If you ever feel like your days are consumed by meetings and somehow there’s still miscommunication on your team, you’re not alone. Many workers spend the equivalent of two full workdays in meetings and on email each week, according to a new Microsoft report. And that’s not even counting time devoted to instant messaging, phone calls, or impromptu conversations with co-workers.
With the average employee spending 57% of their work hours on office software communicating, coordinating, and collaborating, many workers and managers are having trouble finding the time to get their work done. In fact, in a separate Microsoft survey, nearly two-thirds of respondents said they struggled to designate time and energy to actually do their jobs, and these people were more than three times as likely to say innovation and strategic thinking were a challenge for them.
Ironically, despite all the time devoted to talking and collaborating, many workers and bosses have said that workplace communications haven’t improved. In a 2022 Harris Poll survey, bosses estimated that their teams lost an average of nearly eight hours a week to poor communication, costing thousands of dollars per employee each year.
So, as a manager, how can you improve communication without wasting time in meetings?
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How to improve communication on your team
1. Identify the right channels
As a leader, you need to strike a healthy balance between enough communication to make employees feel heard, supported, and engaged, and not too much communication that you interrupt work tasks by too frequent meetings and exchanges. To do so, you must understand when conversations should take place in a team channel, and when an actual meeting is necessary.
Team group chats or channels are great for non-urgent everyday questions, updates, and documents that ensure your team members have the information and visibility they need to keep their work moving forward. From databases to team guidelines, these spaces help ensure that everyone can easily find the resources they need. Meetings, on the other hand, are best for real-time updates, discussing big changes, brainstorming projects, and providing feedback.
2. Set time to focus
Try blocking off specific time in the work during which meetings cannot take place to make sure there is always time for dedicated work. Calendly, a scheduling-software maker, restricted its core meeting hours to between noon and 5 p.m., and roughly two years in they’ve found their people continue to embrace it. You can try following that same structure, designate certain days in which internal meetings are prohibited, or split up the hours to account for different productivity preferences – granting your morning people a few focused hours at the start of the day while ensuring your afternoon folk still have some time at the end of the day to get their best work done.
3. Keep meetings short
According to the Pomodoro Method, a decades-old time management technique, 25 minutes is the ideal amount of time for people to touch on everything important while instilling a sense of urgency that prevents team members from getting distracted or off-topic. Of course, one-on-one meetings or brainstorming sessions may require a bit more time to cover everything, but it’s important to err on the side of keeping meetings short and to the point to ensure the most effective communications. With more time constraints, employees can stay focused on the goal of the meeting and feel pushed to move faster through relevant items.
4. Try icebreakers
Steve Jobs knew that to get the most out of his team, they needed to be focused. And to focus, he believed the first step was clearing up anything that was cluttering their minds and impairing their ability to be engaged, inspired, and innovative. Sources say that Jobs would gain his team’s focus by beginning each meeting with the question, “What’s on your mind?” By enabling team members to get whatever was on their minds off their chests, they could actually let go and be present as opposed to silently stewing about the issue and in turn being too distracted to fully participate. So, whether you try Jobs’ approach or start with some other icebreaker, take just a few minutes at the start of your team meetings to help build connections, set a positive tone, and enable your employees to feel more comfortable when delving into work-related matters.
5. Create meeting agendas
All meetings should have clear goals and agendas. Whether you’re creating KPIs for the next quarter, brainstorming potential strategies, updating team members on company changes, or simply aligning expectations, meetings are most effective when everyone knows what needs to be accomplished. Try sending the agenda to all participants beforehand to avoid miscommunication and wasting time during the meeting, and be sure to specify who is responsible for what so that everyone can come prepared. Remember, if you can’t effectively outline the agenda or goal of a meeting, it’s probably best to cancel it.
6. Be intentional with invites
It’s estimated that $37 billion in salaries is wasted each year by employees attending unnecessary meetings, according to Glassdoor, which is why it’s so important to evaluate who needs to attend each meeting – especially when it comes to larger group meetings. Go through invite lists and really consider which team members need to be at a given meeting in order to do their work effectively. If someone was just invited to listen in on the conversation, try sharing meeting takeaways instead or sending them a recording that they can listen to in their own time (and fast-forward to relevant snippets.)
Additionally, for team projects or brainstorming sessions, try to break the group up a bit so that there are fewer voices and contributors working together at a given time. In smaller groups, communication can be easier as each employee has more space to speak up and share their ideas.
7. Try to keep meetings unplugged
Screens can be distracting, and distractions lead to miscommunication. So, whenever possible for in-person meetings, encourage your team members to put away their phones and computers in order to focus better. This is obviously more difficult to do in a virtual meeting, but it’s still helpful to start each meeting by asking team members to silence their work notifications and try their best to avoid multitasking.
8. Identify meeting leaders
There should always be someone in charge of team meetings who’s responsible for sending the invite, setting the agenda, and keeping the meeting on track. This person needs to lead the conversation, bring people back on-topic when the conversation starts to veer off, and share the mic when certain voices overpower. When relevant, this person should end the meeting by summarizing the next steps, including defining responsibilities and setting deadlines to ensure everyone understands their roles moving forward.
9. Get employee feedback
The best way to determine which communication styles work best for your team members is to ask. Do your team members need more individual check-ins? Fewer team meetings? Send out anonymous surveys and/or make time during your one on ones to get the answers to these questions. Take the time to understand which meetings your team members find to be most productive, and which, if any, they think are unnecessary. While you may not be able to tackle every concern, regularly checking in is a great way to identify patterns that need to be addressed.
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monday.com Work OS helps managers like you improve the way they work. With an intuitive experience and the flexibility to fit any use case, we make collaboration and communication a breeze. Get in touch with our team of experts today to learn more.