Loving the use of both the carrot and the stick in your suggestion, Nitin! Great ideas, both of them!
1. Make sure that the meetings are providing true value to the team. If they don’t find it useful or productive they will be less likely to show engagement to attend.
2. Setting the proper expection
3. Make sure during the meeting everyone feels safe to express themselves and their ideas and be inclusive with all of the team members. I have been in meetings where the meeting leader would pose a question and people would raise their hand to speak and the meeting leader would call on the same person every time to answer. Others in the group felt devalued and it came to a point they would make excused why they couldn’t make the meeting.
4. The time of day is really important. When the meetings are scheduled shortly after the start of the work day people are fresh and haven’t become caught up in their daily work.
Thanks for your insight, Shannon! Strong agree that inclusivity and time of day are absolute essentials 
Early birds catch the warm…Be on time and leave late that s my motto
I am loving this cert programme!
1) I often used the words “pychological safety” to enable a sense of safety for all without any repercussions. That would be my starting point during the intials stage.
2) Highlight the value that smarketing meeting will bring to the workers through the process of identification of problems and deciphering a solution based outcome. A sense of being heard, valued and appreciated goes along way for people wanting to be in the room.
3) Setting the bar for collaboration as an example for the rest of the organisation. Being part of a special process or structure that delivers change to everyone - thats a great feeling to have!
Thanks
Internal meetings should be proactive in a collabortaive sense, with an active guide for follow-through post meeting for key discussion points brought up by the team. With <10 members per meeting ,bi-weekly meetings should be limited to 50-70 minutes in length, with open internal discussions happening via slack or other channels throughout this time period as well.
If you have the right culture in place of accountability and ownership, then team members will inherently get to the room on time. I suggest everyone read Extreme Ownership which goes more into detail about this idea.
Thanks for the recommendation, @JoeBurchard!
Well for me, getting peple to be on time for meeting i a company culture problem not an incentive thing. i believe in sustainability.
Q. What will you do if there was no incentive?
Q. How long can you continue with incentive?
The goal of the meeting is to move forward and i believe this should be for the benefit of the organizatio and the individuals. so Early arrival for meeting online or real time is a culture problem and should be treated as such.
NOTE: People are committed to something based on the degree to which that thing or association is directly or indirectly helping them achieve their ultimate life goal not immediate gratification.
Well for me, getting peple to be on time for meeting i a company culture problem not an incentive thing. i believe in sustainability.
Q. What will you do if there was no incentive?
Q. How long can you continue with incentive?
The goal of the meeting is to move forward and i believe this should be for the benefit of the organizatio and the individuals. so Early arrival for meeting online or real time is a culture problem and should be treated as such.
NOTE: People are committed to something based on the degree to which that thing or association is directly or indirectly helping them achieve their ultimate life goal not immediate gratification.
Nobody should need any sort of incentive if the right example is set by leaders within the organization. This all starts at the top.
People show up late for meetings when…
1. Leadership sets a poor example by rourtinely running late.
2. Leadership allows people to run late and waits five minutes past the scheduled start time so the stragglers can show up.
3. Leadership doesn’t pay attention to which people are / are not engaged during the conversations.
4. Leadership doesn’t require people to have their cameras on during Zoom meetings.
If team members all understand the expectations that meetings will start on time, cameras must be on, and the leaders lead by example, this will minimize tardiness.
The best incentives I can think of in this case will be leading by example and making the attendees feel they have something to gain if they arrive on time, or to lose if they come late.
When people feel held accountable and responsible, you spend less time forcing or reminding them to do what they are supposed to do.
The best incentive is maybe to invite to the meeting based on “looking to correct our outreach to X” as the opener. Give both sides an increntive to join because both marketing and sales would benefit from this solve. As the meetings progress, both sies will see more and more benefit from getting things corrected.
Here are some tips that have worked for me:
- There should be someone with authority initiating the meeting, people will be more interested in coming.
- Do not be too dependent on autoreminders in meeting apps or thinking the agenda of the meeting is so important (cause this might me subjective). Sometimes a personal message or a call before time goes a long way.
- Invite only people who are important and contributing to meetings. The less people the less probability for lateness.
- Sometimes a little public rebuke to the offender making the person understand how the lateness is a show of disregard to all present and should reconsider the weight of the decision.
- Always start the meeting on time, no matter who is present.
- Make your meetings safe environments where everybody can contribute and they will look forward to the engagement.
Some incentives are public recognition to the group and making it standard so that everyone expects it and can look forward to it, calling people out when they’re late/giving a stern look when they enter, or alternatively kicking them out so that it becomes habit and they know there are consequences if late.
I don’t think you need any particular incentive when you are invited to participate in internal meetings, regardless of your position. But, you need to feel and understand that your time is respected, and your opinion will be objectively evaluated; on the other hand, you should acknowledge your accountability for what you do or don’t do before and during the meeting.
What we use as best practices before any meeting is the following:
1. Timely inform the participants about the suggested date/time and duration of the meeting. The choice is made based on their calendars that we can review, so everyone feels like we respect their schedule and priorities; but we also need them to respect our intention to invite them to the meeting, and act accordingly (i.e., avoid booking anything during the meeting time, prepare themselves etc.).
2. In the invitation, we always include the preliminary agenda. We call it “preliminary”, because we ask the participants to contribute to the topics to be discussed. Once we get responses from all, we share the “final agenda”. It is important to note that if someone has nothing to add, we ask for a “nothing to add” reply.
One personal and absolutely subjective remark, after having read the replies here, which I found profoundly interesting.
If a company ends up penalizing staff for being late at meetings, something is wrong -and it’s not just the person who is late. It is like a demo you have booked, but the prospect never shows up, or shows up with a limited time and/or focus on what you are going to present… In this case, you need to redefine the structure of the meetings’ preparation and realization.
Um this is actually a tough one because peoples lives etc The best way to incentive would be to just cultivate a good culture in the workplace something will always come up but lets say you have a decent and a bad enviornment vs a good enviornment 10 people in each enviornment if its good im expecting 8/10 that is good s decent 5/10 showing up bad 1 or 2/10 showing up. if enviornment is good I might not be able to get a good 10 consistently but if we can average else 7 out of 10 every time those are good numbers I think that is the best solution to this question
This inlcudes specifics as well because you not going have to worry about nuances if people actually like working with you
One of the best initiatives is to motivate or invite all the members of the meeting to participate, it is very good to listen to their thoughts, point of view and contemplate ideas from the whole team.
Another great initiatives is to do some activities, and have these meetings regularly. This allows us to have an overview of the current situation of each team, refresh ideas, and focus on the goals so we can align the actions between both teams and have better practices.
The best darned way to incentivize people to attend the meetings is to have them actually *matter*.
Once the meeting is done, minutes/summary, precis should be sent out to tall.
A list of action items that were asked/suggested shoud be listed.
Importantly; Point out when that action item has been completed *and highllght the fact that it came from one of the team meetings*
From a management POV, it never hurts to throw in a highlight of one or more employees who did something particularly well since the last meeting - ideally, use at least two, with one of those employees that are highlighted NOT being in sales or marketing.
-Marc