6 Things Managers Can do to Improve Meetings for Working Moms

Meetings are anchors in our professional lives, but they require herculean efforts to schedule. And when we have too many meetings, schedule-Jenga, competes with time and mental energy for deep work. Every organization is scrambling to find capacity right now but most workers are extra crispy from the ongoing crises and shaky economy.

Although managers also live this reality, many are given ‘do more with less’ edicts which result in crowded calendars and busy work. Conditions that are career killers for moms, who are once again exiting the workforce in high numbers. So, what’s a caregiver-savvy-leader to do?

Meetings are Not the Output

I’m not saying, ‘don’t have meetings’ because they’re important to align on and inform the ‘work’ but remember, they’re rarely the actual work. Unless perhaps if you’re a lawyer or consultant who bills for your meeting time. But even then, there’s still effort before and after meetings. You begin to manage people and yourself differently when you realize, the meeting itself is not a deliverable.

There are Limits to Your Team’s Mental Space

Effective professional communication is an ongoing, nuanced dance, it’s also critical to your goals. Of course, being understood is pretty important and if you’re good at getting your points across, you’re rewarded. Managing projects, programs, or partnerships well puts your work on “the map” in ways that moves your career and compensation forward. But what happens, whey you own the overwhelming majority of household and childcare outside of your work role? Right, you’d do what most parents do. Try to squeeze deliverables into nights, weekends and tiny spaces between meetings.

You Can Make Meetings, Work Better for Moms

It’s a recipe for disastrous career, mental and often financial health. In the most recent wave of our research study, now with over 3,800 parents mostly mothers, 87% of moms admit, “dialing back their professional ambitions to make their life logistics work” and 79% cite doing, “terribly or not as well as usual” at restorative self-care. Moms still own the unpaid work in most families, but this isn’t just a ‘mom problem.’ Dads don’t like it either and single parents, people caring for spouses or aging parents, also pay penalties in the home or workplace.

This includes everything from that late-pickup daycare fee, guilt from missing a school performance or getting passed over for a promotion. Penalties, like rewards are often subtle and subjective. When suffered needlessly, they fracture trust between you and your employees.

There are 6 Key Things to Be Sensitive to as a Leader

One: The ‘Why’ Matters, State Your Purpose

When that invite comes over, unless there’s an agenda or super-clear meeting title, they’ll wonder ‘do I really have to be there? Do I have something to contribute or is it just important for me to listen in real time?’

So, consider the following:

Is there a decision that needs to be made during the meeting, and if so, can you and your colleagues make it during the meeting without a pre-read?
Is the length of the meeting conducive to the size of the group and agenda? For example, 25 people cannot actively participate and meet for 30 minutes.
Is the meeting about ‘getting things done’ or is the focus on team bonding? If it’s the latter, make sure the time (more on that below) is caregiver friendly and you’ve provided advance notice if it isn’t during work hours.

Two: Is the Meeting Really a Form of Training?

Meetings when you’re teaching are a bit different. For example, if you have early career colleagues or someone new that may not have a lot of experience with the organization, topic or a task, then a live meeting can be helpful. However, depending on what the project is, and what the person does, you can experiment with giving detailed guidance asynchronously.

Can you make a quick video or voice memo showing or explaining what you’re assigning in detail? What about a shared document that includes the objectives? Including what you want the result to be and options about how to start. When you’re training someone, it’s quite different than having a routine meeting with subject matter experts so, make it clear that it’s psychologically safe to ask questions, be confused, make errors and seek input along the way.

Three: Time of Day

Please don’t schedule meetings early in the morning. Let me explain, a lot happens in the mornings. Including school or daycare drop off, transitions to a grandparent or nanny, recovery from being up-all-night-with-a-sick-kid and morning sickness during pregnancy, are just a short list of possibilities. If your child is too sick for school or daycare, that realization tends to happen in the morning. Parents need extra space to rearrange their entire day as a result.

If you’re in a ‘9 to 5’ type of role, please don’t book meetings before 10 am, or during lunch or after 4 pm if you can avoid it. I know what you’re thinking, ‘but Leslie that means I only have 10 – 12 pm or 1 – 4 pm for meetings’ and yes, that’s about right. This is not locked in stone because it won’t work 100% of the time. For example, when you’re working across multiple time zones and or stakeholders, including with people outside of your organization.

You also may work in a 24/7 field like healthcare, education, retail, or hospitality. Whatever industry you’re in, create intentional guidelines that suit your norms, especially for internal meetings, to make them as productive as possible. Your people will notice. Not only will they appreciate it, and get more deep work time for deliverables, they’ll be more present when you do meet.

Four: Time of Year

Okay, if your kids are school-aged you already know what May-cember, (or for those of us in the Northeast, June-cember) is a thing. End of year parties, performances, graduations and sports take over the calendar. There are other seasons of intensity for parents like the first month of back-to-school, holiday season, summers and school breaks. Of course, it’s not always feasible to accommodate every period of extra intensity with lighter meeting schedules but if you can most of the time, that’s a win.

You may also have seasonality within your organization. Like certain times of year when you launch products or attend conferences and events. Think through what you’re really asking (indirectly) by having back-to-back meetings as the norm. If your meetings coincide with back-to-back personal and social commitments, you’re asking people (again indirectly) not to sleep, workout, cuddle with their little ones, talk with their partners (if partnered) or friends. It’s well documented that workplace conditions can either boost or undermine mental health. It’s like sending people through a daily slog that many don’t recover from.

Five: Location of the Meeting

The rapid decline of women in the workforce is in part, attributed to growing return-to-office mandates. There are times, when meeting in person is desirable and helpful. For example, social events for bonding, onboarding new employees especially if they are meeting people they will work with for the first time. It’s also helpful for meetings that are 2 hours or longer, where it’s just draining to participate over video, or where there’s a whiteboard or other group creative activities that would be difficult to engage in or replicate on screen.

But if the meeting is in person, and especially if it includes travel (like a conference or event) there has to be lead-time, guidelines around duration and ideally scheduling when people on the team have coverage plans in place for their childcare or eldercare responsibilities. We also facing heightened global conflicts and fear in immigrant communities. Not everyone feels comfortable traveling, especially overseas. So, have discussions about offsite plans in advance and work with your team or HR partners to manage accommodations.

Six: Response Time Sensitivity

Unfortunately, your team will likely treat any message you send as urgent by default. Because you’re their manager and people need their jobs so, your requests will float to the top of the list. Whether or not they belong there. You can, however, preempt this by giving people a timeline, along with any connected deadlines.

For example, “hi team, as you know we’re getting into our planning season for the next product launch. We need to make decisions about our programs by X date, so I’d like to meet as a group by Y date to finalize our priorities. Here’s a brief video or document with notes to help create some context before we meet, you’ll probably need about 10 – 15 minutes to prepare.” Help people manage their time, with sufficient lead times and grace when they need flexibility.

Create Guidelines and Team Norms

If you need to communicate about something time sensitive in real-time, come up with a team wide system. When I interviewed my colleague and friend Alexis Haselberger, productivity and leadership coach during the height of the pandemic, she said “When I bring a team together and ask them, ‘how quickly should email or Slack be answered?’ We go around the room and you’ll get 10 wildly different answers. Some people will say, ‘by the end of the day’ whereas others say ‘within 30 seconds.’ Huge discrepancies! So, discuss what to use email and Slack for and decide what the emergency channel will be if there’s a need to reach out urgently. Then people don’t feel like they have to answer right away or have notifications on constantly.”

Managers have a huge impact on work/life and mental health. So, free your team from hovering over their inboxes when they need that space to rest, sleep, exercise, play and care for their kids.

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