![]() ![]() To be sure, these words quickly signal that a speaker needs to click the unmute button. This isn’t something that will be shared publicly, but the practice of thinking about one’s objectives before a meeting begins can be grounding. Another exercise I like is asking everyone to write down their intention or objective for the meeting. That may mean moving something off their desk, opening a window in their room, or closing a window on their computer. I often start by asking everyone to remove one distraction. To make the most of those inevitable few minutes when you’re waiting for stragglers, one idea is to start with brief tone-setting exercises. At the same time, there are legitimate reasons why an individual may be late to a Zoom meeting (or an in-person one). Often among the first words uttered by an online meeting host, this practice dishonors the time of those who joined on time and does nothing to establish a culture of punctuality for meetings. We’re going to wait five minutes for everyone to join. Here are some of the responses that resonated the most. To learn what refrains others would be happy to never hear again in a meeting, I did a bit of crowdsourcing on social media and among colleagues. And so, as leaders and employees continue to rethink what the modern workplace should look like, including how we gather, perhaps it’s an opportune moment to banish certain phrases from the “meeting-speak” lexicon. We unwittingly send a powerful message that our organization’s gatherings take from team members, rather than contributing to our team’s collective accomplishments.Įven at a time when so much is beyond our control, we remain in control of our own speech patterns. By framing a few extra minutes as an opportunity to give people their time “back,” as though that time had been wrongfully pilfered, we undermine our collaboration. But language is generative, and the way we talk about our meetings comes to define what happens in those meetings. ![]() ![]() It’s couched as welcome news, this unexpected gift of time. Some version of this cheerful declaration seems to cap every meeting that ends with a few minutes to spare. Others may be pleased by this turn of events, but I cringe, bracing for the line that I know is coming: “I’m going to give you 10 minutes of your life back!” The final agenda item has been resolved, and it’s clear that we’ll be wrapping up early. It’s 50 minutes into an hour-long meeting. ![]()
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