The Big One: Remote Calls and Meetings

This is the thing that probably takes up a fair bit of your time, one way or another. With the rise of working from home since the pandemic, we are all using Teams or other collaboration technologies. How does this affect your schedule? Entire chunks of time in your calendar will be devoted to meetings/calls of various kinds, including Zoom/Teams-style calls involving several people as well as more ‘traditional’ two-way phone calls.

Preparation time

The thing about meetings and calls is that you need to prepare for them, especially if you are going to be leading or making important contributions. Think about how much time you’ll need and book that time in your calendar. If the meeting starts at 3pm, then do you need to be spending 15 minutes before that going through your notes and making sure you are fully prepared?

Logistics

Even if you are fully ready for the meeting and don’t need to do any preparation, there are other things to think about. How long will it take you to log on to the call? If it’s a video call with a client, for instance, then do you look presentable, will you need a glass of water with you, so you don’t have to get up and leave, do you have a pen and paper handy? Is your laptop fully tuned up, so that it’s not going to get sluggish when you try to open up Teams and connect to the call? Is Teams actually open? Has the client asked you to use another video conferencing software (e.g., Zoom, WebEx) that you don’t normally use in your company, so will need to launch (or even install for the first time!)?

As a rule of thumb, be at your desk 5 minutes before the start of an internal call; be at your desk 10 minutes before the start of a client call. Expect to log on a minute or two before the start of an internal call; for a client call, be logged on around 3 minutes beforehand. Sometimes you may need to be let into the call by the host, which doesn’t always happen right away.

Get your material ready

Then comes your material. Is your digital notebook open to the right page; if you are going to be presenting a report, then you may need to share your screen. (Is PowerPoint open and ready?) If this is the case, then you definitely want to be logged in early so you can set this up before people start coming in. It saves the awkward wait while you try to find the ‘share button’, and then the right window (now you wouldn’t want to accidentally share your Amazon shopping window...).

Value your time

In as much as it is possible in your role, try to have all meetings and calls scheduled. Sure, they may be routine meetings (such as catchups with a manager or client) that are out of your control and will form part of your calendar that you will have to plan around. However, if someone wants a ‘quick call’, see if you can schedule it for sometime in the day. If it’s urgent, then obviously take the call. However, if it’s less urgent, you could ask the person if they can talk at such and such a time later. You can then put the call in your calendar to remind you about it—ultimately, it’s going to take time out of your day.

Think of your time as precious (because it is!)—don’t give it away easily!

Instant messaging

What happens if you are busy following your calendar and working on an important document and then a colleague pops up a Teams message asking for your help on something. Now, seriously, does every message need a reply within 10 seconds? At the very least, try to finish the part of whatever you were doing before reading the message. The ideal solution is to treat IM just like email and turn off notifications and then check at certain times of the day. This may not be workable, as this kind of collaboration tool is intended to be more of a substitute for someone physically walking up to you in the office and asking for a chat. But even in the office, couldn’t you say that, yes, I’ll come back to you in 5 or 10 minutes? Obviously, if someone comes over and says they want an urgent chat, then obviously that’s what you do.

You can also use functionality for both emails and IM to ensure you get notifications for messages from VIPs that demand quick replies and turn off those from everyone else. Take the time to set this up and it will serve you well.

Back-to-back calls

Chances are you will find yourself, on some days, with the prospect of several different calls one after the other. Back in the office, you would probably have had the opportunity for a break between meetings, even if simply to walk from one room to another. In the virtual world, however, there is no such natural pause, and it’s easy to find your diary booked up with several hours’ worth of calls.

If at all possible, try to minimise this from happening in the first place. In particular, try to ensure you are not on an internal call immediately before an external one (especially if it’s an important client call).

If you are caught in a series of back-to-back calls, one good technique is to just say at the beginning whether we can aim to end the call 5 minutes before time as you need to immediately go onto another call. You may be surprised at how quickly others might agree! Or just give your apologies and leave a few minutes early so you have time to at least stretch your legs before the next call.

Ending meetings on time

This leads us to a related topic, which is meetings overrunning. Now this can obviously happen both in the office and online, and in both cases it’s a matter of all attendees respecting the end time. Teams now has a feature that notifies everyone there are 5 minutes left in the scheduled time. This can help people wrap up rather than starting a new line of conversation. Whoever is leading the meeting should be aware of the time as well, but unfortunately this isn’t always the case! If you know that a meeting is likely to overrun, try to make your excuses by saying you have another call, need to prepare for another call, etc. Of course, it may be that the longer conversation is actually valuable and you want to have it extended, but make that a judgement that you are happy with. Don’t allow the time you had scheduled for other important work to be stolen by chit-chat.

Doing other work during a call

During a boring or routine call in which you are not participating very much, it can be very tempting to start doing other work on your PC, opening up the web browser, etc. Try to avoid doing it! You will lose the thread of what is being talked about and you never know when somebody will ask you something out of the blue; you don’t want to have to pretend your connection had dropped! It’s also just mentally taxing for your brain to have to split its concentration between half-listening to what is being said and half-reading something on the web. Best to just be fully present for the meeting and then continue with your work afterwards.

Of course, if you often find yourself in meetings where you don’t feel like you need to pay attention, then think about whether you really need to be there at all.