Preparing for Calls: Tips and Best Practices for Less Stress | Brafton

For some people, the fear of public speaking is worse than the fear of death. Whether this is the case for you or not, meetings can be a stressful type of public speaking that many of us do on a daily basis. Without preparing yourself for these moments, you can lose a lot of work time and hold more stress than necessary. 

There could be lots of reasons why you get overwhelmed before calls. There’s the uncertainty of not knowing what’s going to happen or what people are going to ask or say during a given call. Will you have the right answers and actually be helpful? Another concern can be feeling judged for how you’re perceived or for any miscommunication that may occur. How can you appear intelligent and humble without stumbling over your words?

So, what can you do to work through those feelings so you don’t pass out in the middle of your meetings? That’s where prep work comes in handy. It also helps to put a name to the fears and frustrations that arise before or during calls so you can healthily work through them. And that’s what this guide will hopefully help you do! Let’s get started.

Common Fears and Frustrations From Calls

Calls can make us feel many things, and fear and frustration are big ones. Some common situations you may experience that cause irritation surrounding meetings may be:

• Anticipation of an upcoming call can make it hard to get started on a writing project.
• Important calls cause anxiety, especially complex subject matter expert interviews.
• Meetings pull me out of focus, forcing me to try and get back on track once a call is wrapped. 
• Calls interrupt my writing flow, especially when the call falls within prime working hours or interrupts a bigger/more stressful task. 
• Even short, harmless calls can break up the flow of work and make it difficult to get projects done.

Whether you have a full agenda to look off of or you’re going into a call blindly, hoping for the best, it’s still difficult to have zero feelings about the addition to your calendar. The problem is, you can’t just avoid attending meetings; they’re your chance to communicate information, collaborate with others, share ideas and make decisions with your team or client. Luckily, there are things you can do to overcome those challenges.

Tips To Overcome Those Fears 

While you don’t have the power to clear your own schedule or make meetings less distracting, these tips will hopefully help you feel more prepared and less anxious on days when you have any number of meetings:

Think About Who’s Going To Be There

Before you start to spiral out of control, consider who’s going to be in attendance. Are there particular people who make you the most nervous? Why? Think through what types of situations this person could cause and figure out how to better prepare for them.

Speak the Truth to Yourself

It’s also beneficial to remind yourself that no one on the call wants you to fail. Even if a client is difficult, they don’t want you to personally feel victimized or sick to your stomach with worry. Because you’re ultimately working on projects together to secure the best possible outcome, you’re on the same team. They want you to be as successful as you do.

Know When You’re Most Productive

Knowing yourself and what time is your most productive can help you set up your day for success. This doesn’t work for everyone, but sometimes it’s best to start with big, time-consuming tasks right away in the morning. This enables you to get a jump on that item (or even finish it), which makes afternoon meetings feel less daunting.

If you’re not a morning person and need more time to get into the groove of things, use the time before meetings to knock out the easy, less stressful tasks so you can fully focus on the bigger tasks once you’ve wrapped up calls for the day. It’s all about time management and setting yourself up for success.

Split Up Your Day

In the same vein as organizing your day to be most effective, it’s also beneficial to split your day into shifts. For days when meetings are spread out to only allow 30 minutes to an hour in between, ensure all your meeting notes are clean and organized, then close any tabs that had to do with that chat completely. This can allow you to feel like you’re concluding one part of your day and moving to the next. This filler time, when it’s often difficult to accomplish anything, is also a great chance to get away from your computer screen and go for a walk outside or change up your scenery for a few minutes. 

This method works on your mindset when it comes to meetings. Go into a meeting shift and fully focus on that; then, close out of those tabs, get a change of scenery and start a productive shift where you can pivot to projects. While it’s not a perfect process, it’s a good place to start when trying to refocus in between meetings. 

Clear Your Calendar

Now, I’ not telling you to say no to all meetings and delete them from your calendar. What I am telling you to do is get any meeting invites that you don’t plan on attending off your calendar. Set meetings as “always attend” or “never attend” as appropriate to make managing meetings less stressful. If you decline a call, you can add a note explaining why, so you’re communicating what’s going on. 

What You Can Do To Make Meetings Less Uncertain

While some of these tips may seem like overkill, for people who want to feel extra prepared for the uncertain, these best practices may come in handy:

Make a Great First Impression

When going into a client meeting where you’re being introduced to someone for the first time, have a notes page up with how you want to present yourself. You don’t have to read from this directly, but it can provide extra assistance if you get nervous when speaking about your role and what you’ll be doing for them. 

Have Notes Ready

On top of a mini script, it also pays to have a document pulled up where you can jot down any and all relevant information, even if you’re just attending a weekly internal check-in. This ensures you don’t scramble to pull up a notes page later if something pertains to you. It prevents poor memory from getting in the way of expectations later on.

Create a Goal for Each Meeting

When coming into SME interviews, kick-offs, debriefs or any other type of complex meeting, bring a list of questions to better understand the project or client and a goal that you’d like to achieve. That way, you can easily evaluate if you have what you need before the meeting ends. 

Be Up to Speed

It shouldn’t be only your responsibility to know what’s going on with a project. However, it’s important to assume that you may need to answer questions or fill people in. Be prepared with insights in case no one else is ready to speak on a particular subject.

Use the Client’s Expertise

Clients are a wellspring of expert knowledge. They know more about their brand and audience than anyone. Pick their brains by asking them to explain things in their own words — especially when it comes to tone, voice, audience demographics and what they want to achieve by working with you.

Don’t Be Afraid To Go Off Script

You have your list of previously created questions to ask your SME, but if you’re only getting half-baked or superficial answers, it’s okay to get narrower with queries not on your original plan. 

Asking Clarifying Questions

To get the information you need to be successful in a project, you may need to ask follow-up or clarifying questions. These will help you glean more useful insights to ensure you end the meeting feeling good and ready to get started on your next task:

• You mentioned XYZ. Can you please elaborate more on that?
• Because your team understands your business better than anyone, could you explain in your own words XYZ?
• I have a base-level understanding of this topic from the research I’ve done, but you know the industry much more thoroughly. Could you explain XYZ to me as if I were brand new to it?
• Could you be more specific with XYZ? I want to make sure I fully understand its importance.
• Why do you think XYZ happened? 

The Value of Good Call Presence

While you may be a marketer, it’s also necessary to be a good speaker and have good call presence. No matter what job you see yourself doing in the future, whether it’s at an advertising agency, writing fiction books, doing technical writing or any other type of writing role, being able to speak clearly, calmly and concisely about your work is critical. And, in the changing world of AI, the more you can push yourself professionally and the more skills you cultivate, the more in-demand your work will be. 

With these resources in your tool belt, you can approach meetings with calm and precision, knowing you’ve got this in the bag! Now, go put those skills into practice in your next meeting.