3 Types of Meetings — and How to Do Each One Well
Sessions are suspended. Something happened when work moved online in 2020, and opening the office didn’t fix it. Every interaction with colleagues became a video call, and our days became a transactional Tetris game: where can I schedule this or that meeting? Now, with guidelines dictating which days of the week should be where, Tetris has become more complex.
In my work helping distributed and hybrid organizations thrive, I see employees commuting only to spend time in nearly empty offices or on phone calls. It feels less like flexibility than a new constraint, and it doesn’t build the relationships we intended. It’s the worst of both worlds.
There is a better way. Instead of focusing on when and where we meet, let’s start with why we meet and let that dictate the logistics. When asked to help rebuild relationships and strengthen complex collaborations, I start with basic advice: The new work calendar isn’t about office or home, it’s about three types of gathering and the conditions that best serve them.
Three types of gatherings
Why do I call them assemblies and not assemblies? Names signal purpose. To meet has a strong connotation, suggesting people around a conference table (or the online equivalent) and a tight agenda. gatherings provide multiple purposes and let go of the idea that we need to do a timestamped march to check things off lists.
Transactional Gatherings advance work; relationship meeting strengthen connections; and adaptive gatherings Help us tackle complex or sensitive issues. As transactional meetings are more easily conducted online, relational and adaptive meetings have become relatively rare. Now is a good time to reintroduce and redesign these gatherings, as all were already deficient before the pandemic. Let’s look at the best conditions for all three. While I focus on distributed and hybrid environments, the lessons apply to any organization.
1. Transaction Meeting
Transactional gatherings are about getting things done. Examples include daily standups, weekly sales updates, and planning meetings. You need three things to be successful:
Common working documents
Cloud-based tools like Google Docs, Miro and Figjam are breaking new ground. If your team hasn’t used them yet, now is the time. Because multiple people can edit at the same time, everyone sees real-time updates, and they far outweigh a whiteboard that few can see.
screen parity
Hybrid transactional meetings — where at least two people are in the same room and the rest are spread out — benefit from screen parity, or each person appearing in an individual tile. As anyone who has attended a hybrid meeting remotely probably knows, interacting with a virtual conference room full of blurry people is difficult.
A host looking for signals of participation
While technical adjustments go a long way, hosts have an additional responsibility when not everyone is together: spying on signals of attendance. A raised hand or a microphone being muted are cues to engage participants. I’ve found it beneficial to add an additional role: an engagement lead, to help the host ensure active, equal participation. For smaller events, the engagement lead and host are synonymous. For larger gatherings, consider appointing separate owners.
2. Relationship meeting
Relationship meetings are meant to strengthen our connections. Examples in the past have been offsites, joint lunches or team building trips. You need three things to be successful:
Clear targets
Relationship meetings suffer most from the “let’s just get everyone together” syndrome: the idea that just throwing people together is enough. While these types of events can be beautiful, they are not relationship builders. Whether you’re bringing two people together or the entire organization, relational gatherings should be intentional with clear goals in mind. Instead of “getting to know everyone,” try goals like:
- Find out more about career developments
- Understand driving motives
- Think about moments of growth
These goals give people a hook so they can get to know each other in a more natural way.
Structured Activities
Instead of amorphous free-for-all, consciously structure time. Divide the session into periods of reflection (alone) and sharing (in small groups) with activities such as the following:
- Draw a map of your career and mark the pivotal points.
- Share a piece of work-related advice that you come back to often.
- Tell a story of resilience.
Strong relationships are built by raising levels of openness, so these activities allow people to choose comfortable levels of exposure. A leadership team that has worked together for years and navigated rocky waters would likely have deeper stories to tell than newcomers at an onboarding event.
When you have a subset of your team together, create a unique, asynchronous way for non-attendees to engage. For example, for the consulting activity, you could ask people to share their example via video in advance.
A mix of people from different functions, levels or locations
We are left to ourselves and go where we feel comfortable: we talk to our teammates, our colleagues or people in similar situations. But organizations need us to have relationships beyond those silos that can support relational gatherings, intentionally mixing people who wouldn’t be naturally attracted to each other.
3. Adaptive assemblies
Adaptive Meetings help us address complex or sensitive issues where the right process or desired outcome is not clear from the start. These gatherings require agility and sensitivity. Examples include strategy sessions, innovation sprints, career talks, or navigating the organizational implications of a societal issue. To be successful, they need three conditions:
A malleable, self-contained environment
When I was at design company IDEO, where almost every client gathering was adaptive, we preferred rooms separate from team meeting rooms. Ideal were spaces where furniture could be moved, people could walk around, and no formal hierarchy was implied (boardrooms: out!). Space affects how people interact, so location was the participants’ first clue that this was no ordinary conversation.
When online, break out of video boxes. Design non-video brainstorming sessions and focus on a digital jamboard. And try having awkward conversations (where body language matters) with people seated on sofas or chairs rather than at desks, with the camera further back to reduce intensity and allow for full-body signals.
A sense of security
In the past, difficult or sensitive conversations took place in person, so we could observe body language and use the physical environment to create a sense of security. But we’ve learned over the course of the pandemic that this isn’t always necessary — or desirable. One example is sensitive career talks. While you instinctively tend to hold these meetings in person, several employees have told me that they prefer to have these discussions online. The screen helps them manage their emotions and gives them a better sense of control. Give employees autonomy over where these take place (some may prefer the internet, others a walk-and-talk).
Release valves to relieve tension
Complex problems are often pressed for time and relief valves can help. To reach conclusions from a place of stillness, create a separation between discussing options and making decisions. In the room, this could be a coffee break with a shared laugh over something off-topic. Encourage everyone online to get outside and not think about the issue. This shift in focus is not expendable, but a critical component to a successful outcome.
In a distributed organization that I lead, we had to build a new guiding framework after a charged incident. To relieve tension, we changed the cadence and structure. First, we hosted a small digital roundtable to reflect on the incident (to get emotions flowing when assessing the pain point). Next, we had one-on-one interviews with different people to understand the different needs (the intimacy helped people feel more comfortable being vulnerable). Finally, we hosted a session to create our new framework (at this point, the emotions of the first two phases had enough space to dissipate).
What should you do if your meeting includes all (or none) of the above?
Although these use cases benefit from different conditions, that doesn’t mean you can’t combine them. An example is an offsite dedicated to building relationships, tackling complex strategic issues, and getting work done. Set conditions for each one: mix and match people who wouldn’t naturally attract, give strategic discussions room to breathe, and use different spaces for each type of activity.
Other events may not feel like they are transactional, relational, or adaptive gatherings. That’s okay too. Because the way to an effective meeting always leads to the question: Why are we meeting? What are we trying to achieve? And to give each need its own space and space. You may be surprised at the rhythm of when you meet in person. While it varies based on team needs, it’s more of a monthly, quarterly, or project-based rhythm than weekly.
And if you can’t make company-wide changes, you can still influence your own meetings. As part of a policy of dictating where you should be, not why, refocus the way you conduct meetings by shifting your priorities from the logistics of your calendar to the needs of your employees.