The Surprising Science of Meetings

by Steven G Rogelberg

  You can adapt this survey for your own meetings or just go with a very basic, three-question stop, start, and continue survey:

  1. What am I not doing so well as the meeting leader (need to stop doing)?

  2. What should I start doing that I am not currently doing?

  3. What am I doing well as the meeting leader (need to keep doing)?

  A survey such as this can be administered using an anonymous online survey platform (e.g., a free Qualtrics or SurveyMonkey account). The survey directions provided to participants are key. Here is an example:

  I want to be the best possible leader I can be. I want our meetings to use time effectively. To achieve these goals, I need your candid feedback. Please answer the following questions as honestly as possible. I will summarize the overall themes in the results, report out to all, implement actions to promote positive change, and then resurvey down the road to see if it helped.

  Instructions like these serve to reinforce a climate of excellence, of continual learning, and of inclusiveness. Notice that I recommend reporting findings to the team as part of those directions—this is key, too. After others take the survey and you have compiled the data, summarize the major themes and specific actions you are going to take moving forward. Share your observations at a future meeting or via email.

  Ultimately, meaningful evaluations of meetings and meeting leadership start to align what we see in the mirror with reality. This raises the next critical question: what image should we aspire to see in the mirror?

  What Image Do You Want to See?

  The image you want to see—that is, the type of meeting leader you want to aspire to be—is one closely aligned with servant leadership. By elevating and helping others, a servant leader experiences success for him- or herself, for others, and for the organization. This type of person makes the needs of others a priority and works to meet them and, more broadly, aims to help others grow. By doing so, others maximize their potential and abilities, and they feel “safe” fully engaging at work. As a result, the promise of a team and a meeting is more readily realized as the collective talent is unleashed. This latter point is key, as leveraging the knowledge, skills, and abilities of the attendees is often a main reason for creating teams and assembling people together. This is in sharp contrast to an egocentric, “leader-first” leadership approach, designed to elevate leaders themselves, drive the accumulation of power, and use that power for self-centered gain. The servant leader is comfortable sharing power and derives satisfaction and success when others prosper and the organization thrives. This type of leadership approach is a core part of the values and development process at many of the most successful global organizations. For example, it is the core leadership paradigm at SAS, The Container Store, Whole Foods, Zappos, and Starbucks.

  This servant leadership style is highly consistent with the research described by Wharton professor Adam Grant in his book Give and Take. Grant discusses how employees make daily decisions on whether to act like givers or takers. Unlike takers, givers actively assist others and share knowledge—they do this without seeking a quid pro quo arrangement. The giving is done because it is just the “right” thing to do. Research suggests that organizations in which giving is the norm among employees experience robust business outcomes around profitability, productivity, efficiency, employee satisfaction, and customer satisfaction. The question for us is how to apply what we know about servant leadership and a giver mindset to running effective meetings.

  A leader with a servant-and-giver mindset recognizes his or her unique responsibility to make the meeting a good use of time. The meeting is not about the leader personally feeling the meeting had value; rather, it is about deriving value more broadly. Such leaders recognize that, as leaders, they must truly own others’ experiences of the meeting. They think carefully about the design and execution of the meeting, from soup to nuts—they never just “phone it in.” Instead, they plan and design the meeting experience they are orchestrating. This planning could take just a few minutes, but it is a sincere pre-meeting reflection on the agenda, the goals, the order of topics, potential problems, dynamics, and useful strategies to try. It further includes creating a psychologically safe environment where people can share genuine comments, concerns, and feedback.

  Let me illustrate one potential manifestation of this mindset in action. True story: A highly respected leader created an implicit rule for himself in some discussion and decision-making meetings where folks tended to defer to him; he restricted his comments to just one or two sentences and, when possible, held back until discussion among attendees had occurred. The aim of this approach was to ensure that participants’ thinking could evolve and that his comments wouldn’t prematurely influence the discussion. This simple rule is very significant. Yes, it is quite extreme and not always practical, and this particular (servant) leader used this technique only when it fit the situation at hand. But engaging in a servant leader action like this led to rich, engaging, inclusive, and unexpected conversations. Overall, leaders like this are focused on meeting dynamics; they truly are keyed in on facilitating a good meeting experience, rather than elevating and promoting themselves. Being plugged in to managing group dynamics is, after all, the leader’s role, as others will find it difficult to jump in to do this type of task given that it is not the norm for them to do so.

  Some of the facilitation behaviors aligned with servant leadership are listed next. These are sample facilitation behaviors; a complete list can be found in the Good Meeting Facilitation Checklist in the “Tools” section at the end of the book.

  Time Management

  • Keeps track of time and paces the meeting effectively, given the big picture of the agenda.

  • Does not rush through an emergent issue that truly needs to be discussed. Able to recognize if an issue raised would be best addressed at a subsequent meeting.

  • Keeps conversation flowing (e.g., recognizing a tangent and pulling it back in to what needs to be discussed).

  Active Listening

  • Keeps clarifying and summarizing where things are and collects people’s input so that everyone understands the process and the discussion at hand.

  • Listens carefully for underlying concerns and helps bring them out so that they can be dealt with constructively.

  • Keeps engaged with the note-taker so that issues, actions, and takeaways are recorded and not lost. Confirms with attendees that all is correct.

  Conflict Management

  • Encourages conflict around ideas (e.g., “any concerns with this idea”), and then actively embraces and manages the conflict so that positive benefits for performance and decision-making ensue.

  • Maintains an environment where people are comfortable disagreeing (e.g., thanks people for sharing divergent points of view). Invites debate.

  • Deals with disrespectful behavior quickly through redirection, comments around staying constructive, and reminds attendees of the meeting ground rules.

  Ensuring Active Participation

  • Actively draws out input from others. Keeps mental track of who wants to speak and comes back to them.

  • To keep an attendee from dominating the conversation, uses body language (e.g., a subtle and small hand movement to indicate the need to stop speaking) and transition statements (e.g., “thank you for that”).

  • Keeps side conversations at bay by reigning folks in when they lose focus.

  Pushing for Consensus

  • Tests for agreement and consensus to get a sense of where attendees are at, but does not unduly and unnecessarily pressure others to reach a conclusion when not ready (unless there is a time urgency).

  • Knows when to intervene assertively in the meeting process and provide direction (e.g., the group lacks focus and is talking over one another) and when to let the process run as it is.

  • Is an honest broker of the conversation at hand and does not privilege his or her viewpoint or ideas in the discussion.
Works to remain impartial. Makes it clear that his or her opinion is just one opinion to be discussed.

  Although these facilitation techniques are consistent with servant leadership and can certainly promote meeting success, none of this precludes a leader from being direct and assertive and moving the discussion forward actively if needed. In fact, jumping into the meeting fray and taking control might be exactly what is needed from the meeting leader. Or, it may be the case that the leader truly is the subject-matter expert at hand and being firm with her or his input is critical to success. With a servant-and-giver leader approach, however, this action is experienced as more genuine by the attendees who have experienced the leader’s track record of inclusion and support.

  Overall, servant-and-giver meeting leaders take pride in being excellent stewards of others’ time and recognize that this is the path to their ultimate success, the success of others, and the success of the organization. This is a giver mindset. This is a servant leader mindset. This is the image you want to see in the mirror. And, ultimately, it leads to personal happiness. Namely, research regarding giving behaviors suggests that one of the most robust predictors of life satisfaction is helping others.

  A great quote by author William Arthur Ward captures this theme well:

  The adventure of life is to learn. The purpose of life is to grow. The nature of life is to change. The challenge of life is to overcome. The essence of life is to care. The opportunity of life is to serve. The secret of life is to dare. The spice of life is to befriend. The beauty of life is to give.

  Putting It All Together

  In this chapter, I discussed why meeting leadership that we see every day may not be optimal, most notably how leaders’ perceptions of their skills appear to be overinflated and exaggerated. Leaders are just not as skilled as they often think they are. This problem is left unchecked because of inadequate assessment of the meetings themselves and of those who lead them.

  A study by Green Peak Partners and Cornell’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations examined leader success among seventy-two executives at public and private companies. The conclusion was that high self-awareness was an exceptional predictor of overall success. Those with high self-awareness did a better job hiring subordinates and, perhaps most importantly, leveraging the talent around them. The tools in this chapter can help you gain more self-awareness, which, with training, the right mindset, trial, error, and more feedback, will improve the way you work with your team and lead meetings.

  Takeaways

  1. Realize—and embrace—the fact that you are likely not quite as good at leading meetings as you think you are. Evidence shows that we are likely to overestimate our abilities; accepting this reality is key to self-awareness and making improvements.

  2. Given that we are likely to overestimate our abilities, take a pulse of your meeting leadership. How do others act in meetings? Are there side conversations? Are people on their phones? Have you tried administering a quick survey? Data like these will increase your self-awareness and give you more of an accurate picture than your perceptions alone.

  3. Make increasing meeting leadership an organizational priority: start by suggesting that meetings be part of your 360-degree feedback for leaders; add a section to your yearly employee engagement survey on meetings. Do not try to make these improvements all on your own—make it a focus for everyone in order to create positive organizational change.

  4. Try to adopt a servant leadership and giver mindset in order to unleash collective talent in a meeting and to foster buy-in. Ultimately, servant leadership will serve you well in and outside of meetings.

  Chapter 4

  MEET FOR FORTY-EIGHT MINUTES

  Cultural norms abound. They influence how we think, how we speak, what we do, how we engage with others, even how we raise our children. Take, for instance, the concept of the tooth fairy. While many cultures do not have such a concept, in France, Spain, and Colombia, the tooth fairy is a mouse. In Greece, the child throws the tooth on the roof of the house instead of putting it under the pillow—this brings good luck and strong teeth. In Turkey, the parent buries the tooth near a location of meaning or future hopes (e.g., if the parents want their child to be a professor, they might bury the tooth near a university). In Russia, the child will often place the lost tooth in mouse holes. The mouse, in turn, will give the child a strong tooth as a replacement. In Malaysia, children bury their baby teeth, as they believe that teeth, being part of their body, should be returned to the earth. In looking at these various traditions, it is clear that what becomes the status quo for tens of millions of people within a country may be considered odd, perhaps even downright bizarre, by those outside the country.

  In the way that organizations work, and with meetings in particular, there are a number of examples of this cultural diversity. In the Middle East and Latin America, for example, it is not at all unusual to start meetings nearly an hour late. Or, consider the length of meetings: the majority of workplace meetings are exactly one hour long. Think about this for a moment: despite the fact that meetings vary greatly in purpose, scope, history, communication modality, and the number of attendees, they often are exactly one hour in length, and the sixty-minute meeting has been a cultural norm for decades. In fact, it is such an accepted norm that when calendar software programs like Microsoft Outlook were developed, sixty minutes was the default setting when a meeting was scheduled. The norm begets the software default, and the default software setting reinforces the norm. In this chapter, we will explore the concept of meeting length, why the sixty-minute norm can be counterproductive, and some alternative approaches to the standard meeting length. Namely, I will discuss a set of practical recommendations given the pernicious effects of Parkinson’s law.

  Have Time, Will Fill It

  In 1955, The Economist published a humorous essay titled “Parkinson’s Law.” The first paragraph reads as follows:

  It is a commonplace observation that work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion. Thus, an elderly lady of leisure can spend the entire day in writing and despatching [sic] a postcard to her niece at Bognor Regis. An hour will be spent in finding the postcard, another in hunting for spectacles, half-an-hour in a search for the address, an hour and a quarter in composition, and twenty minutes in deciding whether or not to take an umbrella when going to the pillar-box in the next street. The total effort which would occupy a busy man for three minutes all told may in this fashion leave another person prostrate after a day of doubt, anxiety and toil.

  This notion of work expanding to fill time voids prompted much research—most of which provided empirical support for the concept.

  Parkinson’s law has been documented in many populations. In a classic study, management researchers Judith Bryan and Ed Locke conducted an experiment in which college students were asked to complete a fixed set of very simple arithmetic problems. Sounds easy enough, but here is the rub: some participants were assigned to an “excess time” condition and others were put in a condition where they had just the “right” amount of time for the problems at hand. Lo and behold, those in the excess time condition took significantly longer to complete the problems; it appeared that the students who had more time than they needed expended less effort and felt less urgency to complete their tasks expediently—Parkinson’s law in action! Similar sets of findings have been found in other populations, from pulp mill workers to NASA scientists.

  Parkinson’s law manifests in non-time related ways as well. An intriguing study published in the Journal of Criminal Justice examined jail capacity and incarceration. It found that a large increase in jail capacity in Orange County, Florida, led to an increase in daily incarceration levels beyond what would be expected on the basis of police activity and preexisting incarceration. Stated differently, if we have space, we fill it. As humans, we seem to consciously or unconsciously strive to fill voids. This applies to meetings as well. If the meeting is scheduled for sixty minutes, it will
generally take sixty minutes. John Morris, cartoonist for fifty-two years for the Associated Press, illustrated this in poignant fashion. In one published cartoon a conference table is surrounded by a set of meeting attendees with blank stares on their faces. The meeting leader exclaims, “There’s no way we can come to a decision yet—this meeting has only lasted thirty minutes.”

  The fact that the work of a meeting generally expands to fill whatever amount of time you allot presents us with an opportunity. How much time can you reclaim for yourself and your coworkers by trimming and pruning your calendars? In the rest of this chapter, we will look at ways to more effectively set a meeting time so that it not only fits the task at hand but also creates reasonable pressure and poses a challenge the meeting attendees can rise up to. Finally, I will provide exemplars and discuss how companies can have super-speedy meetings without sacrificing effectiveness. Ultimately, decreasing a meeting’s length not only returns time to the attendees but also creates a positive form of pressure, in turn sharpening attendees’ focus and interest.