Conference Call Exhaustion

Start at 7:30 AM, straight through to noon. No time to take a pee-break, or you mask it as something like "My kid is crying" or "Hold on, someone is at the door" just so you can seem like you're impervious to human bodily functions to your colleagues. Meanwhile your e-mail is piling up at an exponential rate. If we had a penny for each e-mail we received during COVID19 quarantine, we would all be able to retire yesterday.

You scarf down lunch - trying to hide yourself off video while you chow, so no one can get an unflattering screengrab of you stuffing your face with a burrito - while you're yet on another call, and by 2 PM you feel like you've had the same conversation three times. Next thing you know, it's 5 PM, your mind is numb, you don't remember what you did today, and you have 564 unread e-mails in your inbox. When you click the Clean Up Folder button, it only brings you down to 543. F---.

So now you have to spend your evening - or your weekend - cleaning out your inbox because you know there's an e-mail from your boss somewhere that needs to get done, there's been some sort of outage that you weren't aware of, and there's probably something interesting from a vendor that could help your business, but you just have not had any time!!!

Anyone else? Welcome to...

Conference Call Exhaustion

Read that in a breathy, robotic female voice that is way too cheery for its own good.

We are all feeling it, at every level, in every organization. So here some of my personal tips and tricks to help combat the true pandemic of our time - too many conference calls!

1) Take Detailed Notes & Share Proactively

Especially if you're dealing with customers or with a project that has lots of moving parts.

Many conference calls start off with 10-15 minutes (or more) of "introductions" or "recaps" of information that should already be known going into the call. If you're bringing in resources, partners, or other parties that need to be briefed on a situation - do not do that on the call with the customer. Send notes ahead of time, put them in the agenda and invite, have a 10 minute pre-call with the new people; enable them to be successful from the first minute of that conference call.

Also, set the stage yourself - provide a quick agenda and recap - two to three minutes max - in the beginning and then ask if your client has any new developments they'd like to add. Do not make your customer repeat themselves, especially if there are multiple conversations to be had about a topic. That customer will have to repeat their problems 20 different times on 20 different conference calls - save them the time, show them you're listening, and streamline the process. You will save everyone those 10-15 minutes and will make the meeting more productive.

The worst thing you can do in a meeting is dial in, and passively sit around, checking e-mail. Stay in tune, take notes, stay focused. It will help you be present, will help you with execution on next steps, and will help keep all involved contributors on task with all future conversations. Keep the notes in a shared, central location, and get in the habit of conducting rapid-fire (5-10 minutes) pre-calls and debrief calls to keep new and existing people informed and on-task.

2) Less is More

Are there people on your calls that never talk? Why were they added? Could they benefit from an e-mail recap of the notes, or did you do a poor job of qualifying the meeting and engaging everyone? You could've just wasted 30-60 minutes of that person's time, and all they did was multi-task and clean e-mail while on your call.

Working groups of three to four people, in short bursts of 15-30 minutes are most effective. The time constraint and the accountability of a small group forces participation. I wrote about this in a different article of mine, that when we have limited time and resources, it leads us to be more selective, productive, and make better decisions.

How many of you - when you see an invite for an hour long meeting - automatically think: "Yesssss, I will have some time to clean up e-mail!" Be real with yourself - it's almost everyone. No one is fooling anyone anymore.

So let's work with that unconscious bias - schedule a 30 minute meeting, or be really risqué and schedule a 15 minute one! That will really throw people off and show them they have to be focused. Don't run the full time. Invite less people. Have a shorter agenda that is actionable. Less is more.

3) Own the Meeting

Ever get that feeling in your stomach that someone's been talking waaaaaaay too long and one by one, the attendees' attention spans are dropping like flies? Say something! Check in, get a pulse on the room. Do something interactive like ask everyone to answer a question in the conference room chat. You will quickly see who is paying attention and who you've lost along the way.

If the topic seems to be deviating from the original agenda, bring everyone back. The new ideas, put them in the "Parking Lot" - thanks Bob Masterson for this trick - and revisit them later. We're here with a clear purpose to accomplish a specific agenda. If you own your meetings, then you will walk away with actionable next steps and/or results. Winging it will yield inconsistent results and you will find yourself having the same conversation three separate times. Or more...

Being the organizer of the meeting puts the outcome of the meeting completely in your hands. Your brand is dependent on how well that meeting goes and by the quality of the resources you brought to that meeting. If it's a bust, your credibility is impacted, which means future meetings will be met with resistance and a bias that the meetings will be ineffective. You must take ownership - extreme ownership - of how your meetings go, and that means you have more pre-work to do than anyone else on that call in order to make it successful.

Also, define what a successful meeting looks like for you: did you accomplish all of the agenda items? Get all of your questions answered? Came out with new ideas? Have some defined next steps for the project? If you don't know what you're working towards, you will have a hard time owning your meetings.

4) Sharing is Caring

Reduce redundancy by collaborating. Has someone already had this conversation? What lessons can we learn from them? Are there pitfalls we should be aware of? What if I just need to be informed?

I like using the Project Management RACI chart for this one; who is responsible, accountable, consulted, and informed. Figure out who falls into which bucket. This could make things much easier in figuring out who needs to be invited to which meetings versus who can simply benefit from being informed a conversation was had, along with the details and next steps of that meeting?

Often times conversations can be had in a vacuum and then stakeholders or group-members are left in the dark. So what naturally happens? More conference calls to get everyone else up to speed, because notes weren't taken and those individuals weren't informed in a timely manner!

This comes down to using collaboration tools wisely. E-mail, chat, direct calls, persistent teams channels, and conference calls all come into play here. Often times, they're used incorrectly, or a one-for-all fashion. One of my favorite rules until this day is: "If it takes you more than two times of back and forth via e-mail to figure something out, just pick up the damn phone and call!"

Collaboration should improve productivity, not reduce it. Make sure you're proactively collaborating to help your peers, team-members, decision-makers, customers, and other stakeholders be successful. Use your tools how they are intended to be used - e-mail is not the panacea for all communication... it's often the cause of miscommunication!

5) Make it Interactive

In the absence of visuals, props, and body-language cues, you must over-deliver on the interactive aspect. Use the chat feature to ask questions, that way everyone in attendance can participate instead of talking over one another. Use icons, drawing tools, whiteboards. If you're bold enough to attempt to use PowerPoint right now, make sure your animations are timed well to keep the audience focused and engaged. DO NOT put all the content out on the slide immediately! Build it out as you have your conversation.

Prepare with questions to ask - this is the "driving of the bus" part. Seed them in there to gauge your audience, test their listening skills. Set the stage at the very beginning that you will be asking them questions along the way so they can pay attention!

Use tools, such as polling or voting buttons. My personal favorite is Mentimeter however there are dozens of options out there! There are people on your calls that are too shy to ask questions or speak up because they think they will be judged or their ideas are too crazy. Anonymous platforms such as these will allow your entire audience to feel heard and valued. Don't allow the loud ones on your calls monopolize meetings - that's a reflection on YOU and not on them.

My last piece of advice... if you can give people time back in their days, do it. It goes further than you know. It may be the time they need for a pee break, or to let out a deep sigh after being on five calls straight, or five minutes to meditate before having their next call which happens to be an unpleasant and tough customer call.

What other tips and tricks do you have about minimizing the amount of - while improving the quality and results of - your conference calls?