You call a meeting. You put together the meeting agenda and carefully select the participants. Some of them are optional, but some of them are absolutely necessary in order to achieve the meeting goals.
If you arrange meetings on a regular basis, then you probably know how difficult it can be to bring together a group of highly occupied business professionals.
You spend time exploring their calendars, you move your own meetings, and you ask your fellow colleagues to move their meetings in order to accommodate that particular time slot when the key participants are available. Finally, you seem to have found the desired time window that should work for everyone.
You click “Send” in anticipation that people will mark their calendars. Your fellow colleagues that accommodated your meeting and postponed previously scheduled appointments reply right away. They accept the meeting.
Yet, no word from your “most important” participants. Someone you absolutely need at the meeting does not respond. Or, better yet, they “tentatively accept”.
What do you do in such a situation? How much time do you give them to respond more definitely?
Clearly, if someone you absolutely need does not show up at your meeting, the time of all other participants will be wasted.
So you go ahead and send them a reminder asking to confirm their attendance. Once again, there is no response. You end up calling them and leaving a voice mail... 2 hours before the meeting.
If they respond all of a sudden that they cannot make it, then you cancel or reschedule your meeting at the very last minute. If they don’t respond, then you either have to take a risk and hold your meeting, feeling extremely relieved if they show up or extremely upset if they don’t, or you still have to cancel your meeting at the very last minute.
So what is your best course of action? What is the right proportion of assertiveness and tolerance in this particular situation?
Of course, every case is individual, and you should try different tools under different circumstances. Nevertheless, there are still multiple ways to prevent these situations from happening.
Clearly, the actions that you undertake should be preventive. Let’s begin with some general activities that I recommend:
1) Set up the ground rules. If you work with the same group of stakeholders, let them know that you request either an “Accept” or “Decline” response in advance, so that your meetings can be efficient – normally your colleagues would respect this framework
2) Communicate your expectations often – remind your team that meeting attendance is important and that their advance participation confirmation would be appreciated
3) Include “call to action” words in the meeting invitation, or better yet, in the meeting subject: “Please confirm your attendance: our weekly team call”
4) If you are speaking with the same people earlier, remind them of the upcoming meeting
5) Check your meeting invitations in advance to track the responses
Now, let us talk about the individual activity you can undertake. In order to do so, let us understand why a potential meeting attendee failed to respond or tentatively accepted your meeting.
- They have other commitments and simply forgot to respond
- They underestimate the importance of your meeting
- They underestimate the importance of their attendance and inputs
- They don’t bother responding to you (lack of respect, lack of discipline, lack of work culture)
- They do it on purpose (due to some personal reasons)
Your best bet is to speak with the important stakeholder one on one - in person would be best, but a video call or at least a phone call would suffice.
If they simply forgot, your call could be short – it will serve as a vocal reminder and typically they would take action right away.
If that was not the case, let them know how important they are for this meeting. Let them know that you value their input. Walk them briefly through the agenda. By doing so, you will eliminate the “underestimation” reason.
If you feel that they are still not convinced, let them know that other people made arrangements to accommodate this time slot. Normally, that would raise their commitment and dedication, so that the remaining two reasons would be addressed.
Having a one-on-one conversation could have additional positive outcomes – it could build a better relationship with that particular stakeholder; plus, if they feel that someone else should be invited to your meeting, they could advise you and your meeting would become even more efficient.