Overall, all these various approaches are designed to start the meeting with a better tone than what is typical—a tone where complaints and grousing stay in check.
Tweaking Meeting Processes to Sustain Presence and Positive Energy
As we have seen, starting the meeting in a positive way is certainly important. But a strong start in and of itself is not enough to keep everyone present and deflate negative energy from start to finish. Throughout this book, I have shared a variety of techniques that, besides promoting more constructive and effective meeting processes, are intended to maintain a positive and constructive meeting climate and thus are relevant to this chapter. I want to close the chapter by briefly sharing a variety of additional techniques that, though small in scope, can have positive effects on the meeting and its climate. The various approaches are listed next. I picked seven very different techniques. While these examples are approaches to consider, they are indeed just examples. A meeting leader can dream up and craft any number of potential efforts to draw attendees into a meeting and maintain presence and positive energy. My hope is that these examples help spark innovation and a willingness to try new things.
Offer Food
A meeting leader has at his or her disposal one tool that is an almost fail-safe for creating a sense of separation. It is referred to across the globe as, quite simply, snacks. You may not be surprised to learn that we have consistently found in our research that snacks at meetings are a good predictor of positive feelings about meetings. Not only do people enjoy treats, snacks help build an upbeat mood state and foster camaraderie that can carry into the substance of the meeting itself. A bowl full of a tasty treat, for example, is a small price to pay for a more focused and energetic meeting.
Bring Toys to the Table
Now think of the contents of a child’s toy box. Think of those contents laid out on a conference table. Some companies use toys and other items, such as Play-Doh, Slinkys, magnets, and other little puzzles and games, to help create separation and concentration and to foster a positive mood state. There is some research from New York University’s Polytechnic School of Engineering that indirectly supports this meeting practice. This work suggests that fidgeting and certain kinds of hand movements can aid in coping with restless energy, stimulate the brain to focus on mundane tasks, reduce stress, and promote overall levels of focus. Plum Organics, a maker of organic baby food and related products, uses a similar approach. It is not unusual to see coloring books actively being used at their meetings. Their chief innovation officer, who was quoted in a 2015 Fast Company online article, summed up the company’s motivation for this approach: “It’s proven that coloring during a meeting helps promote active listening, and is more beneficial than multitasking on something like email.”
Establish Technology Policies
Although eating and playing with toys can aid in creating separation and promoting presence, there are some other tangible actions that meeting leaders can take as well. These actions target technology usage and multitasking. Over the last forty years, our confidence in our ability to effectively multitask has increased. The reality, however, is that the human brain has not actually fundamentally changed in these four decades. An unhealthy paradox ensues; we think we are good at multitasking when we are actually not all that good at it. This belief leads us to engage in highly counterproductive behaviors, many of which involve technology. For example, driving and texting has become quite rampant. The National Transportation Safety Board reports that texting and driving is generally the equivalent of driving with a blood alcohol level three times beyond the legal limit. Although it may not be physically dangerous, we also have an issue with using technology while engaged in real-time face-to-face interpersonal interactions. This type of multitasking can undermine active and empathetic listening, lead to distraction, and undermine the ability to be “present.” Furthermore, it can serve to distract those around the multitasking individual and lead to feelings of frustration and disrespect. The solution to these problems is an obvious one: create technology-free meeting zones.
The research supports this solution. Three professors from the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California conducted research on perceptions of civility in the context of mobile phone use in meetings. Surveying over five hundred professionals, the conclusions were quite robust:
• Eighty-four percent of respondents said it is rarely/never appropriate to write and send texts or emails during meetings.
• Fifty-eight percent of respondents said it is rarely/never appropriate to even check time with a phone during meetings.
• Older professionals, especially those with higher income levels, reported even lower tolerance for the use of technology during meetings.
Given these results, many companies are banning technology at meetings and asking attendees to check their phones at the door or deposit them in a basket (granted, exceptions exist for employees “on call” or the equivalent). The highest-profile example of this practice is former President Obama’s Cabinet meetings, where the use of cell phones was banned so that staff could be entirely present during the meeting. There are a couple of important caveats to this advice. First, banning technology works best if the meetings are short and focused. If the meeting is on the longer side (e.g., an hour or maybe even less), you may want to build into the agenda a technology break so folks are able to check in and quickly resolve issues using their devices. And let’s be realistic: given the various levels of technology addiction in our society, this will also likely provide meeting attendees with some peace of mind.
A common question asked when discussing this intervention is whether the technology-free zone should extend to laptops. In general, the answer is yes. Laptops can be just as distracting as phones. Certainly, you can imagine some exceptions to this rule (e.g., attendees who may have meeting-critical info on their laptops). To add to this, an interesting study conducted by psychologists Pam Mueller and Daniel Oppenheimer found that students taking notes by hand, instead of with their laptop, had a significantly better understanding of concepts presented during the class. So, besides decreasing distractions, not using a laptop during the meeting can result in better and deeper comprehension of what was discussed.
Consider Clicker Quizzes
Clicker quizzes are a way of collecting data and opinions during the meeting via an attendee’s personal phone or device. The information is instantly collected, summarized, and presented in real time on a display in the meeting room. This technology (e.g., Socrativ) is easy to navigate and there are plenty of instructional YouTube videos for anyone who may need a little help. The process typically involves attendees visiting a website and entering login credentials. Then, a question is put on the screen for attendees to respond to, and within moments the data are collected and results are presented. This is a terrific way to generate high levels of participation in a very efficient manner. The types of questions asked can be closed-ended, such as “Which of the following plans do you want to discuss?” or “Please rate the quality of an applicant for a particular position.” The questions can also be open-ended, such as “Please identify any concerns you have about the proposed plan.” These quizzes can be easily created in advance of the meeting. However, in the event of an emergent issue or topic that warrants attention, questions can be created in just a few minutes during a quick break as part of a meeting. Although I have not seen any research on using clicker quizzes in meetings yet, I have been completely impressed by attendees’ positive reactions to them. Clicker quizzes can promote engagement and focus throughout the meeting, while also adding in a bit of positivity and fun—which, hopefully, you have been promoting from the beginning.
Consider Role Playing Beyond Just Devil’s Advocate
Asking someone to play the role of devil’s advocate (i.e., a contrarian) can be useful to generate critical thinking. However, there are additional roles that can be assigned as well, depending on the agenda at ha
nd. Most notably, certain individuals can be asked to role play a particular stakeholder not present at the meeting but relevant to the agenda item (e.g., an elderly customer). When playing the role for a certain limited amount of time (five to fifteen minutes), the attendee should be asked to be realistic and engage normally (the person is not asked to dominate the conversation) in the meeting discourse while taking on this other vantage point (roles can be rotated). A process intervention such as this tends to be intellectually stimulating and mitigates ruts and gaps in thinking, and of most relevance to the themes of this chapter, these interventions serve to add energy, engagement, and spice to the meeting.
Get Attendees Talking in Pairs
Before kicking off an all-attendee discussion on an agenda topic, ask folks to get into pairs and talk about the issue at hand for a short amount of time (e.g., three minutes). Then, move into that all-attendee discussion. Although you can have the pairs report their preliminary thoughts to the group, this is actually not essential. In studying and applying this technique for twenty years, I have seen that even when there is no reporting out, participants are still more primed to think about certain topics, and a diverse and robust conversation ensues. This simple action serves a number of purposes. First, it gets everyone involved (e.g., it’s hard to sit back and let other people talk in a one-on-one). Second, it gets a host of new ideas on the table, thus helping to mitigate groupthink. Third, it makes it easy for shy people to engage in the meeting in a way that is comfortable for them; in fact, it is often the case that their “partners” become advocates for their ideas. One key to making this process work is to emphasize to the pairs that everything they do in the breakout conversation is just tentative and they are not seeking to come to any resolution (a short time allotment also helps emphasize this reality).
Consider a Good Old-Fashioned Stretch
This one does not require much explanation. It is simple to do and it works well. Periodically, between key agenda items, consider having everyone get up and do a big stretch by reaching to the sky or down to the toes. Ten seconds is all you need to boost energy.
Conclusion
You only have one try to create a good first impression. Those first moments you meet someone are important to get right. The same applies to meetings, especially as people bring a set of baggage with them to the meeting. Whether that baggage is an overall negative feeling about meetings or the feeling of being haunted by a pressing task they are working on independently, the meeting feels like an interruption. As meeting leaders, we need to be aware of this baggage, as it can weigh meetings down and create a negative meeting dynamic that is counter to creativity, constructiveness, and enjoyment. We can actively mitigate these forces by starting and running the meeting in a way that promotes a sense of presence and positivity and, most importantly, honors the time the attendee is investing.
Takeaways
1. Emotions are contagious, and meetings are not immune to this phenomenon. Scholars have shown that positive and negative mood states can spread among meeting attendees; leaders are in a unique position to influence the mood of the meeting.
2. In order to create a positive mood and meeting experience for attendees, leaders should deliberately create a separation between what attendees were doing before the meeting and the meeting itself. There are several techniques for doing this, including intentionally greeting attendees, offering snacks, and playing music as they enter.
3. Another important technique for creating that meeting separation is discouraging multitasking during meetings. In fact, some companies have eliminated cell phone, electronic tablet, and laptop use in meetings altogether; remember, we are not as good at multitasking as we think we are.
4. In addition to creating meeting separation, it is also important to start the meeting on the right foot. Make sure that your opening statement is purposeful, that you consider recognizing group accomplishments (or individual ones), and that you remind your attendees of the “meeting values.”
5. Finally, it is helpful to try different approaches, such as incorporating clicker quizzes, encouraging advanced role playing and partner discussions, and even stretching; I firmly believe these techniques promote good energy and mindfulness throughout the meeting.
Chapter 9
NO MORE TALKING!
“The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.”
George Bernard Shaw, Nobel Prize–winning writer and critic
Remember Life Savers’ soda, Bic’s disposable underwear, Harley Davidson’s aftershave, and the McDonald’s Arch Deluxe? Each of these products failed quickly. A dramatically failed product launch from a large company—with such talented staff, so much investment, and so many preparations—is difficult to fathom. Here is another example: how was it possible that Coca-Cola could not anticipate the strong negative reaction to ditching traditional Coke for “New” Coke? After all, they built a business on fostering brand loyalty. Research and case studies suggest that the problem in so many of these decision-making fiascos was that unique, discrepant, and important information did not come up in meetings. Therefore, despite countless meetings to prepare for these launches, critical factors remained under the surface, all but assuring ultimate failure. One key to preventing this outcome: less talking and more silence.
Let me start at the end of the story: sometimes it would be incredibly helpful and productive if meeting attendees would just stop talking for an extended period of time. As crazy as it might sound on the surface, there are a host of techniques that cultivate silence to create dynamic, engaging, and rich meetings. Silence can be golden, especially for generating and evaluating ideas in meetings. In this chapter, we will review the case for silence as a panacea for many meeting ills.
The Whole Can Be Better Than the Parts
Although sharing information and coordinating people are clearly utilitarian reasons to meet, there is a greater hope for meetings. There is a hope that when you bring people together to work on a challenge or a vexing problem, something unique and synergistic happens, whereby the meeting outcome exceeds what would have been achieved with a series of one-on-one conversations and emails. Ideally, the interactions among attendees yield ideas and solutions that no individual alone can derive. In organizations, this can be experienced as that “aha moment” when the team surprises itself by coming up with a completely unexpected idea. This is even easier to see in sports—think of an overachieving team that outperforms a set of individual talents—for example, the very young 1980 US Olympic hockey team beating the stronger, more seasoned, and more talented Russian juggernaut team.
Drawing from the research on meetings, a synergistic effect occurs roughly 10–15 percent of the time. While this strikes me as an alarmingly low rate, it is at least clear that the potential for meetings to achieve the unexpected does exist. This might mean more and better ideas, richer feedback, insightful critique, and unique integrative paths forward. Most of these, however, depend on the engagement and involvement of the attendees. Perhaps most importantly, for good things to happen, the meeting must tap into each attendee’s relevant and critical knowledge, insights, and perspectives. If attendees don’t share key information and insights relevant to the meeting goals, especially information they hold uniquely, the meeting is destined for mediocrity, at best. Or, as with New Coke, it can lead to a slew of poor initiatives and product launches.
This leads us to the key question: do attendees actually pass along critical and unique knowledge relevant to the meeting goals? Professors Garold Stasser and William Titus conducted an experiment on the topic of information sharing in meetings—does it actually happen? To answer this question, they created a scenario in which each meeting attendee, prior to the meeting, was given information that pertained to a task at hand. Some information was common across all attendees, and some was unique to a particular attendee. The intriguing part of the study was that if attendees pooled together the unique information, t
hey would yield the optimal decision; without all the available information, their decision would miss the mark. A good way to illustrate the sort of task they used is to imagine a hiring committee coming together to evaluate two job candidates after conducting extensive interviews and screenings and checking references. Let’s call the candidates “Ms. Gold” and “Ms. Take.” If attendees pull all of the unique information from each person, they should realize that Ms. Gold is, by far, the better candidate, based on her credentials, and therefore she should be chosen. But if they focus on information that is mostly shared or common among all attendees, Ms. Take would receive the support; what is special about Ms. Gold, the information only some people have, would remain under the surface. Sixty-five additional research projects later, involving a host of researchers, more times than not what happened was that the attendees discussed the shared knowledge and based their decision on the shared knowledge. The unique information, even when highly relevant, did not bubble up. As a result, in these studies, meeting performance and meeting solutions were often flat and uninspired. Stasser and Titus found in one study, for example, that the superior decision was derived less than 20 percent of the time—in our example, this would mean Ms. Take got the job the vast majority of the time.
The Surprising Science of Meetings Page 10