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Updated August 7, 2023Not all meetings are created equal. While your daily stand-up meeting may not seem too important, you will be in other meetings where crucial decisions are made. Depending on the topic of the meeting, it may be worth your time to prepare so you have an idea of what you want to communicate before you need to. That may involve scanning your project management board to remember what you worked on yesterday, reading through the codebase to refresh your memory about how a particular component works, or reviewing documentation for potential third-party services.
You may be called upon in the meeting to give your opinion or your input on how a particular part of the system works and how easily it can be extended. If itβs not fresh in your mind, it may be hard to give a complete answer during the meeting when everyone is relying on your input. By preparing ahead of time, you will be able to give an answer confidently so that important decisions can be made.
Itβs also good to go into meetings with a list of predetermined questions youβd like to have answered. Donβt assume that everyone is on the same page about how easy or hard some change will be, or how the change should be made. Oftentimes, other people havenβt considered a solution you may be asking about, so asking the question can be helpful to others as well as yourself.
Finally, itβs good to keep a notebook and write down your thoughts and questions before starting the meeting. Conversations happen quickly in meetings, and if you try to keep it all in your head, you may not remember everything you wanted to bring up. Writing down notes also helps organize your thoughts, and you can cross things off your list as they are discussed.
These may be simple ideas, but as they become second nature, these habits will help you communicate your thoughts more clearly throughout the course of your career.
Did you ever play that game called βTelephoneβ growing up? Itβs a game where kids stand in a circle and one player whispers a sentence to the person next to them. The second player then repeats the message to the third player, and so on. When the message reaches the end, the last player announces the sentence that was whispered to them and compares it to the original sentence from the first player. Almost always, the two sentences are completely different due to each player interpreting and repeating the message with slight differences to the next person. With each iteration the message becomes less like the original.
The same thing can happen in professional settings as well, even if itβs unintended. If possible, try not to rely on someone else to pass your message along to the intended recipient, because it may not be communicated exactly as you intended it to be. Sometimes though, you may not have an option, such as if you need to convey important information up the management chain to the executive team. In general, the more people your message passes through, the higher the chance it will be misinterpreted by the receiver.
If possible, send a chat message, an email, or speak to the recipient directly rather than communicating through a chain of people. If you must pass along information through others, try to follow up with the recipient and confirm they got your message. It may seem trivial, but itβs yet another habit you can build now that could save you from headaches in the future when collaborating across teams and organizations.