Employees routinely check their phones and other digital devices during office meetings, a habit many have grown into, especially after the transition to remote and hybrid work.
However, some CEOs believe they need to re-establish basic business etiquette.
This push often includes setting clear rules for device use, as many leaders feel that divided attention undermines the purpose and productivity of face-to-face meetings.
JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon was particularly blunt about it, Fortune.com reported.
At Fortune’s Most Powerful Women Summit in October, Dimon said he expected the full attention of everyone in the room.
“If you have an iPad in front of me and it looks like you’re reading your email or getting a notification, I’m telling you to shut the damn thing up,” Dimon told Fortune Editor-in-Chief Alyson Shontell.
“It’s disrespectful,” he added.
However, IBM CEO Arvind Krishna sees things a little differently. He argued that it would be “weird” for a tech company to tell its employees not to use their technology — especially in larger meetings where the devices can be a useful tool rather than a distraction.
Krishna, 62, also suggested that more attention should be paid to smaller, more intimate encounters.
“I distinguish between meetings of one to 10 people and very large meetings. If it’s a very large meeting, I’m sorry. It’s not really a meeting. It’s a means of communication. You’re just informing people,” Krishna told CNN last week.
He added: “If it’s a small meeting, I would really frown when someone is sitting across my desk and lost on the phone, I’d say, ‘Why don’t you come back when you have time?'”
Distraction
Conference room behavior is something Dimon has long lamented. In fact, he mentioned the word “meetings” six times in his annual letter to shareholders last spring, urging employees to schedule them only when necessary and to make them matter.
While Dimon didn’t draw clear lines around the size of the encounter like Krishna, his frustrations seem to go far beyond small encounters.
“I keep seeing people in meetings getting notifications and personal texts or reading emails,” Dimon wrote. “This has to stop. It’s disrespectful. It’s a waste of time.”
With the increasing reliance on technology in the workplace, multitasking during a meeting is easier than ever – especially when an AI assistant can generate post-meeting summaries and let you ‘zone out’.
