How many times have you attended a meeting where you felt that you didn’t belong? In the end, you probably thought that the meeting was just a waste of your time, as you couldn’t contribute and nothing was accomplished. This is an all too common scenario in meeting rooms everywhere, as meeting organizers simply don’t spend enough time thinking about inviting the right people to their meeting.
This is no different in online meetings. Just because people can attend virtual meetings from the comfort of their desk or home, it doesn’t mean that every employee involved with a certain project, or in a particular department should be invited. Good meeting organizers will carefully consider those team members who are truly important in a meeting and will avoid inviting unnecessary people who can contribute little to it.
The first step in choosing your participants is to use your online meeting agenda as a guide to the invitation list. When you decide to have a meeting, you need to have a clear idea of what you want to discuss. Write this down as a rough draft to your agenda, and think about those who will have something to say about the subject that will be discussed. Keep in mind that you don’t need to invite your boss to every single meeting, unless it directly involves their work. Letting them know that the meeting is happening and sending them the minutes should suffice. Use this same logic for your colleagues.
To make this task easier, ask yourself the following questions regarding each potential attendee:
- Is this person directly involved in the project being discussed? If not, will they know what the project is about and how to contribute to the online meeting?
- Have this team member’s contributions been valuable in past meetings?
- What is this person’s expertise? What will they bring to the table that no one else will?
- How does this colleague work with others in the team? Is this person a ‘yes man’ or will they challenge the team to come up with good ideas?
- Can they work collaboratively?
The answers to the questions above will help you create a good team dynamic, which will make reaching your meeting’s goal much easier. A productive online meeting will have a good mixture of colleagues who can work well together. Remember that as nice as it is to have people agree with you, your meeting will not benefit from only ‘yes people’. The same goes for any sort of work personality. Your goal is to choose the people who will make the meeting interesting and engaging, and who will add interesting points to the discussion at hand.
It’s important for you to remember that just because someone has logged into an online meeting, it doesn’t mean that they are paying attention. Attendees could easily be working on the background while listening to the meeting, and they are likely to do so if what is being discussed is of no interest to them. Also keep in mind that online meeting tools charge per attendee, or have plans that only allow for a small number of participants. So the more people you invite to your online meetings, the more you will pay - this can get expensive if you keep inviting people to an online meeting without proper consideration of their need to be there. Ultimately, by carefully choosing your online meeting participants you will be seen as an organized and considerate meeting planner, with great meeting results to boot.