I wrote before about courtesy for emailing people.
Some matters which lack clarity are best discussed in person.
When meeting someone in a higher position then myself, here are some considerations I usually take.
These follow the following general guideline: Put as little work and uncertainty as possible onto the senior person.
- Prepare questions beforehand – what is the point of the meeting?
- Send an agenda beforehand. This is just the topic or list of topics you want to discuss, so the person can prepare their mind.
- For each question you prepare, guess what the other person might say, and have a follow-up thought for one or two trivially obvious answers. If X, then you will do Y.
- For arranging meeting times: try to reduce the number of emails needed.
- If you only have a few possible slots, send these first and provide a default that you prefer.
- If the bottleneck is the other person, or it is a meeting with multiple people, use when2meet or similar, it is quick to fill in and focus on one time slot. Select it and announce it.
- If the meeting is via zoom, prepare a zoom link and send it with the meeting confirmation.
I have to admit – I should follow these better myself.
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