Elon Musk. Pic Courtesy Getty Images

Leadership coach and former C-suite executive Rishi Piparaiya points out that burdening yourself with long days of meetings can fool you into thinking that you have been productive although you have done little to no creative or strategic thinking. The latter, he says, requires focused, quiet time, minus distractions or interruptions. Coach Farzana Suri adds that leaders must be mindful of the fact that “every time you pull people away from their task and disrupt their flow, it takes them up to 23 minutes to get back in the flow. Before you schedule a meeting, think about whether the discussion really warrants a meeting or if you can make do with a phone call or an email. Make sure you have an agenda that all participants go through before attending the meeting. Also, give them enough notice. Last-minute meetings must only be an exception. It’s also crucial to keep time — begin the meeting on time and end it on or before the stipulated time,” she says.

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Sonalee Panda; Niranjan Nakhate; Rishi Piparaiya

Have an agenda
Make a habit of listing out an actionable roadmap based on your discussion. Before your next meeting, review if the roadmap from the last meeting has been achieved. Niranjan Nakhate, co-founder of Futwork, shares that in his organisation, meetings are recorded and shared to facilitate dissemination of information, and to ensure that they are taken seriously.

Succinct communication 
The experts agree with Musk’s mantra of no jargon and simple, effective communication. Panda says, “If your communication is littered with acronyms and very specific terms, it can even inhibit communication across departments. Not everyone has the confidence to admit they didn’t understand what was being said, and this can alienate them. If jargon takes over the whole culture, your frontline employees will use it with customers and end up alienate them as well.” Nakhate vouches for platforms such as Slack and Discord that can be checked by multiple team members   so that queries are answered at earliest by whoever has the answer.  Piparaiya says conducting skip-level meetings with employees can help leaders  to better gauge the challenges.