the meeting? Invite only people that have a purpose for attending and expect everyone to clarify their meeting role to eliminate attendance out of ego, FOMO, or fear.

3. Think strategically.

Make a list of the communication strategies you use to keep team members informed (up, down and across your organization), which approaches get the most engagement? Notify your team that you will be sharing important team/organization information via that tool and then stick with it (newsletter, Chatter, email, etc.).

For meetings that you own, is an agenda sent out to participants at least 1 day in advance? Preparation allows you to lead an efficient and impactful meeting and sending an agenda in advance affords attendees time to collect data, brainstorm independent ideas, and join ready with meaningful contributions.

Competing priorities require time for group work and individual processing, who on your team needs more time to progress the work instead of meeting with no updates still? Consider the volume of work that your team is driving and be willing to make adjustments if you notice progress stagnation, too many priorities can be to blame.

Using these troubleshooting concepts will make business better for everyone. The time is NOW to address this meeting overload problem. Meetings are ideal for making key decisions, generating new ideas, solving broad challenges, sharing feedback and insights, and one to one developmental conversations. The troubleshooting concepts above aren’t just for team leaders, they are for anyone that wants to lead well, get recognized, and thrive.

I coach growth-minded professionals to lead well, get recognized, and thrive. As a coach, I offer perspective, accountability, feedback, encouragement, and additional possibilities. I'd love to chat with you about how I can accelerate your journey to leadership at the next level.

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