3 Tips for Scheduling Meetings

Jeremy · 0:00

Today's leadership quote comes from Grace Murray Hopper. You manage things, you lead people. Welcome to Episode 20.

Speaker 2 · 0:14

The Leader Assistant Podcast exists to encourage and challenge assistance to become irreplaceable, game-changing leader assistants.

Jeremy · 0:24

Please review on iTunes. Hey everyone, thanks for tuning in to Episode 20 of The Leader Assistant Podcast. I've had a run of about eight straight interview episodes, so I thought I would take a break and do a quick practical episode on a few tips to make scheduling meetings easy. Before I jump in, just a reminder to join the Facebook group at facebook.leaderassistant.com, as well as check out the 30-day Assistant Challenge at assistantchallenge.com. We'd love to have you join us. And lastly, today's show notes can be found at leaderassistant.com forward slash 20. So in my years as an executive assistant, I've come up with three tricks to a good system for setting up meetings that allow you to be efficient, helpful, and ultimately take control of your executive's calendar. So in this episode, I'm going to walk through three tips to help you schedule meetings more easily. The first one is to add meeting blocks to your executive's calendar. The second one is to not let your executive schedule meetings. And the third one, don't ask the other party to send date options. So before I jump into number one, have you ever thought about how you set up meetings or do you just wing it? The whole big picture for this episode is to encourage you to think about the system that you use for scheduling meetings. And if you don't have a system, you need to get one if you want to be a leader assistant. So trick number one, add meeting blocks to your executive's calendar. So I talk about an ideal week calendar a lot. It's pretty simple concept, but I think every executive, business owner, leader, pastor, any sort, needs to know what their ideal week would look like. One of the biggest challenges to creating an ideal week, if you're the assistant, is to sit your executive down and get them to tell you what they want. So get them to tell you, hey, I don't want to meet on Monday mornings, or I don't want to meet on Fridays, or I only want to do phone calls on Thursday afternoons. Whatever it is, one of the biggest challenges is to actually get your executive to tell you what they want. So what a good assistant will do is tie their executive down to a chair and ask them these questions and get answers from them. Maybe not that literally, but you do need to take initiative and get these answers from them. But you can also gauge what they like and what their rhythm should be if you've worked with them for a while. So I would encourage you to initiate that conversation and talk through their preferences. One of the biggest benefits to creating and sticking with an ideal week calendar is that you get to decide when you want to have meetings or when you want to schedule meetings and when you don't. And so your executive can tell you, hey, these are the times I want my meetings to be scheduled, so schedule them then. So when you get an incoming request, you don't have to just kind of throw it in wherever. You have these predetermined slots to place those meetings in. So I wrote more about this process on my blog. You can check out the show notes at leaderassistant.com/20 for a link to that. And you can also download my free ideal week calendar template at gobrows.com forward slash ideal week.

Speaker 2 · 4:15

Crank the volume up. You're going to want to hear the next part.

Jeremy · 4:19

At least that's what my dad says. The next trick is to never let your executive schedule meetings. As assistants, we know the schedule like the back of our hand. I would just strongly encourage and challenge your executive not to schedule meetings on their own. So if someone contacts them directly asking for a meeting, they can simply reply, copy you, and they can say something like, Hi, John, I look forward to connecting. Here's my assistant, copied on this email to schedule a phone call next week. If the meeting isn't urgent, then you can have your executive kind of use some code to communicate to you what type of meeting or how urgent this meeting is. So you could say something like, Copying my assistant to set up a meeting next month, or copying my assistant to set up a meeting ASAP, or copying my assistant to set up a phone call when I get back from my travels. So what this does is it gives you, the assistant, a clear picture of when and how urgent and even what type of meeting this should be. So they don't have to ask you a follow-up clarifying questions, and they can just act on it and get the meeting scheduled. So I love using this code to save the trouble of having to clarify at a later date. So if you're an executive listening to this, do everyone a favor, including yourself, and let your assistant schedule your meetings. All right, trick number three, don't ask the other party to send options. So when you make first contact with someone to set up a meeting, I always try to include three to five dates and times, as well as the time zone, of course. And these should be easy to find if you have an ideal week calendar set up, so you don't have to search the calendar for a few options. You should be able to pull up a list of the predetermined slots, like we talked about earlier. You can also suggest a location in the initial email. And then give them an option of meeting somewhere else if they prefer, but always send dates and times and time zones in a location suggestion. Now you may be thinking, why wouldn't I want to ask the other person what works for them? Wouldn't that be more generous or less selfish? But I actually think taking initiative and giving these predetermined slots will allow you to schedule these meetings when your executive is more energize and excited to meet with people and just overall more productive. So wouldn't you want to schedule meetings for your executive with other people at times where they're excited to meet and ready to meet and less likely to show up late or have to cancel or have to reschedule? So as you can see, it's not selfish to suggest the times initially. But there's also another reason to be so bold, and I think most people miss this. When the other party receives an email with dates, times, and a location already suggested, all they have to do is glance at their calendar, see which works, hit reply, and say this date and time at this location is great. Thanks. Please send an invite. So it keeps the email thread to no more than two, three, maybe four emails. On the other hand, if you're sending an email without dates or location, then the other party is forced to do all the work or reply back and say, please suggest some dates and locations. So then they have to figure that out or they push it back to you. So long story short, you end up with two, three, maybe four extra emails in the thread. And you may end up with a meeting at a time outside of your executive's ideal meeting blocks. So save your executive some headache, save yourself some headache, save the other person some time and energy by doing the work in that first email. So to recap, the three tricks that I use to make scheduling meetings more easy is I add meeting blocks to my executive's calendar with an ideal week calendar. I don't let my executive schedule meetings and I don't ask the other party to send options. I take initiative and send them myself in the first email. So those are a few of my tricks. I hope they're helpful, but I would love to hear from you and hear what tricks you have up your sleeve to help others schedule meetings more efficiently. So please share your tips on our Facebook community at facebook.leaderassistant.com. Tell us how you schedule meetings, tell us what tips or tricks or tools that you use to schedule meetings, and I hope this was helpful. The show notes will be at leaderassistant.com/20. Again, check out the Assistant Challenge at assistantchallenge.com to join hundreds of assistants from around the world in getting an email every weekday for 30 days to challenge and encourage you to become a better leader assistant. Be sure to subscribe to the show so you don't miss the next few interviews coming up, including one with Melba Duncan from The Duncan Group and Jess Lindgren, Executive Assistant to Pat Flynn from the Smart Passive Income Podcast. Thanks again, and we'll talk soon.

Speaker 3 · 10:05

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