Meeting Attendance with a Pair

I has a clear set of values and expectations when it comes to meetings. But many of my clients won’t! With that in mind, pairing can become a useful way to avoid spending all your time in meetings.

While some meeting attendance will be necessary or required, many meetings are more optional than you think. When you are both invited to a meeting, it doesn’t hurt to have a quick check in beforehand to make sure you feel that attendance is necessary for both of you. Some meetings (like standups) everyone should attend, and others you will attend to gain more context. But often as you become more familiar with a client, one of you can bring back information to the other. Alternatively, you may each take on different parts of a project, making meetings more relevant to one of you than the other. However, make sure that one person isn’t attending all of the meetings while the other person sits out.

Pairing provides many different growth opportunities. Though I often focus on the technical and professional, another advantage of my pairing set up at I is that pairing can act as a buffer between client and more junior team members. I expect each individual Frontkomer to work side by side with the client, but junior partners should feel free to lean on senior partners for help if they are underwater. This also allows junior partners to learn how senior folks handle difficult requests or situations with clients.