Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JP Morgan, has been in the news recently decreeing that his employees should stop answering their emails when other people are talking in business meetings.

It has certainly become apparent that the old rigid rules and hierarchies of formal business meetings are beginning to break down. This may be attributable to the advent of hybrid working and online meetings, which has brought a whole host of behavioural changes, but it also connected with the increasing informality of the workplace. This has led to a drive towards democracy, a resistance to hierarchies and traditional notions of respect and deference. The belief is that a more relaxed and informal atmosphere will encourage junior members of staff to contribute to discussions and will foster an atmosphere where new ideas are encouraged, and nobody feels too cowed to speak.

But how relaxed can a business meeting ever be? If people sitting around the table are not attending, or multitasking, or reading their emails, is that acceptable? Many more junior staff members will never have experienced a formal, or semi-formal, business meeting, so will take comparative informality as a starting point.

We all have shorter attention spans these days: reflexively, we tend to reach for our phones when we are not fully engaged. Meetings inevitably involve a great deal of listening to other people talking; obvious signs of inattention are inevitably undermining and frustrating.

What is the bare minimum we can expect from attendants at work meetings?  Many of us don’t like meetings, seeing them as tedious and time-wasting, but if we’re required to attend them, we should focus on making meetings count and ensuring that they’re no longer than absolutely necessary. We’ve put together the following guides to basic business meeting survival, both in real life and online:

Eight Basic Rules for Business Meetings

•Dress for the meeting

Depending on your workplace, this may not mean formal business attire, but at least accept that certain types of clothing will just make you look as if you’re not taking the meeting seriously. These include cycling gear; running gear; beachwear (short shorts, flip flops in particular). All of these clothes will send a simple message: you’d rather be out and about than sitting in a meeting. This certainly may reflect what you feel, but it is not what you should be communicating to your colleagues and bosses.

Even if you’re online, pay attention to your dress. People will be alert to signs that you are not fully committed to your work and are in fact exploiting the skiving opportunities that working from home provides. Don’t give them extra fodder for suspicion.

•Control small talk

Inevitably, there will be some small talk at the beginning of meetings, especially if you enjoy friendly relations with your colleagues, but it is important to ensure that this does not get out of hand, as it is difficult to bring everyone back to the matter in hand and focus is lost.

So, keep your opening remarks to the “how are you?” variety, rather than more in-depth “how was your holiday?” type enquiries. If you find yourself confronted by garrulous colleagues, who see meetings as a great opportunity for endless chit-chat, try and shut this tendency down, by giving concise answers and, if necessary, saying something like “should we get started?”. As long as you are friendly and communicative with people outside the context of a meeting, this shouldn’t be taken amiss.

•Streamline your meeting

The whole point about meetings is that you come together as a group to communicate with each other. If people who are invited to meetings who have little perspective on what is being discussed, or who are relevant only to part of the discussions, it is inevitable that they will become bored and restless and might start fiddling with their phones and answering their emails.

Think carefully about who you invite to meetings; or consider inviting relevant team members for certain discussions only. Do everything in your power to ensure that the group who are gathered together are tight-knit and focused, and that everyone has something to contribute to the discussion. Flabby, over-populated meetings, with loose agendas and no sense of direction inevitably lead to feelings of ennui and distraction.

•Practise your listening skills

You’re in a meeting to interact with other people and that means listening to what they have to say. We’ve all experienced the tedium of a meeting that is going nowhere, or a speaker who has very little to say. But it is imperative that you sit up straight and look attentive and interested. This means focusing on the speaker, mirroring their facial expressions (eg smile when they say something amusing) and laughing occasionally.

Do not slouch in your chair, fiddle with your hair or face, doodle, exchange grimaces with your neighbour, or toy with your phone. This is particularly important when you’re online, as it easy to forget the unforgiving scrutiny of the camera when you’re comfortably lolling around at home.

•No eating!

It is fine to have a cup of tea or coffee or a glass of water. It isn’t acceptable (unless it is a so-called ‘working lunch’) to bring food into the meeting and eat it while other people are talking – everyone will become transfixed by the contents of your sandwich. This is particularly true on-screen, where chewing looks comically exaggerated.

•Put phones away

The simplest policy is to put your phone away or turn it off when you’re called upon to interact with colleagues at a meeting. That way, you will not find yourself tempted to glance at the screen or respond to notifications.

Some people would argue that answering their work emails at a meeting is an excellent use of time, allowing them to maximise ‘down-time’, when people are talking about subjects that are not their concern. But if you streamline your meetings policy, this really shouldn’t happen. And it is a fine line between productive work-related emailing and catching up (however briefly) with text messages or social media.

Above all, it is deeply off-putting for a person who is putting their all into making a presentation, arguing a point, pitching an idea to glance round and see a sea of bowed heads as people pore over their phones. Don’t delude yourself that this doesn’t happen online – any kind of distraction, from glancing at your phone to reading your emails or looking at your on-screen notifications – is completely discernible, and the screen magnifies your lack of engagement.

•Beware your self-view camera

This is an obvious trap for people who are attending online meetings: if you’re narcissistic, there is a tendency to use your camera as a mirror substitute, and if you’re not careful you’ll be caught preening and pouting on screen, much to your colleagues’ dismay. If you’re insecure or self-conscious, you might be given to anxiously checking your image, which will greatly increase your discomfort. If you feel vulnerable to either of these traps, turn off your camera.

•Give meetings a chance

We probably have all suffered from times when we feel that we are being overwhelmed by meetings and would dearly love to be left alone to get on with our work. But a well-targeted, focused, tightly run meeting can be an excellent way of progressing and making key decisions and, most importantly of all, it is a highly effective way of building bonds and relationships between colleagues.