Chapter 81 Participating in Meetings

Most data scientists spend a fair amount of their time in meetings, either running them or as a participant. In this lesson we’ll cover when to have a meeting, how to run a meeting, and how to participate in a meeting as a data scientist.

81.0.1 Meeting Etiquette

When it comes to meetings, whether you’re running the meeting or in the room as a participant, there are a number of general guidelines when it comes to meeting etiquette. Some of these may be obvious, but we’re including them for completeness. Those who attend many meetings will already be familiar with this topic; however, for those who have not yet attended many meetings, this information is incredibly important. It will help your meetings be more organized and help so others don’t like meetings you host or those at which you present.

When it comes to meetings:

be on time - show up on time, start the meeting on time, and end the meeting on time
be concise - avoid rambling on. People will stop listening to you, and you don’t want that
be positive - you can disagree with an aspect of someone’s work while still expressing appreciation on what they’ve done. It’s okay to “What you’ve done here is great and a lot of work. I have one suggestion though…”
don’t talk over others - We all get excited about an idea from time to time, but that’s no excuse to talk over others. If someone else is speaking, you shouldn’t be
don’t interrupt - Let others finish their ideas. Even if you know the rest of the sentence you’re going to say, everyone else in the room may not and it’s just rude to interrupt others. Let the person speaking finish their thought.
avoid being hyper-critical - Simply, being hypercritical is not a good look. It makes others not want to work with you and makes you look generally like a jerk. Find a way to make your thoughts clear without being unnecessarily critical
if you point out a problem, try to think of and offer a solution - Providing your thoughts and feedback within a meeting may be incredibly important; however, if you’re identifying problems, it’s best to also offer possible solutions or suggestions

While some of these may seem obvious, it can be hard to be a good citizen within a meeting. If you’re less experienced, speaking up may be intimidating so you may be more likely to ramble on when called upon. If you’re more experienced, you may be quick to notice errors others have made because of your experience. In each case, it’s important to remember these guidelines so that meetings do not become things that neither you nor your team members want to attend.

Meeting Dos and Don’ts

81.0.2 How to Host A Meeting

Sometimes you’ll just be a participant in a meeting while other times you may be the one running the meeting. If you find yourself in charge of hosting and running the meeting, there are a number of considerations to take into account while planning the meeting, during the meeting, and after the meeting. A lot of this has been discussed elsewhere previously and we’ll use this twitter thread to guide this lesson, but it’s important information to cover here as well.

81.0.2.1 Before the Meeting

Before the actual meeting it’s important to:

Decide If you Need to Have a Meeting
Write & Distribute an Agenda
Decide When & Where to Have the Meeting
Determine Who Should Be There

81.0.2.1.1 Decide If You Need to Have a Meeting

When you first decide to have a meeting, the first thing you want to be sure is that there actually has to be a meeting. Meetings are necessary for sharing and discussing ideas among participants or for interactive presentations. If the purpose of the meeting is simply to share information, this should be an email and not a meeting.

81.0.2.1.2 Write & Distribute an Agenda

Once you’ve determined that a meeting is truly necessary, you should draft an agenda. This agenda should have times on it for each part of the meeting to keep everyone on time during the actual meeting. When deciding on an order for the meeting, the most pressing and important issues should be covered first. Prioritize those items that will have the largest impact, but take the least amount of work/time to accomplish. Additionally and importantly, this agenda should be distributed to all meeting participants before the meeting

81.0.2.1.3 Decide When & Where to Have the Meeting

With a plan in hand for the meeting, it’s up to the host to find the date & time that will work best for the people who have to be in the room and to ensure that the room/space where the meeting will be held is available and has been reserved.

81.0.2.1.4 Determine Who Should Be There

When planning and hosting a meeting, ensure that everyone who should be there is invited with enough notice. Similarly, be sure that people who do not need to be at the meeting are not brought to the meeting. There’s no reason to waste others’ time with a meeting full of information that does not pertain to them.

81.0.2.1.5 Send out The Meeting Information

There are may different ways (email, apps, etc.) in which people invite others to meetings, so it’s best to use whatever system is customary at your job. Regardless of how you send out the information about the meeting, be sure to send out the date, time, and location for the meeting to all participants. This should be done as early as possible, as peoples schedules fill up. Then, a day or two before the meeting, send out a reminder to all who will be there.

81.0.2.2 During the Meeting

Once the time, date, and location are set, participants have been made aware, and an agenda has been sent out, you’re close to ready for the actual meeting.

81.0.2.2.1 Ensure Someone is In Charge

First, someone should be running the meeting. This does not mean that this person has to speak the most. In fact, it’s best if this person is not the person leading most of the discussion, as the person engaged in a lot of discussion is less likely to keep everyone on task and on time. Alternatively, the person running the meeting should make sure that the schedule is adhered to and that everyone stays on topic. If discussions begin to veer off topic, it’s the person who’s in charge’s responsibility to cut it off before everyone’s time is wasted. The person running the meeting can always encourage those involved in the tangential discussion to chat outside of the meeting. Additionally, if you’re concerned about stopping the conversation and not wanting to be rude to those in the off-topic conversation, just consider the time of the others in the meeting whose time is being wasted by off-topic discussions. By cutting these types of discussions short, you’re doing everyone else in the room a favor and doing your job as the person in charge of keeping the meeting running smoothly.

81.0.2.2.2 Keep Minutes

Someone should be responsible of keeping notes during the meeting. All important information, decisions that were made, and tasks that were assigned should be recorded.

81.0.2.2.3 Meeting Expectations

Additionally, at the beginning of the meeting, expectations should be clearly set. If this is a meeting where information will be presented with time for questions at the end, ensure that the audience knows that. If it’s a meeting involving a lot of brainstorming, make sure that is stated explicitly. Additionally, be sure that if many people are given the chance to contribute, that everyone with ideas is getting to contribute. It’s the person in charge of the meeting’s responsibility to ensure that a few loud voices are not dominating the conversation when others have ideas to contribute.

81.0.2.2.4 End Early

If the agenda is adhered to and individuals stay on-topic, this should be no problem. If a meeting is to end at 2PM, be sure that it ends at 1:55PM at the latest. This will allow everyone at this meeting to get to their 2PM appointments.

If the agenda is not adhered to and topics still aren’t covered by the time 1:55PM rolls around for your meeting that was scheduled to end at 2PM, too bad. The meeting still must end by 1:55PM. It is not ok to take up others’ time due to the meeting agenda being poorly-executed or managed. Always end early.

81.0.2.3 After the Meeting

Right after the meeting, be sure to send a meeting summary including all the information in the minutes to all meeting participants as well as those who weren’t able to make the meeting but would have participated had they been free.

These meeting minutes can also be referenced in the future to hold people accountable. If someone promises to do something by the next meeting, that will be recorded in the minutes and can easily be followed-up on at the next meeting.

81.0.3 How to Participate in a Meeting

If you’re not in charge of running the meeting but are rather a participant in a meeting run by someone else, you have a number of responsibilities as a meeting contributor. If you’re presenting at the meeting, you have additional responsibilities.

81.0.3.1 Your Responsibilities

When you’re in a meeting, it’s your responsibility to pay attention to what’s going on. This may mean putting your laptop and cell phone away. Often, it requires at least jotting down notes. As you jot down notes, it’s good practice to write down questions you have. When it’s your turn to speak, you can use what you’ve written down to ask a great question without rambling on. Additionally, as a meeting participant, it is your responsibility to limit the length of your commentary. Avoid rambling on without saying anything important.

81.0.3.2 When Presenting

In addition to these responsibilities as a meeting participant, if you are presenting at the meeting, you have additional responsibilities.

81.0.3.2.1 Be Mindful of Time

First and foremost, be sure to check on the agenda to see how long your topic has for presentation and discussion. As discussed in the presentation lesson earlier in this course, always stay within your allotted time. Any time that you go over what you’ve been allotted takes away from someone else’s presentation time, and that’s not fair.

81.0.3.2.2 Be Prepared

When presenting at a meeting, you should always be prepared with a high level overview of what you’re presenting. This is often referred to as an executive summary. As discussed in the brief reports lesson earlier in this course, this will include only the necessary and minimal details about your work. While you’ll often only present the high level and general summary, you should still know the details of the work to answer questions from others in the room. Additionally, if you’re presenting high-level slides, it’s a good idea to have “just in case” slides at the ready. These are slides that you don’t intend to present but could be used if someone were to ask a particularly detailed question about your project.

81.0.3.2.3 Guide The Discussion

This can be tricky, but if someone starts down a path that is tangential or unrelated to the work you’re presenting, it’s ok to cut that line of discussion off. It’s often best to say something like “That’s an interesting idea, but I’m not sure we have time to discuss that now. You and I should talk after the meeting about that.” It can be difficult to do this, especially if the people asking the unrelated or off-topic questions are your bosses, but it’s best for the meeting to do so, so just keep that in mind!

81.0.4 Summary

In this lesson we’ve covered the basics of participating in and running meetings. At their core, meetings take up time, thus it’s best to ensure that this is time well spent. To do this, be organized, start on time, keep to the agenda, stay on task, and end on time. If you do this, your meetings will be productive and run smoothly!

81.0.5 Additional Resources

Twitter Thread on Meetings, by Greg Wilson
How to Run a Meting, by Antony Jay