24 ways to end those endless virtual meetings

Editor’s note: This article is a re-run as part of our countdown of top stories from the past year.

For more than a year, most of our meetings with co-workers, clients and executives have been through a screen. Many of us have logged more hours in Zoom than we’ve logged in Microsoft Word or Salesforce or HubSpot.

One of the many communication challenges I’ve experienced in all these online meetings is that it can be more difficult to end a Zoom meeting than to end an in-person meeting. People want to chat more and check the time less when meeting online. And that’s how we end up spending even more time in meetings in 2020 and 2021 than we did in 2019.

If you find yourself sitting through too many of these prolonged Zoom calls, here are a few ways to set expectations and manage the end of your meetings with finesse.

When you have to go . . .

Time warnings

When my kids were younger, I learned to avoid unnecessary fits when it was time to leave the playground by giving my kids a “five-minute warning.” You can do the same in your online meetings.