The first step towards planning a meeting at the right time is defining what type of meeting it is. While every meeting is unique, being familiar with the six most common types of meetings is one of the keys that we will show you how to identify goals, structure, and activities based on them. The next step is to find a chronotype to adjust the group of members in the right category for different purposes. The last step is to find a correlation between steps one and two to create the right timing for meetings. That shows how “When” the secret of the timing, helps to reach our goals during meetings.
Here is a break-down of the six general types of meetings to increase the success of your meeting which will allow you to understand the first step.
Status Update Meetings are one of the most common meeting types. This category includes regular team and project meetings, where the primary goal is to align the team via updates on progress and challenges. Most activities in these kinds of meetings are problem-solving, prioritization, decision making, and task assignments.
Information Sharing Meeting presentations, panel debates, keynotes, and lectures are all examples of information-sharing meetings. The primary goal of these meetings is for the speakers to share information with spectators. This could be information about some subjects like upcoming changes, new products,techniques, or in-depth knowledge of a domain. During information sharing meetings, visual communication tools are very common. Using slides and videos, are powerful tools for making the shared information more memorable and often necessary.
Decision Making Meetings The vast majority of business decisions are made by groups in meetings. Some processes such as voting, ranking, scoring, getting all on board, having multiple votes, voting rounds (Democratic system), and Iterative convergence — Delphi Method (make suggestions and feedback from the other group) help the attendees choose a process that best matches the situation.
Problem Solving Meetings are perhaps the most complex and varied type of meetings. Whether the meeting an identified problem or it is focussing on creating strategies and plans to navigate the future. The brainstorm and evaluation of this meeting come after identifying the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats at hand.
Innovation Мeetings and creative meetings often start with thinking outside the box, by brainstorming, associating, and sharing ideas in a broad scope. During innovative meetings, the main focus is to come up with new ideas, designs or redesign products, or develop entirely new approaches for business.
Team Building Meetings All meetings should contribute to team building, strengthening relationships, and corporate culture. This category includes meetings like all-hands meetings, team-building outings, and corporate events. Having participants feel like essential parts of their unit, team, department, branch, and company has a plethora of positive impacts on their engagement, performance, and satisfaction.
The next step is to find a chronotype, which means every person has a master biological clock ticking away inside his or her brain and dozens of smaller biological clocks throughout his or her body. This will help adjust your team in certain groups to take advantage of their presence during meetings. For example, you will see a lady wearing red, bright and awake, ready to tackle anything that comes her way. On the other hand, you see a young man, probably in his 20s, with his tie a little too loose, his shirt crumpled and his soul still hovering over his bed. However, the same people in the afternoon represent themselves in a different manner. The lady in red, starts yawning, but the man in his 20s looks sharper. From this, you can determine the midpoint of your sleep.
● If your midpoint of sleep is 3:30am or earlier, you’re probably a lark.
● If your midpoint of sleep is 5:30am or later, you’re probably an owl
● If your midpoint is somewhere in between, you’re probably a third bird
And then from there, take a look below to make sure you can set up the right people at the right time.
The last step is about how to set up the right time for each meeting to take advantage of the perfect timing for your meeting goals. The organizer of the meeting needs to pay attention to what kind of meeting they have and what kind of people they need to have in certain meetings. By scheduling the appropriate meeting, in fact, you can avoid wasting time and energy and instead take profit from the meeting. Indeed, by adapting the meeting to using chronotypes you can create the perfect timing to adjust and accelerate your goal. Here are examples of the meetings from above, which provides more results when they happen at the best times.
Status update & Problem-Solving Meetings: They are known as analytic tasks. Having a productive meeting either early morning, midmorning, late afternoon and in the evening provides efficient results. So, make sure you have a circulation between these times if you have all three chronotypes on your team.
Information sharing meeting & Innovation meetings: These two meetings are known for making an impression. Morning is the only time that you can get all the attention from your attendees. So, make sure to consider providing food. Even if it’s not an entire meal, some drinks or small snacks will help employees feel productive and energized. Some tips for being a better morning person include: having a glass of water when you first wake up, avoiding drinking coffee immediately, soaking in the morning sun, and schedule some talk therapy.
Decision-Making Meetings: This meeting is known for making important company decisions and strategies. Usually, depending on the culture of the company, it could happen from early in the morning to the late afternoon. The best time to hold decision-making meetings is when the group’s mind as a whole is calm.
Team Building Meetings: This type of meeting is known for learning and sharing insights. It is much better to set up team building meetings late in the afternoon or in the early evening. For those people at the meeting, who are owl chronotypes, morning is their desired time. You need to provide a suitable environment to help them keep up their energy for having productivity in the workplace.
By creating the perfect timing to get optimal results from your meetings, you need to blend the specific meeting type with the right chronotypes of your members. You can obtain more at your meetings by employing the sharpness, power of intelligence, and energy of your members.
Ghazal Fadai
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