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Checking phone, tablet in meeting is disrespectful mistake
JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon has a “little management lesson” for professionals when it comes to conducting meetings: Give everyone your full attention.
“If you have an iPad in front of me and it looks like you’re reading your email or getting notifications, I’ll tell you to close the damn thing,” he said on Oct. 14 at Fortune’s Most Powerful Women Summit, where he also discussed mentoring female leaders. “It’s disrespectful.”
Appropriate meeting etiquette — like preparing beforehand and practicing active listening — signals that you care about the task at hand, and that you’re passionate about your work, said Dimon, 69.
“When I go to a meeting, I’ve done the pre-reads, and you get 100% of my attention,” he said. “None of this nodding off, none of this reading my [email] … And when I can’t do that, I should move on.”
Dimon, who called for “more hustle” from his employees wile implementing a five-day-in-office policy in March, shared more of his meeting do’s and don’ts in an April 2024 letter to shareholders.
“When [meetings] happen, they have to start on time and end on time — and someone’s got to lead them,” Dimon wrote. “There should also be a purpose to every meeting and always a follow-up list.” He added that checking your phones and tablets “has to stop: It’s disrespectful. It wastes time.”
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Taking notes or recording a meeting with your tablet or smartphone could be misinterpreted as texting or scrolling. And if a notification pops up, it could easily distract you, which can leave a bad impression. That’s why it’s important to focus in meetings and listen carefully and intently, Harvard Business School associate professor Allison Wood Brooks told CNBC Make It in July.
But simply listening isn’t enough, Wood Brooks added: Ask follow-up questions, particularly ones that show you’ve been paying attention by referencing information or perspectives previously shared in the meeting.
“Probing for more information is a superhero move, and a shockingly low number of people think to do it,” said Wood Brooks. “You should show [you’re listening] by saying [you are] out loud.”
If you take notes, try using a pen and paper, a method that can help you better comprehend information, leadership and writing expert Katie McCleary said in a March 2023 TED Talk.
When writing digitally, you try to “capture all the information coming at you. And eventually, you can’t capture it all and that device starts to whisper to you, ‘Hey, maybe we should multitask. Maybe we could check social media for a minute. Maybe we should send another message,’” said McCleary.
“Handwriting helps you focus,” she said. “We need stuff to stick.”
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