Do you get a lot of meeting requests? A lot of my clients talk to me about how they get so  many meeting requests.

Today I want to have a conversation with you about a 3-step formula I’ve designed which will help you manage your meeting requests. Enabling you to make better decisions about whether you should go to a meeting or not.

It’s called the Meeting Resistance Model.

I think there are three problems that people face around meetings.

#1. They get too many meetings. They get the whole week filled up with meetings before they can even get to it.

#2. Wrong timing of meetings. So in terms of how the timing works for you in your week, it’s a wrong timing.

#3. The wrong people are in meetings. Maybe there’s too many people, or they’re just the wrong people in meetings.

So how do we fix these problems?

I want to share with you the Meeting Resistance Model. It’s a funnel that will help you to make better meeting decisions.

Imagine this: you’ve got this big funnel that your decisions run through.

1. Meeting requests come in and the first decision you need to make is Right Context. So you ask yourself,

“Is this meeting sitting in the right context for me?”

“Am I involved in this project?” 

“Is this something we even do?” 

“Contextually, is this something we can help them with? Is this something we’re even involved?” 

And if it’s ‘no,’ then what you would do is you Deny the meeting. So you send an email back and say,

“Hey, thanks so much for inviting us. I don’t necessarily think that we’re the right people for it but I think maybe you could talk to these people. They could really help you.” 

2. The second level is Right Person.

So the questions you ask yourself are,

“Am I actually the right person for this meeting?” 

“Do I actually have the right skills to be able to contribute to this meeting?”

And if the answer is ‘no,’ then you Delegate it. You delegate the meeting on to someone else who is the right person.

3. The third filter to ask yourself is Right Timing.

“Is this the right timing?” 

“Does this fit within my timing, my week, my projects? 

And if it doesn’t, it might be you suggest a different time. Write back an email or have a conversation with them and suggest some different timings for the meeting. If it’s wrong timing, then you Defer it.

So it’s either you deny it, you delegate it, or you defer it based on right context, right person, and right timing. 

To go to a meeting, all of the 3 context need to be ‘yes.’

You need to answer ‘yes’ for context, ‘yes’ for the right person, and ‘yes’ for timing. And then you send back an email and say, “Yeah. That really works great for me. Look forward to seeing you at the meeting.”

So that is the Meeting Resistance Model.

Today’s question:

What’s been most valuable about the Meeting Resistance Model? 

How has this given you clarity about making a decision on whether to go to a meeting?