Contents:
Intro
Top 7 Corporate Meeting Trends in 2020:
1. Niche Meetings
2. Shorter Meetings
3. Personal Communication Over Q & A
4. Context, Space, And Design
5. Corporate Meeting Solutions To An Emergent Crisis
6. AI Technology
7. Integration And Online Meeting Management
Conclusion
Meetings are a great platform for business.
Managers and employees hold meetings to talk, to pass on information, to debate ideas, and settle disputes. Yet, despite its usefulness, people hate meetings because most meetings are unproductive:
Many business executives say that 67 percent of meetings are a waste of time, as they fail to produce any meaningful results. But there are ways to make your meetings productive, more successful. And when you do make them successful, you compete better in the business world.
This article presents seven corporate meeting trends in 2020. The trends walk you through several ways to organize effective meetings and win in the marketplace.
Let’s look at each trend more closely.
One of the corporate meeting trends of 2020 is niche meetings. Niche meetings are those meetings that focus on a specific topic of interest or address a particular problem. The reason why niche meetings are trending in 2020 is that they are very specific to a particular area of interest.
People like such meetings because they’re often brief and straight to the point. Such meetings appeal to employees because people are busy and are very conscious of their time and energy. People like to attend meetings that are tailor-made to address a certain task or issue.
“Meetings are essential for enabling collaboration, creativity, and innovation,” HBR’s Leslie Perlow says. “…But why would anyone argue in defense of excessive meetings, especially when no one likes them much?” The answer is because most meetings are not properly structured and organized.
People easily get bored with meetings. In fact, 92 percent of people multitask during meetings because most meetings are generally long, dull, and boring. To make your meetings exciting, make it short, simple, and brief. That’s how you keep people focused and exciting during a meeting and keep them away from checking their phones or dozing off.
Modern companies realize that businesses that display personal human touch engage more with their customers, get the most followers on social media, and have high customer retention. That’s probably one of the reasons why Q & A’s are becoming unpopular during meetings.
Businesses get the most out of their employees, especially when they allow team members to engage personally, rather than to go over the old Q & A session.
That’s probably one of the reasons why Q & A’s are becoming unpopular during meetings. Businesses get the most out of their employees, especially when they allow team members to engage personally, rather than to go over the old Q & A session.
This is the reason why the visionary leader Steve Jobs used to walk—barefoot—on the street of California as he engaged with his design team. He makes the entire meeting experience personal and avoids formal pressure.
This is good because personalizing meetings entertains the flow of ideas and creativity.
Your corporate meeting environment must respect these three important elements: Context, space, and design. The ideal corporate meeting room is one that not only focuses on the meeting itself but provides a background outlook for that meeting agenda.
In other words, your meeting room should be furnished with high-tech equipment. For example, the speed and connectivity of your A/V setup have to be up to date.
Personal space has to be elaborate and accommodating to improve your meeting experience. And the design and layout of your meeting platform should tally with your brand and provide a framework that encourages good business ethics such as openness, transparency, and inclusiveness. In essence, your design should provide a basis for the work that takes place within your meeting environment.
You can’t prevent tensions, conflicts, and crises in any organization. As people assemble to achieve a business goal, whether it’s in a factory or assembly line, tension and crisis of all kinds must take place. That’s where corporate meetings are essential.
They are organized to iron-out issues and resolve conflicts. In 2020, business execs are prioritizing smarter crisis management skills over any other thing. They call on meetings so they could douse off the emergent crisis, preach peace, and communicate solutions to conflicting parties.
That’s because peace is the engine that powers a company, empowers it to grow and excel beyond leaps and bounds.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is one of the central communication technologies that are part of the modern-day meetings.
In 2020, more and more companies are using AI technology to improve their meetings: record, transcribe and edit meeting recordings to ensure effective communication and smoother team interaction.
You can harness the power of AI-powered transcription tools like Audext to enhance your meeting experiences.
(Image source: Audext)
For instance, with AI-powered Audext, you can automatically transcribe your meetings; the software determines which word is said at each second, and saves each word into a transcript of the audio recording.
And, above all, your editing is stress-free. Just choose the speed for the playback and slow down to edit your audio files at your own pace.
Integration is one of the major corporate meeting trends in 2020. Organizations, small and big, are integrating high-tech in their communication on the one hand and both the online and offline meetings on the other. For example, both digital and traditional businesses are integrating recording technological tools, CMS, teleconferencing apps, management software tools to improve their meetings.
Doodle’s State of Meetings report suggests that having a clear agenda and using visual stimuli such as videos and presentation technologies can make one’s meeting more powerful, clearer, and efficient.
Holding effective corporate meetings isn’t as difficult as you may think. Luckily, this year, we have seen a number of corporate meeting trends. The trends are packed with great tools and tips that anyone can use to plan and structure an efficient corporate meeting.
The seven meeting trends in 2020 that we have explored in this piece include:
It’s about making meetings effective and clear and less boring. And that requires a lot of preparation, planning, and the application of human creativity, knowledge, and technology.
04/17/2020
Katrin runs her own podcast show, and interested in best ways to transcribe audio recordings into text.