Hello and happy summer, Reader!
Apologies for the lull between newsletters; I've been traveling and living life, and all is well here. Today I'm going to talk about something that really bugs a lot of us (and — I assume — hasn't even occurred to many of us): Meeting invitations and how to do them in a way that doesn't make your colleagues hate you. Storytime...
There it was, on my calendar, several Friday afternoons throughout the year ahead: A two-hour in-person meeting titled “planning” with no introduction, no agenda, no context.
I’m pretty sure I wasn’t the only one who noticed this and promptly reacted: “What the hell?”
My friends, this is no way to invite people to a meeting (especially a long one on a Friday afternoon). The occasional Friday afternoon meeting was actually well intentioned, it turned out: This was the only day and time everyone invited was available, and apparently, it was intended to provide a luxuriously long, open, safe space to discuss whatever was on people’s minds. Snacks were provided. There was absolutely no planning – just pure, un-planned conversation. After having spent 10 years working in a corporate environment where I don’t think this would be tolerated (or attended), it was a shock to my system. Not a good one.
So, what is the right way to call a meeting? (Does that exist?) Meetings are a necessary evil, and sometimes they’re even productive and helpful, and there IS a way to make call them and not make your colleagues hate you for it. Here are 8 best practices for calling a meeting:
1. Make sure everyone is available and awake. In offices these days, you have people calling into meetings from around the world. Sometimes the time difference is difficult to overcome. However, just because you’re a person who enjoys an 8 a.m. meeting to kick off your day (I’ve found a lot of project managers are into the first-thing-in-the-am daily standup), it doesn’t mean your coworker in California should be expected to be online at 6 a.m. to accommodate your preference. (Especially if that person is also routinely working 10-12 hours later.) Consider other people’s lives before you choose your meeting time. If it MUST be earlier or later than typical work hours, then reach out to the time zone-affected people in advance, let them know you can’t find an alternative and apologize.
May I also add: 7 to 8:30 a.m. is a very difficult time for parents to attend meetings, and most of us won’t say anything about it because we don’t want to be that person. That’s prime time for getting your kids out the door to daycare or school. Years later, I still feel a little PTSD about the hours I spent driving mine to daycare and pre-school while dialed in to a conference call – hoping the car would be quiet enough to respond if someone called on me, praying I could unmute quickly enough to talk. (I was lucky they were remote meetings. I can’t imagine if I’d had to arrange alternative pre-daycare care for them and attend in person.)
2. Don’t call a meeting for the following morning after work hours. This is simply rude. People should not be checking their inboxes all night or upon waking up, and they might miss your meeting if they don’t. They’re unlikely to be prepared for it, too. (Again, there are exceptions and emergencies, but most meetings do not fall under this category. If you find yourself or others in your workplace doing this routinely, it might be time for a serious culture check.)
3. Write an introduction or little note in your invite. You should treat the invitation like an email. Say hello to the names of the people you’re inviting (unless it’s really obvious or a massive list). State in a short sentence why you’re inviting them to this meeting and briefly what it’s about or what you’re trying to accomplish.
4. Wait! Does this need to BE a meeting? If the meeting is largely to inform, might it work better as an email? Or a group chat or Teams or Slack? Do all of these people really need to be invited or would it work more efficiently with only 2 or 3 people? You might not really need to gather a bunch of people just to tell them what’s going on, especially if you don’t need their input or any action at that time.
5. Title your meeting accordingly. If you aren’t actually doing any planning, do not title the meeting “Planning Meeting” (and be more specific regardless). If this is just a check-in meeting, write the title so that it explains who is checking in and why: “Sam-Shayla Weekly Social Media Check-In” or “Content Team Calendar Strategy Session” both work.
6. Include a short agenda (when it makes sense to do so). Granted, a weekly one-on-one check-in meeting is likely to have shifting topics, and some people do like a heads up about what those topics will be (some don’t care and don’t need you to waste time creating one — *raises hand*). A larger meeting with topics of discussion and action items absolutely requires an agenda. It can truly just be a list of bullet points. It does not need to be overly detailed (though I think it’s nice when you can link to previous documents or briefs that remind people of the details and context if they wish to learn more).
7. If you’re inviting people whom you don’t usually invite to meetings (and especially if you’ve never met or interacted previously), introduce yourself. The workplaces I inhabited the past 10 years tended to have a lot of turnover (or maybe I should spin it more positively and say they were dynamic!). Frequently, I’d get an invite from someone I’d never heard of, and then I’d have to spend the next 10 minutes trying to figure out who they were and wonder whether they actually intended to invite me to their meeting. If they’d just written a little note – even a “PS Nice to meet you, Shayla! I’m from the Product team and we wanted to include you for perspective on content strategy”, it would have been SO welcome.
8. Try to avoid Friday afternoon meetings. Some people actually love them, and sometimes they work well. My former colleague Marisa and I did a weekly Friday afternoon check-in that was more like therapy/happy hour (remote and minus alcohol), and it was a conversation we looked forward to. Most of the time, though (and especially for me now as I teach Monday through Thursday), Friday is the one day people have to buckle down and get their own quiet work done – whether it’s writing a script, grading papers, crunching numbers, starting a deck for a presentation the next week, whatever. Additionally, most people are pretty spent from being “on” by the end of the week, making it difficult to focus and have a good discussion. Also, many companies now also do “summer hours” with Friday afternoons off – making a Friday afternoon meeting especially cruel. Keep this in mind before you totally ruin someone’s Friday plans, OK? It should be a last resort, in my opinion, and if you must have one, please keep it as brief as possible. (Ahem: Two hours is not an option.)
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Here are some additional bits of advice from the archives:
🕺🏻💃🏽 Why you need a thought partner
📻 How to get the most out of feedback
🐣 Easy ways to get your brand started on TikTok
🏴☠️ Why PDFs are the worst
Thanks for reading! Now get outside and enjoy the sunshine. 🌞
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