Many managers regard inefficient, unproductive or boring meetings as an unavoidable business flaw.Acknowledge that meetings can cause a lot of frustration, and assess your meetings to seek improvements.Rather than getting rid of meetings, solve your problems with them by applying science.Critically evaluate your meeting facilitation skills: Are they as good as you think they are?Carefully craft meeting agendas. Make participants “directly responsible” owners of their agenda items.

Meetings Are Inevitable Even If We Don't Like Them

<ul><li>Holding a meeting for 48 minutes will catch your colleagues’ attention.</li><li>Invite fewer participants to reduce “social loafing”; encourage input before and after from “secondary stakeholders.”</li><li>Walking and standing meetings add variety to your meeting culture and ensure that people “don’t get too comfortable in that chair.”</li><li>“Deflate negative energy from the start” and create technology-free meeting zones.</li><li>Encourage silence to bring out every team member’s input.</li><li>Pay special attention to audio-only telephone conferences.</li></ul>

Scientific Meetings: Key Takeaways

Everyone needs to meet for team discussions, inter-department alignment and group decision-making. But everyone needs to meet effectively. Meetings can cause frustration, especially when they waste time and energy due to a bad meeting culture.Bad meetings should never be accepted as an organizational norm.

Seek To Improve Meetings

While you’re stuck with your colleagues in a meeting, you all could be spending time doing real work. When your company manages meetings effectively, meetings add to productivity and organizational cohesion. And when it doesn’t, they add to the cost. In 2014, meetings cost the United States economy about $1.4 trillion – roughly 8% of the nation’s GDP that year.

The Opportunity Costs Of A Meeting

Employees have no lack of cynicism when it comes to meetings. Yet getting rid of all meetings is not feasible. Without meetings, you would lose contact with your colleagues, disconnect from other departments and become single-minded about difficult problems. Rather than eliminating meetings, improve them.

Don't Reject Meetings, Just Be Smart

Rather than overestimating your skills, accept that you might have room for improvement, and strategically seek out opportunities to improve. You can, for example, gain input by asking meeting participants for feedback. If you feel that approaching them in person would bias the results, consider sending around a short, anonymous survey. Collecting data and being open to that information will increase your awareness of issues, which is the first step to improvement.

Evaluate Your Meeting Facilitating Skills

Look for the following signals when assessing your meeting effectiveness:<ul><li>Are participants on their phones or other devices, attempting to multitask?</li><li>Are a few participants talking all the time, while others aren’t speaking at all?</li><li>Are you, as the leader, dominating the meeting?</li></ul>

Meeting Effectiveness: The Signals

What differentiates successful meeting leaders from unsuccessful ones is the willingness to pick the right tool for the job at hand.

Adopt a “servant leadership” mindset and buy into an idea by Adam Grant, a professor at Wharton, that you should be a “giver” who actively assists others and disseminates knowledge without expecting anything in return. Companies with strong servant leadership and giving cultures perform better across all business indicators.

Servant Leadership

Collect meeting feedback through different instruments, including your annual employee engagement survey. You could also make meetings part of any 360-degree feedback instrument that applies to leaders in your company.

Get Meeting Feedback

A meeting will fill in the time you allot it. When you schedule a meeting for 60 minutes, it will most likely take 60 minutes. Your tasks as a meeting leader include making a conscious choice about the meeting length. Consider your objectives, agenda items and the number of participants to determine the best length for a meeting. Once you have an accurate estimate, reduce that estimate by 5% to 10% to add the extra time pressure that makes meetings more effective. Going forward, hold meetings that last 25 minutes instead of 30 minutes, or 50 minutes instead of 60.

Make The Meeting An Odd Number OF Minutes

Research shows that merely having an agenda doesn’t yield more effective meetings. Instead, be intentional in the process of creating a meeting agenda, including customizing it to meet team needs and approaching team members to ask them to add their agenda items in advance. The rule of thumb is to prepare for an internal meeting as carefully as you would prepare for an external client meeting.

Craft The Meeting Agendas

Place important discussion items near the top of your agenda. The same holds true for items that participants have generated. Even if you convene the meeting, you don’t have to own every item. Increase accountability by assigning agenda items to participant-owners up front. Present the most salient and demanding items early.  These topics usually will require a more intensive exchange and alignment time. It’s most functional if you kick them off no later than 10% to 15% into the meeting time.

Prioritizing The Discussion Points

Research shows that seven participants per meeting hits the sweet spot. With more participants, decision-making effectiveness decreases by roughly 10% per additional participant above seven. Reasons for this decrease include logistics, coordination and social issues.How do you keep the number of participants low, while not offending colleagues by not inviting them? To strike this balance, revisit your meeting goals and determine who among your potential participants is absolutely indispensable to achieving those goals.

Invite Fewer Participants 

Change the seating arrangement – Actively ask participants to sit in a different seat, change the table set-up or switch to another venue.Conduct a “walking meeting” – Take the meeting agenda and your participants outdoors or on a circular walk through your building.Hold your meeting standing – Participants in “standing meetings” gain health benefits and appreciate the efficiency of this shorter meeting format (15 to 20 minutes maximum).

Don't Let People Get Too Comfortable

Meetings enlivened with humour and laughter lead to more supportive team members, more constructive group dynamics and higher team performance. Negative comments lead to “mood contagion” that lowers performance. Paying attention to the emotions in your meetings is part of successful meeting leadership.Greet participants, offer refreshments or snacks, and play an upbeat song as they enter the room. Discourage multitasking. Some companies also create “technology-free zones,” banning personal laptops, phones and smart devices from meetings.

Avoid The Negative: Mood Travel Quickly

“Brainwriting” – Ask meeting participants to be silent and jot down their ideas before sharing them with others. Your objective is to generate unique ideas and avoid “groupthink.”“Silent reading” – Assign 10 to 30 minutes of silent reading for a new proposal and conceptual piece rather than having a person present the idea. This ensures participants evaluate a proposal on its merits and not on the eloquence of the presenter.

Idea Generating Technique

Because audio-only meetings are tricky to lead, pay special attention to your format. The absence of social controls tempts participants to perform other tasks or embrace distractions while on the call – reducing meeting efficiency immensely. To counteract those shortcomings, ban the mute button at audio-only meetings and increase engagement by actively addressing participants by their names.

Audio Conference Calls

Many managers regard inefficient, unproductive or boring meetings as an unavoidable business flaw. The author challenges this assumption with ideas on how to stop wasting time and energy by facilitating better meetings.

Preface -- Setting the meeting stage -- So many meetings and so much frustration -- Get rid of meetings? no, solve meetings through science -- Evidence-based strategies for leaders -- The image in the mirror is likely wrong -- Meet for 48 minutes -- Agendas are a hollow crutch -- The bigger, the badder -- Don't get too comfortable in that chair -- Deflate negative energy from the start -- No more talking! -- The folly of the remote call-in meeting -- Putting it all together -- Epilogue: trying to get ahead of the science' using science -- Tool: meeting quality self-assessment -- Tool: sample engagement survey and 360 feedback questions on meetings -- Tool: good meeting facilitation checklist -- Tool: huddle implementation checklist -- Tool: agenda template -- Tool: guide to taking good meeting minutes/notes -- Tool: expectations assessment -- Acknowledgments -- References -- Index

Stashed ideas

The Surprising Science of Meetings

A recent survey shows that 49% of employed Americans admitted to working for an hour or more a day while on vacation, and 25% work more than three hours each day on paid time off. This sort of distracted time off essentially cancels the purpose of spending time off the clock. Another survey states that only 26% of workers used all their paid time off, and over 25% don't feel rejuvenated after their vacations.

Working while on vacation

Vacations can do wonders for people’s mental health and well-being. <ul><li>People who take vacations are at less risk for cardiovascular problems and other life-shortening factors, like depressive symptoms.</li><li>The level of vacation restfulness is dependent on how we feel before and after our time away from work.</li></ul>

Benefits of vacation

<ul><li>Working during a vacation. Resist peeking at your inbox. Put clear boundaries between your work responsibilities and personal time.</li><li>Keeping your notifications on. Notifications cause worry and distraction, interrupting your peaceful time off.</li><li>Not taking enough time off. Research suggests it takes around a week to feel truly detached from work.</li><li>Neglecting to plan before your vacation. Practice good pre-vacation protocol by meeting most of your vacation week’s deadlines in advance. Set a good out-of-office message.</li></ul>

What to avoid during a vacation

4 things that can ruin the effectiveness of your vacation

Employees often make up their own stories when they don't get helpful feedback. The stories they tell themselves are often a problem for them (and for the manager). By giving helpful feedback, you'll give your employees the data they need to do more of what's working, and give them less opportunities to make up their own stories.

Without helpful feedback, employees will make up stories

Most professionals prefer to know what good and not-so-good impact they're having. If satisfactory performance is "not a problem employee", you will probably sit with "non-troublemakers" instead of high-performing, committed and engaged professionals. Instead, let your employees know specifically what you appreciate and value when they meet expectations, and share your perspective on how they could improve if they fall short.

Story 1: “As long as I’m not creating trouble for my manager, I’m doing fine.”

It's the manager's job to create a psychologically safe environment where an employee won't be punished when they make a mistake. If you fear that feedback won't be well-received, it may be that you're falling short:<ul><li>You're not helping your direct report to have more impact.</li><li>You're not modelling accountable behaviour if you don't give feedback because you fear how it will be taken.</li><li>You may be contributing to a lack of psychological safety.</li></ul> Instead, consider why you fear your colleague won't receive feedback well. If you don't have a good reason, go ahead and give feedback. Just do it.

Story 2: “My manager doesn’t think I can take feedback well.”

If you really believe your employee cannot change, you will not offer him resources or opportunities to change. Instead, adopt a growth mindset for your employee and yourself. Employees with growth mindsets welcome challenges and work harder and more effectively, making them better contributors to their organisations. You will give more feedback because you believe they will rise to the challenge.

Story 3: “My manager doesn’t think I can change.”

There are three common stories that employees tell themselves when they don’t get enough feedback from their managers: 1.) “As long as I’m not creating trouble for my manager, I’m doing fine.” If the bar for satisfactory performance is “not a problem employee”, then your bar is way too low. 2.) “My manager doesn’t think I can take feedback well.” If you don’t have compelling evidence to support the belief that your employee won’t receive feedback well, then you need to, as Nike suggests, “Just do it”. 3.) “My manager doesn’t think I can change.” It’s important to adopt a growth mindset, for your employee and for yourself. By giving more helpful feedback, you’ll be providing your employees with the data they need to do more of what’s working, less of what isn’t, and with fewer opportunities to make up their own stories.

The Assumptions Employees Make When They Don’t Get Feedback

Many leaders have had their own efforts and engagement thwarted by micromanagers that they may be wary of repeating the pattern with their direct reports. They use “My door is always open” as code for “I don’t want to micromanage you, but I also don’t want to leave you flailing.” They want to be helpful and supportive, and making themselves available to them is a simple way to do that.

Being Helpful And Always Available At Work

An open-door policy is helpful only if you can actually deliver on its intent. Far too often, we offer an invitation for our colleagues to ask questions or share opinions when it may not be the time or the place. By putting the responsibility on others to approach us rather than us thinking strategically about what they need, we may be under-leading—which can be every bit as harmful as micromanaging.

The Open-Door Policy And It's Limitations

Example: If your sales manager doesn’t know how to use their updated CRM software, they need hands-on, directive instruction to learn how. “Come to me with any questions” isn’t helpful when someone has nothing but questions.How to help instead: Provide them with training, and the time to process the new information. Give them examples of what success looks like, and develop a plan for them to learn and practice their new skills. Anticipate the questions they may have, and check in frequently to give feedback on their progress.

How To Handle: A Colleague Lacks Knowledge, Skills, or Experience for A Task

Example: If your expectation is that your team members comply with the company’s mandate to get vaccinated before they return to the office, telling your employees that your door is always open to questions or concerns about this may be misleading. It may send a signal that this policy is open to discussion or negotiation, which it may not be.How to help instead: Communicate the why behind the decision—and also expect that not everyone will be happy. Let people know what is open to discussion and negotiation.

Compliance Is More Important than Commitment

Example: There’s been a building security breach. Everyone needs to exit the office immediately and gather in the parking lot next door for the next set of instructions. Offering an open-door policy for questions may slow an urgent mandate down when you want people to act now and ask questions later.How to help instead: Make sure your verbal (message), vocal (tone of voice), and visual (body language) cues all match to reflect the gravity or immediacy of the situation. If they don’t match, people are more likely to ignore the content of what you’re saying in favor of visual cues.

When a Decision Needs to Be Made Immediately or There’s a Crisis

We all want to have helpful leaders—and be helpful leaders. Knowing what kind of help to give isn’t as simple as leaving our doors open. It takes a wide range of helpful practices to avoid micromanaging or under-leading.

Bottom Line

It takes a wide range of helpful practices to truly empower your teams for success, this leadership communication expert says.


When your open-door policy is bad leadership

Herzberg’s Two-Factor Theory is one of the most prominent theories regarding motivation factors in the workplace. Psychologist Frederick Herzberg based his theory on some elements of Abraham Maslow's theory of motivation and needs. Herzberg’s theory broke down workplace needs into two categories:<ol><li>Motivation factors ensure employee satisfaction</li><li>Hygiene factors determine the basic level of stability and job security. Job dissatisfaction arises from a lack of hygiene factors.</li></ol>

Herzberg’s Two-Factor Theory of motivation

The theory holds that job satisfaction and dissatisfaction are two separate categories with very different contributing factors. To ensure workplace harmony, employers must increase employee motivation factors and increase workplace hygiene.

Job satisfaction and dissatisfaction are distinct categories

According to Herzberg, the two-factor theory holds that motivational factors and hygiene factors need to be addressed independently. The primary hygiene factors:<ul><li>Pay. Low pay will quickly cause dissatisfaction among employees.</li><li>Benefits. An employer should ensure that the benefits they provide are competitive.</li><li>Job security. Employers should let employees know they are valued and that their jobs are safe.</li><li>Work conditions. Employers shouldn’t cut corners when it comes to the welfare and safety of employees.</li></ul>

Hygiene factors in the workplace

Factors that motivate employees to work often have to do with giving them a greater sense of purpose and significance in their current position.<ul><li>Recognition. Job performance improves when employees are praised and recognized for a job well done.</li><li>Autonomy. Employees feel motivated when they feel that they have an important job with a large degree of self-direction.</li><li>Meaningful work. Employers should strive to help employees see how their work contributes to a greater end product.</li></ul>

Motivational factors

Give employees more autonomy. The more that employees feel that they are responsible and autonomous, the greater the sense of achievement.Provide feedback. Let employees know how they’re doing by providing meaningful and constructive feedback.Improve working conditions. A simple way is to provide a clean, safe, and aesthetically pleasing workspace.Poll employees to get a sense of what motivates employees.Take a macro view of employee welfare. Employers cannot choose between motivation or hygiene. They must strive to improve both.

The Surprising Science of Meetings

4 things that can ruin the effectiveness of your vacation

The Assumptions Employees Make When They Don’t Get Feedback

When your open-door policy is bad leadership

How to Use Herzberg’s Two-Factor Theory to Boost Worker Productivity

It's time to

READ

LIKE

A PRO!