Important Tips for Meeting Participants and Facilitators of Conference Calls
Most of us are looking for ways to waste time in conference call meetings, right? Of course! Otherwise we wouldn’t spend so much time in them as meeting participants.
So, I thought it would be helpful to share my personal top five important tips for wasting time in conference call meetings.
Before I do that however, let me point out that after you read these tips you might also be interested in a very popular post written several years ago (776 shares on Facebook to date) titled “8 Important tips to help you waste time in meetings – Make bad meetings worse!” Between that post and this one, you should be prepared to waste not only your time, but everyone who attends your meetings as well.
Here you go!
1. As meeting participants join late it is important that you get them caught up. To not do so would be highly rude! As you do this, those that are late are comforted in knowing they have nothing to worry about if they are late next time.
In fact, the beauty of this tip is that more and more meeting participants will show up late and you can waste even more time in future conference call meetings.
2. Encourage meeting participants to put their phones on hold instead of mute when they are away from the call. There is nothing like good hold music to break up the call and waste time.
Plus you can say something like, “Who put us on hold?” That is always a great question since the person who put you on hold can’t hear it!
3. When facilitating a conference call meeting use a speaker phone and don’t speak into the phone. This is especially effective when others are in the same room as you and there are a lot of side conversations.
By implementing this tip it ensures that those on the phone have a difficult time hearing. It is even more effective if you can invite someone who is funny so there is lots of laughter. This helps drown out what the facilitator and meeting participants are saying.
And to piggy back on this important tip, it is always a good idea to ask people when they have to cough to do so towards the phone.
4. Don’t let silence work for you. When you ask a question it is going to be uncomfortable because you can’t see people processing the question. So, instead of feeling all that uncomfortable stuff, just answer the question. Your own ideas are better any way.
5. Don’t concern yourself with scheduling to accommodate everyone. It seems like the earlier or later you schedule calls, meeting participant’s calendars are open. The great thing about this is if you are on the East coast and schedule a call at 8:00 AM, that is 5:00 AM on the West coast.
Why does this work so well? Because there is a good chance that either those on the West coast won’t show up, or if they do, they will sleep through the call. This will allow you to get them caught up on the next call.
Question: I have only covered five; do you have other suggestion on how we can waste time in conference call meetings? Have you ever been a meeting participant of such calls?
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