April 23, 2025 • 25 mins
BEST OF
Are the meetings you lead not actually getting enough done? Are you worried that participants are leaving them feeling annoyed? If so, then this episode is for you.
Professor Steven Rogelberg is an organisational psychologist, an award-winning author and the world’s leading expert on workplace meetings. He is an award-winning teacher with over 200 publications and has been cited well-over 12,000 times in the academic literature. Steven’s keynotes on meetings span the globe and occur at the world’s leading organisations such as Google, Facebook, Amazon, Pfizer, Cisco, Bank of America, PayPal, The United Nations, and many more.
His book, The Surprising Science of Meetings: How You Can Lead Your Team to Peak Performance has been on over 25 “best of” lists including being recognized by the Washington Post as the #1 leadership book to watch for. To top it off, Adam Grant has called Steven the “world’s leading expert on how to fix meetings”.
In this episode Steven shares:
- How to figure out if something should actually be a meeting and who needs to be invited to it
- The common traits that make an effective meeting leader and the mistakes we make that can derail a meeting
- Some unusual and unique techniques you can use to liven up your meetings
- The role of AI in meetings and what you should and shouldn’t use it for
- What you need to do before and after a meeting to ensure maximum success
Key Quotes:
“One of the best predictors of the mood of a meeting is the mood of the leader coming into the meeting.”
“We act with intentionality all the time when we're meeting with important stakeholders, but we don’t act with intentionality when it comes to meeting with our peers.”
“The characteristic of really good meeting leaders is they understand that meetings need an ending.”
Connect with Steven via his website and linkedin.
My latest book The Health Habit is out now. You can order a copy here: https://www.amantha.com/the-health-habit/
Connect with me on the socials:
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If you are looking for more tips to improve the way you work and live, I write a weekly newsletter where I share practical and simple to apply tips to improve your life. You can sign up for that at https://amantha-imber.ck.page/subscribe
Visit https://www.amantha.com/podcast for full show notes from all episodes.
Get in touch at amantha@inventium.com.au
Credits:
Host: Amantha Imber
Sound Engineer: Martin Imber
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
How I Work is having a little break for a
couple of weeks over Easter, so I have hand picked
some of my absolute favorite episodes from the last year
to play for you, and I'll be back with new
interviews from Thursday, May one. Like many of us, you
probably spend a significant amount of your week in meetings,
(00:21):
But how many of those meetings actually feel productive? Are
they driving your team forward or just draining time and energy.
Today we're going to learn how to change that and
turn meetings into one of the most powerful tools in
your toolkit. I'm thrilled to have Professor Stephen Rogelberg back
(00:42):
on How I Work to help us make the most
of our meetings. Stephen is an organizational psychologist and a
professor who has received awards for his research into meeting effectiveness,
and Adam Grant has even described Stephen as the world's
leading expert on how to fix meetings. In this episode,
(01:02):
Stephen will reveal the common mistakes we all make when
it comes to meetings, how to prepare a meeting for
success before it even starts, and how you can be
the most effective meeting leader ever. Welcome to How I Work,
(01:24):
a show about habits rituals and strategies for optimizing your day.
I'm your host, doctor Amantha Imber. According to Stephen, there
are about one billion meetings held around the world every day.
That is a lot of meetings, and I think we
can be sure not all of them actually need to happen.
(01:45):
So the first rule for holding an effective meeting is
to figure out if you even need to be having
a meeting in the first place. You know, the saying
this meeting could have been an email. But how exactly
do you figure out if something deserves a meeting or not?
Even this is apparently quite simple.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
Well, the general rule of thumb is that a you
have a compelling topic, and b that compelling topic needs
engagement and involvement. Right, So there's that two pieces to it.
If something is not compelling or doesn't need engagement, then
you don't need a meeting.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
You make it sound so simple. Are there some rules
of thumb or different categories of things that we might
want to be talking about that we can go Yes,
that definitely needs a meeting?
Speaker 2 (02:34):
No, there isn't. There really is just this general intentionality
to step back and say, Okay, I'm putting this together.
Who really needs to be there and do I need
to actually have this meeting. But let me tell you
a technique, right that can be helpful because I know
you like specifics and practical tips, so let me share
(02:55):
one of that you obviously know about agendas, and agendas
are typically organized by topics. So what I want to
challenge meeting leaders to do is to organize their agenda
as a set of questions to be answered. By framing
your agenda's questions to be answered, now you actually have
to stop and really think about why you're having this meeting, right,
(03:16):
it's to answer these questions. So that's a way of
addressing one of the things you talked about. By framing
your agenda's questions, you now have a better sense of
who to invite the relevant to the questions. You know
if the meeting has been successful, the questions have been answered.
Questions creates an engaging challenge for attendees that brings them
in and to your question. By framing, if you just
(03:41):
can't think of any questions, a likely means you don't
need a meeting. So I think this question based approach
can serve as a nice litmus test for figuring out
whether you need a meeting or not.
Speaker 1 (03:53):
Now you mentioned that questions will help us figure out
who to invite. What should we be thinking if we
are the meeting organizer and we're deciding who should I invite,
and maybe we're questioning, oh, we're borderline on some people, Yeah,
what should we do?
Speaker 2 (04:08):
So it's almost like think about planning a wedding. Right
when we plan a wedding, we know who has to
be there, and then we know, well, these people might
be nice to have. The must haves are very clear.
It's the nice hat to haves that gets it's in trouble,
especially because once we invite one of the nice to haves,
then we feel pressure to invite additional ones. So the
(04:29):
general thinking is, let's identify the must haves and then
the nice to haves. Let's just have a separate conversation
with them. Let's tell them, Hey, we're having a meeting
around X, Y and Z. I don't think it's highly
relevant to you. If you have any input on it,
let me know. If not, you know, I'm going to
keep you in the loops so you can decide to
attend future meetings if you like. When you do that,
(04:50):
when you kind of close the loop, in some way
for these nice to haves, and you do deliver some
quick meeting notes like, they are so relieved, they are
so grateful that you're respecting their time. So really, I
think the exercise is to think of this. I do
think this wedding analogy works. You know, this whole must
have nice to have. Focus on the must haves and
(05:12):
the nice to haves. Let's give them a break and
figure out another way that they can still be in
the loop. Provides some input without losing their time.
Speaker 1 (05:21):
What else can we do before the meeting to give
it the best chance of success.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
Well, let me frame it this way. In our research,
the best meeting leaders appear to have something in common,
and what they have in common is a similar mindset,
and that mindset is a mindset of stewardship. They're a
steward of others' time. The thought of people leaving their
meetings saying it was a waste is so uncomfortable to
them that they act with intentionality. And this intentionality is
(05:54):
instead of just you know, dialing the meeting in using
default calendar settings, right, you're making choices. You're saying, Okay,
I'm having this meeting. This is how long I think
it should be, this is who must be there, So
you're just being intentional. And furthermore, one of the things
I talk about in my book is this idea of
a pre mortem, and a pre mortem is where you
(06:17):
start to think about what are the potential challenges and
problems that could arise in the meeting? And given that,
how should I design the meeting? And so it's just
stepping back and giving it a little bit of thought.
And interestingly, we act with intentionality all the time when
we're meeting with important stakeholders because we don't want those
(06:40):
people to leave the meeting saying that was a waste
of time. But we typically don't act with intentionality when
it comes to meeting with our peers or directs. So
this intentionality is just saying, all right, people are giving
me the biggest gift. They have their time, so how
can I honor that time? And so are you? Tightness
(07:01):
of invites ordering of the agenda, right, hit the most
important things first, you know, not the superficial stuff. Right,
Keep the meeting as short and tight as possible. You
can always find more time to meet. But we know
from Parkinson's law that work expands to fill whatever time
is allotted to it, So keep it tight, you'll get
it done. And those are some really important intentional design
(07:22):
factors to keep in mind.
Speaker 1 (07:24):
What else have you found that the best meeting leaders
have in common?
Speaker 2 (07:28):
So that's the main one, but then there's other ones
that fall from that. For example, facilitation when one of
the best predictors of people's perceptions of an ineffective meeting
is the leader doing more talking than the attendees. The
more the leader talks, the more the ratings go down.
And that makes a heck of a lot of sense, right,
(07:50):
because the leader is supposed to be facilitating. That's their job, right,
They've called this party together and their job is to
get these voices out. It doesn't mean that they can't
talk during it, but the mean it does mean that
they shouldn't be dominating because they invited people. If they dominate,
the meeting could have just been an email. So that
propensity to facilitate is really critical. And what underlies that
(08:13):
is this desire to listen, right, to truly engage and include.
And then the other characteristic of really good meeting leaders
is they understand that meetings need an end ding. So
we know meetings end. Right, everything ends, but an ending
(08:33):
is something different.
Speaker 1 (08:35):
Right.
Speaker 2 (08:35):
An ending is where you stop three to five minutes
before the end and you say, okay, well did we
actually decide and for each of these things, who is
the dri the directly responsible individual? And what did we
not decide? You know, so we know that these are
things that we have to discuss at another time. At
the same time, during this ending, you're recording this key information,
(08:59):
so you're not a ten can stay in the loop.
So that is another key thing that really differentiates excellent
meeting leaders from not so excellent meeting leaders.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
What else can we do during a meeting to get
the best outcome, whether that be facilitation techniques that work,
or other strategies that you found.
Speaker 2 (09:19):
I mean, facilitation is absolutely the most key, but you know,
there's lots of different ways to have a meeting, and so,
for example, silence in meetings is phenomenal. The research shows
that when people brainstorm in silence typing directly into their computers,
they generate nearly twice as many ideas, and the ideas
tend to be more creative, right, because everyone can talk
(09:40):
at once and you're not influenced by that very first
thing you hear, so a meeting leader can say, Okay,
depending on what we're trying to solve, maybe silent brainstorming
could be really meaningful. Again, depending on what you want
to solve, Sometimes a standing meeting is really a helpful.
Standing meetings generally take half as much time and yield
(10:01):
the same quality decisions. You might choose to get people
into pairs before the conversation. What we've found is that
when you tell people, hey, again, to pairs and start
to talk about this problem or issue for just three
minutes and then we'll all come together. When you do
that and then you return to the big group, people
are participating, right, you've kind of greased the rails. So
(10:25):
that's another technique that could be super helpful. So there's
lots of choices, and that's I think a really key
takeaway for your listeners is that we need meeting leaders
to think about things and make choices. You know, we
have around a billion meetings a day around the globe
(10:45):
and they generally all look the same. That's not good, right,
Let's mix it up. Let's change it up and position
yourself as a leader as part of the solution, as
opposed to being part of the problem.
Speaker 1 (10:57):
Have you seen particularly effective ways to open a meeting,
whether it be effective, creative, what have you seen that works?
Speaker 2 (11:05):
So the opening of a meeting is indeed important, and
the best practice is after you know, three to five
minutes of just kind of conversation and some quick notes,
you go hard on the most important topic. It's also
at times helpful for the meeting leader to start the
meeting sharing what her hopes are for the meeting. That
you know, right when you say listen, I really want
(11:26):
everyone to engage. You're here because I need your voice.
We also need people to disagree with one another, not
personally but about ideas, right, So starting the meeting with
some expectations increases the chances of those behaviors happening. So
that's really valuable. Another key thing is, you know, a
meeting leader has to recognize that they are inherently a host,
(11:47):
right they call this meeting party together. So what does
a host do? A host welcomes people, a host makes introductions.
A host is also sensitive to their own mood state. Interestingly,
one of the best predictors the mood of a meeting
is the mood of the leader coming into the meeting,
and mood actually matters. When the mood of the meeting
(12:08):
is better, people listen to one another, they tend to
be more creative, and they tend to disagree more constructively.
So those are some really key things that leaders can
do at the start.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
It's interesting about mood. What can we do if we
know that the meeting is going to be a difficult
one in terms of the conversation that we're tackling. What
can we do to give that meeting the best chance
of success.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
Well, I think I'm going to circle back to what
I mentioned earlier about this idea of framing your agenda
as questions to be answered. So now when you submit
that agenda, you are signaling very clearly what's going to happen.
Most of these agendas actually don't really do a good
job signaling to people what's the critical matters. So I
(12:52):
think that that is a really useful strategy for getting
people ready to go and to participate.
Speaker 1 (12:59):
We'll be back with Stevens soon, and when we return,
he'll be sharing some of the quirkier, unique things that
you can do to engage people in a meeting and
what the biggest predictors of meeting satisfaction are. If you're
looking for more tips to improve the way you work
can live. I write a short weekly newsletter that contains
(13:19):
tactics I've discovered that have helped me personally. You can
sign up for that at Amantha dot com. That's Amantha
dot com. What else can we do during the meeting?
What are some of the more quirkier techniques that you've
seen to engage people and get the best out of people?
Speaker 2 (13:41):
So the silent one certainly is quirky, but I'll add
that interestingly, taking a break. You know, even if you
have a sixty minute meeting, taking a three minute break
in the middle of the meeting is quirky and really effective. Generally,
it does a couple of things. First of all, we
all know that people are technology addicted, so that little
break people can check their phones as opposed to doing
(14:02):
it during the meeting. Next, what typically happens when you
have a break is after that break, someone will say, hey,
I was also thinking about X right, Because typically meetings
are kind of like a runaway train. They get momentum,
and when you have a break, it breaks that momentum
and allows for other content to emerge. So that's another
(14:25):
interesting possibility that you can play with. The Other thing
that maybe is a little quirky that works is to
do some of these voting apps to test consensus. We
often rely on determining whether there's consensus based on the
loudest voices, and that's not effective. So if we quickly
stop and say, hey, you know, I want to get
a pulse of where folks are out. We're talking about
(14:47):
these three things, where's everyone out? Which ones do you support?
And do it via an app. That's a nice way
of really getting a good feel for things and figuring
out whether you could go in different directions. You can
also use that voting to say do you think we
need to keep talking about this? Are you ready to
make a decision?
Speaker 1 (15:05):
Right?
Speaker 2 (15:05):
So there's a lot of check ins that can happen
in a very safe way that allows you to be
a meeting leader that's sensitive to the broader dynamics, just
not the loudest voices.
Speaker 1 (15:16):
I love the idea of voting apps. It also makes
me think of very large meetings, But what is your
research found in terms of the optimal size for a.
Speaker 2 (15:24):
Meeting doesn't exist. There's no such thing as an optimal size.
It just always comes down to what you're trying to achieve,
and depending on what you're trying to achieve, that determines
the size. Now, if it is around decision making, you know,
once you start passing eight people, it's just hard to
truly facilitate. You have to be a very skilled facilitator
(15:46):
to bring out more voices. So that's something to keep
in mind. If the meeting is more of a tell
show questions than you know, like a town hall, then
those meetings can be really large because you're not really
looking for folks to deeply engage on the content. So
depending on what you're trying to achieve, that kind of
(16:07):
determines who needs to be there and who doesn't need
to be there.
Speaker 1 (16:11):
I'd love to know more about those town hall meetings
because you know, ideally, well, what you said is that
the facilitator of the meeting, the leader of the meeting,
would do best not to talk so much. But typically
in a town hall, the leaders talk a lot. So
what does a great townholl look like?
Speaker 2 (16:30):
We just have to remember what town halls do well
and what they do bad. They're not for discussion. So
the best town halls are just short and the best
town halls bring up critical issues and not the superficial issues,
because the superficial issues could just be handled via email
or you could record yourself talking. So if you're putting
(16:51):
people into a context where they're just going to be
listening to someone talk, I mean, just keep in mind that,
you know, our batteries for that are pretty darn low.
So keep it short, keep it really short.
Speaker 1 (17:06):
What does short mean? What is short?
Speaker 2 (17:08):
I think most town halls can be twenty minutes.
Speaker 1 (17:12):
That is a lot shorter than most town halls.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
I suspect, yeah, I agree.
Speaker 1 (17:17):
What is your opinion on AI tools in meetings? What
can help us and what can hinder?
Speaker 2 (17:25):
You know, I fully embrace it. I think there's lots
of possibilities. I think AI could be extremely helpful with
the scheduling of meetings, finding some good openings for folks
in thoughtful ways. I think AI is fantastic for capturing
the meeting notes. We've really gotten better at that. You know,
even the built in packages into Zoom what have you
(17:47):
does a great job capturing what are the key takeaways
from the meeting. It's awesome. I think AI excels with that,
which is great. Again as a way of managing number
of attendees. What I'm still struggling with is AI serving
in any type of facilitation role. So there are startups
(18:10):
that are playing with that. You know, where the AI
is putting real time feedback saying, hey, this person hasn't talked,
or here's who's talking the most, and the leader is
able to monitor that, you know, then there's AI saying
you know, actually prompting saying you know that might say
you KNOWMANTHD, what do you think? So I'm not as
(18:30):
keen on that. I want the meeting leader to do that.
I really do. I don't want to punt that to AI.
Over time, the AI facilitator is going to get better
and better and better. But I don't think that fundamentally
changes the need for the meeting leader to be thoughtful
in the design and execution of the meeting. So yeah,
(18:52):
I love use of AI definitely for scheduling and note taking,
though I think it's very, very helpful.
Speaker 1 (19:00):
I'd love to know about meeting satisfaction because that's something
that you've measured many, many times. What are the biggest
predictors of meeting satisfaction, some of which we might have covered,
But I'm wondering if there's other things that we haven't covered.
Speaker 2 (19:13):
So participation is a key one. Relevance of the meeting
is a key one. The leader facilitating definitely a key one.
The types of participation and listening of other attendees is
really important. And then interestingly, one of the better predictors
of meeting satisfaction is actually food. Yeah. Yeah, having food
(19:37):
and meetings seems to make people pretty darn excited. But
I would argue it's not the food in and of itself,
but food helps people make separation from what they were
doing before the meeting to the meeting itself, which I
think allows them to be more focused. Food can also
elevate mood into a more positive direction, which also can
(19:57):
lead to a more positive meeting. But yeah, snacks can
be helpful.
Speaker 1 (20:03):
What else can we do to elevate mood?
Speaker 2 (20:05):
Steven? You know, I think a meeting leader expressing appreciation
and gratitude set's a really key stage for that. Even
during trying and difficult times, we can always find opportunities
to express appreciation and gratitude. So I think starting these
types of engagements with those types of reflections can get
(20:28):
people in a really good headspace.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
Hm, I would love to explore what happens after the meeting,
like what is in our control after the meeting ends,
to make sure that it was time will spent.
Speaker 2 (20:44):
If the meeting has a proper ending, like I mentioned,
with things being recorded and DRIs being identified, the chances
of action happening is so much higher. So it really
comes down to that ending and doing it well. You know,
once that's documented, then the leader is very well positioned
(21:04):
to follow up and make sure that these things actually happen.
But so often at the end of the meeting, you know,
people are actually not clear what was decided, They're not
clear who's responsible, so action doesn't happen and leaders don't
follow up. So having that proper ending just increases the
chances of all those things happening.
Speaker 1 (21:24):
Are there ways that you encourage people to just keep
track on this was an action that came out of
the meeting, and so we need to track that or
do we just have trust?
Speaker 2 (21:35):
You know, I think trust is great and I think
should always be the lead strategy. But there's no reason
why the meeting outcomes can't be recorded into an asynchronous
document that everyone can look and track, and people can
provide updates of how what the progress they're making. So
I think that's perfectly fine action to take, and I
(21:59):
think people generally welcome it.
Speaker 1 (22:01):
I'd love to know from all the research that you
have done, what have been some of the more surprising
findings that you found in your research. Well.
Speaker 2 (22:09):
I think it's always surprising that agendas in and of
themselves do not improve meeting quality. I think that's something
that's surprising, but when people reflect, it's not much of
a surprise because so many agendas are just recycled meeting
to meeting. And then what matters more is what's on
the agenda, right, is it truly compelling? And what matters
even more is how you facilitate discussion of that agenda.
(22:32):
So this idea of just having a piece of paper
with topics isn't all that inspirational. This is why in
my book I titled the chapter agendas are a Hollow Crutch,
because so often leaders think by having an agenda that
they're a good meeting leader, and they're not. So that
to me is kind of a fun surprising finding. Another
(22:52):
I think interesting finding is to me has always been
this idea that when you survey people coming out of
a meeting, there is one person who says that was
really good, and that person is the leading leader, the
meeting leader. The meeting leader seems to have this inflated
sense of how well the meeting went, and why wouldn't
they right, they are talking as much as they want.
(23:15):
And so this disconnect, though, I think is really important
because given this disconnect, meeting leaders aren't all that motivated
to make many changes to how they run meetings because
they think it went pretty well. So overall, they generally
think the meeting problem is due to others, not themselves.
Speaker 1 (23:34):
How can we overcome that? How can we give leaders
a bit more of a clear idea of what's going on?
Speaker 2 (23:41):
Yeah, So, like I'm working with this company called Cairos.
Kairos and this Canadian company. They're really cool and basic.
What they do is they've created a solution where leaders
can actually see how they are at running meetings and
then they're given feedback and they're provided with tools and
tricks and tips to address the feedback they received. So
(24:05):
a technology solution, I think is a great way of
addressing the issue. But then there's lower fidelity solutions as well. So,
for example, the meeting leader can every once in a
while survey their people and ask them what's going well
not so well, and ideas for making the meetings better.
Speaker 1 (24:21):
Right.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
Meetings are shared experiences. Leaders know that people are frustrated
by meetings, so if you position yourself there's someone interested
in solving it. It's a great reflection on you.
Speaker 1 (24:31):
I love that advice, Steven. I am so glad that
you agreed to meet with me for a second time.
You are such a fountain of knowledge when it comes
to meetings, and I so appreciate your time. I hope
I've used it respectfully. I let you do most of
the talking, so I did that.
Speaker 2 (24:49):
Yeah, you're a great facilitator. I totally feel so, and
that's why I decided to do it again. So thank you,
appreciate it, and yeah, thank you for helping bring the
science to your audience.
Speaker 1 (24:59):
Thank you so much. I hope you love this chat
with Stephen as much as I did. There are definitely
a few strategies I think we can all implement into
our next meeting. If you want to learn more about Stephen,
you can check out his website Stepnogelberg dot com. He
has a ton of resources there to help you out
(25:20):
with your next meeting. As well as links to his books,
which are awesome and believe it or not, he doesn't
make a single cent from his book sales because he
donates everything he makes from them to cancer research. You
can find a link to his website in the show notes.
If you like today's show, make sure you get follow
on your podcast app to be alerted when new episodes drop.
(25:43):
How I Work was recorded on the traditional land of
the Warrangery people, part of the cool And Nation.
How I Work is having a little break for a
couple of weeks over Easter, so I have hand picked
some of my absolute favorite episodes from the last year
to play for you, and I'll be back with new
interviews from Thursday, May one. Like many of us, you
probably spend a significant amount of your week in meetings,
(00:21):
But how many of those meetings actually feel productive? Are
they driving your team forward or just draining time and energy.
Today we're going to learn how to change that and
turn meetings into one of the most powerful tools in
your toolkit. I'm thrilled to have Professor Stephen Rogelberg back
(00:42):
on How I Work to help us make the most
of our meetings. Stephen is an organizational psychologist and a
professor who has received awards for his research into meeting effectiveness,
and Adam Grant has even described Stephen as the world's
leading expert on how to fix meetings. In this episode,
(01:02):
Stephen will reveal the common mistakes we all make when
it comes to meetings, how to prepare a meeting for
success before it even starts, and how you can be
the most effective meeting leader ever. Welcome to How I Work,
(01:24):
a show about habits rituals and strategies for optimizing your day.
I'm your host, doctor Amantha Imber. According to Stephen, there
are about one billion meetings held around the world every day.
That is a lot of meetings, and I think we
can be sure not all of them actually need to happen.
(01:45):
So the first rule for holding an effective meeting is
to figure out if you even need to be having
a meeting in the first place. You know, the saying
this meeting could have been an email. But how exactly
do you figure out if something deserves a meeting or not?
Even this is apparently quite simple.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
Well, the general rule of thumb is that a you
have a compelling topic, and b that compelling topic needs
engagement and involvement. Right, So there's that two pieces to it.
If something is not compelling or doesn't need engagement, then
you don't need a meeting.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
You make it sound so simple. Are there some rules
of thumb or different categories of things that we might
want to be talking about that we can go Yes,
that definitely needs a meeting?
Speaker 2 (02:34):
No, there isn't. There really is just this general intentionality
to step back and say, Okay, I'm putting this together.
Who really needs to be there and do I need
to actually have this meeting. But let me tell you
a technique, right that can be helpful because I know
you like specifics and practical tips, so let me share
(02:55):
one of that you obviously know about agendas, and agendas
are typically organized by topics. So what I want to
challenge meeting leaders to do is to organize their agenda
as a set of questions to be answered. By framing
your agenda's questions to be answered, now you actually have
to stop and really think about why you're having this meeting, right,
(03:16):
it's to answer these questions. So that's a way of
addressing one of the things you talked about. By framing
your agenda's questions, you now have a better sense of
who to invite the relevant to the questions. You know
if the meeting has been successful, the questions have been answered.
Questions creates an engaging challenge for attendees that brings them
in and to your question. By framing, if you just
(03:41):
can't think of any questions, a likely means you don't
need a meeting. So I think this question based approach
can serve as a nice litmus test for figuring out
whether you need a meeting or not.
Speaker 1 (03:53):
Now you mentioned that questions will help us figure out
who to invite. What should we be thinking if we
are the meeting organizer and we're deciding who should I invite,
and maybe we're questioning, oh, we're borderline on some people, Yeah,
what should we do?
Speaker 2 (04:08):
So it's almost like think about planning a wedding. Right
when we plan a wedding, we know who has to
be there, and then we know, well, these people might
be nice to have. The must haves are very clear.
It's the nice hat to haves that gets it's in trouble,
especially because once we invite one of the nice to haves,
then we feel pressure to invite additional ones. So the
(04:29):
general thinking is, let's identify the must haves and then
the nice to haves. Let's just have a separate conversation
with them. Let's tell them, Hey, we're having a meeting
around X, Y and Z. I don't think it's highly
relevant to you. If you have any input on it,
let me know. If not, you know, I'm going to
keep you in the loops so you can decide to
attend future meetings if you like. When you do that,
(04:50):
when you kind of close the loop, in some way
for these nice to haves, and you do deliver some
quick meeting notes like, they are so relieved, they are
so grateful that you're respecting their time. So really, I
think the exercise is to think of this. I do
think this wedding analogy works. You know, this whole must
have nice to have. Focus on the must haves and
(05:12):
the nice to haves. Let's give them a break and
figure out another way that they can still be in
the loop. Provides some input without losing their time.
Speaker 1 (05:21):
What else can we do before the meeting to give
it the best chance of success.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
Well, let me frame it this way. In our research,
the best meeting leaders appear to have something in common,
and what they have in common is a similar mindset,
and that mindset is a mindset of stewardship. They're a
steward of others' time. The thought of people leaving their
meetings saying it was a waste is so uncomfortable to
them that they act with intentionality. And this intentionality is
(05:54):
instead of just you know, dialing the meeting in using
default calendar settings, right, you're making choices. You're saying, Okay,
I'm having this meeting. This is how long I think
it should be, this is who must be there, So
you're just being intentional. And furthermore, one of the things
I talk about in my book is this idea of
a pre mortem, and a pre mortem is where you
(06:17):
start to think about what are the potential challenges and
problems that could arise in the meeting? And given that,
how should I design the meeting? And so it's just
stepping back and giving it a little bit of thought.
And interestingly, we act with intentionality all the time when
we're meeting with important stakeholders because we don't want those
(06:40):
people to leave the meeting saying that was a waste
of time. But we typically don't act with intentionality when
it comes to meeting with our peers or directs. So
this intentionality is just saying, all right, people are giving
me the biggest gift. They have their time, so how
can I honor that time? And so are you? Tightness
(07:01):
of invites ordering of the agenda, right, hit the most
important things first, you know, not the superficial stuff. Right,
Keep the meeting as short and tight as possible. You
can always find more time to meet. But we know
from Parkinson's law that work expands to fill whatever time
is allotted to it, So keep it tight, you'll get
it done. And those are some really important intentional design
(07:22):
factors to keep in mind.
Speaker 1 (07:24):
What else have you found that the best meeting leaders
have in common?
Speaker 2 (07:28):
So that's the main one, but then there's other ones
that fall from that. For example, facilitation when one of
the best predictors of people's perceptions of an ineffective meeting
is the leader doing more talking than the attendees. The
more the leader talks, the more the ratings go down.
And that makes a heck of a lot of sense, right,
(07:50):
because the leader is supposed to be facilitating. That's their job, right,
They've called this party together and their job is to
get these voices out. It doesn't mean that they can't
talk during it, but the mean it does mean that
they shouldn't be dominating because they invited people. If they dominate,
the meeting could have just been an email. So that
propensity to facilitate is really critical. And what underlies that
(08:13):
is this desire to listen, right, to truly engage and include.
And then the other characteristic of really good meeting leaders
is they understand that meetings need an end ding. So
we know meetings end. Right, everything ends, but an ending
(08:33):
is something different.
Speaker 1 (08:35):
Right.
Speaker 2 (08:35):
An ending is where you stop three to five minutes
before the end and you say, okay, well did we
actually decide and for each of these things, who is
the dri the directly responsible individual? And what did we
not decide? You know, so we know that these are
things that we have to discuss at another time. At
the same time, during this ending, you're recording this key information,
(08:59):
so you're not a ten can stay in the loop.
So that is another key thing that really differentiates excellent
meeting leaders from not so excellent meeting leaders.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
What else can we do during a meeting to get
the best outcome, whether that be facilitation techniques that work,
or other strategies that you found.
Speaker 2 (09:19):
I mean, facilitation is absolutely the most key, but you know,
there's lots of different ways to have a meeting, and so,
for example, silence in meetings is phenomenal. The research shows
that when people brainstorm in silence typing directly into their computers,
they generate nearly twice as many ideas, and the ideas
tend to be more creative, right, because everyone can talk
(09:40):
at once and you're not influenced by that very first
thing you hear, so a meeting leader can say, Okay,
depending on what we're trying to solve, maybe silent brainstorming
could be really meaningful. Again, depending on what you want
to solve, Sometimes a standing meeting is really a helpful.
Standing meetings generally take half as much time and yield
(10:01):
the same quality decisions. You might choose to get people
into pairs before the conversation. What we've found is that
when you tell people, hey, again, to pairs and start
to talk about this problem or issue for just three
minutes and then we'll all come together. When you do
that and then you return to the big group, people
are participating, right, you've kind of greased the rails. So
(10:25):
that's another technique that could be super helpful. So there's
lots of choices, and that's I think a really key
takeaway for your listeners is that we need meeting leaders
to think about things and make choices. You know, we
have around a billion meetings a day around the globe
(10:45):
and they generally all look the same. That's not good, right,
Let's mix it up. Let's change it up and position
yourself as a leader as part of the solution, as
opposed to being part of the problem.
Speaker 1 (10:57):
Have you seen particularly effective ways to open a meeting,
whether it be effective, creative, what have you seen that works?
Speaker 2 (11:05):
So the opening of a meeting is indeed important, and
the best practice is after you know, three to five
minutes of just kind of conversation and some quick notes,
you go hard on the most important topic. It's also
at times helpful for the meeting leader to start the
meeting sharing what her hopes are for the meeting. That
you know, right when you say listen, I really want
(11:26):
everyone to engage. You're here because I need your voice.
We also need people to disagree with one another, not
personally but about ideas, right, So starting the meeting with
some expectations increases the chances of those behaviors happening. So
that's really valuable. Another key thing is, you know, a
meeting leader has to recognize that they are inherently a host,
(11:47):
right they call this meeting party together. So what does
a host do? A host welcomes people, a host makes introductions.
A host is also sensitive to their own mood state. Interestingly,
one of the best predictors the mood of a meeting
is the mood of the leader coming into the meeting,
and mood actually matters. When the mood of the meeting
(12:08):
is better, people listen to one another, they tend to
be more creative, and they tend to disagree more constructively.
So those are some really key things that leaders can
do at the start.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
It's interesting about mood. What can we do if we
know that the meeting is going to be a difficult
one in terms of the conversation that we're tackling. What
can we do to give that meeting the best chance
of success.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
Well, I think I'm going to circle back to what
I mentioned earlier about this idea of framing your agenda
as questions to be answered. So now when you submit
that agenda, you are signaling very clearly what's going to happen.
Most of these agendas actually don't really do a good
job signaling to people what's the critical matters. So I
(12:52):
think that that is a really useful strategy for getting
people ready to go and to participate.
Speaker 1 (12:59):
We'll be back with Stevens soon, and when we return,
he'll be sharing some of the quirkier, unique things that
you can do to engage people in a meeting and
what the biggest predictors of meeting satisfaction are. If you're
looking for more tips to improve the way you work
can live. I write a short weekly newsletter that contains
(13:19):
tactics I've discovered that have helped me personally. You can
sign up for that at Amantha dot com. That's Amantha
dot com. What else can we do during the meeting?
What are some of the more quirkier techniques that you've
seen to engage people and get the best out of people?
Speaker 2 (13:41):
So the silent one certainly is quirky, but I'll add
that interestingly, taking a break. You know, even if you
have a sixty minute meeting, taking a three minute break
in the middle of the meeting is quirky and really effective. Generally,
it does a couple of things. First of all, we
all know that people are technology addicted, so that little
break people can check their phones as opposed to doing
(14:02):
it during the meeting. Next, what typically happens when you
have a break is after that break, someone will say, hey,
I was also thinking about X right, Because typically meetings
are kind of like a runaway train. They get momentum,
and when you have a break, it breaks that momentum
and allows for other content to emerge. So that's another
(14:25):
interesting possibility that you can play with. The Other thing
that maybe is a little quirky that works is to
do some of these voting apps to test consensus. We
often rely on determining whether there's consensus based on the
loudest voices, and that's not effective. So if we quickly
stop and say, hey, you know, I want to get
a pulse of where folks are out. We're talking about
(14:47):
these three things, where's everyone out? Which ones do you support?
And do it via an app. That's a nice way
of really getting a good feel for things and figuring
out whether you could go in different directions. You can
also use that voting to say do you think we
need to keep talking about this? Are you ready to
make a decision?
Speaker 1 (15:05):
Right?
Speaker 2 (15:05):
So there's a lot of check ins that can happen
in a very safe way that allows you to be
a meeting leader that's sensitive to the broader dynamics, just
not the loudest voices.
Speaker 1 (15:16):
I love the idea of voting apps. It also makes
me think of very large meetings, But what is your
research found in terms of the optimal size for a.
Speaker 2 (15:24):
Meeting doesn't exist. There's no such thing as an optimal size.
It just always comes down to what you're trying to achieve,
and depending on what you're trying to achieve, that determines
the size. Now, if it is around decision making, you know,
once you start passing eight people, it's just hard to
truly facilitate. You have to be a very skilled facilitator
(15:46):
to bring out more voices. So that's something to keep
in mind. If the meeting is more of a tell
show questions than you know, like a town hall, then
those meetings can be really large because you're not really
looking for folks to deeply engage on the content. So
depending on what you're trying to achieve, that kind of
(16:07):
determines who needs to be there and who doesn't need
to be there.
Speaker 1 (16:11):
I'd love to know more about those town hall meetings
because you know, ideally, well, what you said is that
the facilitator of the meeting, the leader of the meeting,
would do best not to talk so much. But typically
in a town hall, the leaders talk a lot. So
what does a great townholl look like?
Speaker 2 (16:30):
We just have to remember what town halls do well
and what they do bad. They're not for discussion. So
the best town halls are just short and the best
town halls bring up critical issues and not the superficial issues,
because the superficial issues could just be handled via email
or you could record yourself talking. So if you're putting
(16:51):
people into a context where they're just going to be
listening to someone talk, I mean, just keep in mind that,
you know, our batteries for that are pretty darn low.
So keep it short, keep it really short.
Speaker 1 (17:06):
What does short mean? What is short?
Speaker 2 (17:08):
I think most town halls can be twenty minutes.
Speaker 1 (17:12):
That is a lot shorter than most town halls.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
I suspect, yeah, I agree.
Speaker 1 (17:17):
What is your opinion on AI tools in meetings? What
can help us and what can hinder?
Speaker 2 (17:25):
You know, I fully embrace it. I think there's lots
of possibilities. I think AI could be extremely helpful with
the scheduling of meetings, finding some good openings for folks
in thoughtful ways. I think AI is fantastic for capturing
the meeting notes. We've really gotten better at that. You know,
even the built in packages into Zoom what have you
(17:47):
does a great job capturing what are the key takeaways
from the meeting. It's awesome. I think AI excels with that,
which is great. Again as a way of managing number
of attendees. What I'm still struggling with is AI serving
in any type of facilitation role. So there are startups
(18:10):
that are playing with that. You know, where the AI
is putting real time feedback saying, hey, this person hasn't talked,
or here's who's talking the most, and the leader is
able to monitor that, you know, then there's AI saying
you know, actually prompting saying you know that might say
you KNOWMANTHD, what do you think? So I'm not as
(18:30):
keen on that. I want the meeting leader to do that.
I really do. I don't want to punt that to AI.
Over time, the AI facilitator is going to get better
and better and better. But I don't think that fundamentally
changes the need for the meeting leader to be thoughtful
in the design and execution of the meeting. So yeah,
(18:52):
I love use of AI definitely for scheduling and note taking,
though I think it's very, very helpful.
Speaker 1 (19:00):
I'd love to know about meeting satisfaction because that's something
that you've measured many, many times. What are the biggest
predictors of meeting satisfaction, some of which we might have covered,
But I'm wondering if there's other things that we haven't covered.
Speaker 2 (19:13):
So participation is a key one. Relevance of the meeting
is a key one. The leader facilitating definitely a key one.
The types of participation and listening of other attendees is
really important. And then interestingly, one of the better predictors
of meeting satisfaction is actually food. Yeah. Yeah, having food
(19:37):
and meetings seems to make people pretty darn excited. But
I would argue it's not the food in and of itself,
but food helps people make separation from what they were
doing before the meeting to the meeting itself, which I
think allows them to be more focused. Food can also
elevate mood into a more positive direction, which also can
(19:57):
lead to a more positive meeting. But yeah, snacks can
be helpful.
Speaker 1 (20:03):
What else can we do to elevate mood?
Speaker 2 (20:05):
Steven? You know, I think a meeting leader expressing appreciation
and gratitude set's a really key stage for that. Even
during trying and difficult times, we can always find opportunities
to express appreciation and gratitude. So I think starting these
types of engagements with those types of reflections can get
(20:28):
people in a really good headspace.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
Hm, I would love to explore what happens after the meeting,
like what is in our control after the meeting ends,
to make sure that it was time will spent.
Speaker 2 (20:44):
If the meeting has a proper ending, like I mentioned,
with things being recorded and DRIs being identified, the chances
of action happening is so much higher. So it really
comes down to that ending and doing it well. You know,
once that's documented, then the leader is very well positioned
(21:04):
to follow up and make sure that these things actually happen.
But so often at the end of the meeting, you know,
people are actually not clear what was decided, They're not
clear who's responsible, so action doesn't happen and leaders don't
follow up. So having that proper ending just increases the
chances of all those things happening.
Speaker 1 (21:24):
Are there ways that you encourage people to just keep
track on this was an action that came out of
the meeting, and so we need to track that or
do we just have trust?
Speaker 2 (21:35):
You know, I think trust is great and I think
should always be the lead strategy. But there's no reason
why the meeting outcomes can't be recorded into an asynchronous
document that everyone can look and track, and people can
provide updates of how what the progress they're making. So
I think that's perfectly fine action to take, and I
(21:59):
think people generally welcome it.
Speaker 1 (22:01):
I'd love to know from all the research that you
have done, what have been some of the more surprising
findings that you found in your research. Well.
Speaker 2 (22:09):
I think it's always surprising that agendas in and of
themselves do not improve meeting quality. I think that's something
that's surprising, but when people reflect, it's not much of
a surprise because so many agendas are just recycled meeting
to meeting. And then what matters more is what's on
the agenda, right, is it truly compelling? And what matters
even more is how you facilitate discussion of that agenda.
(22:32):
So this idea of just having a piece of paper
with topics isn't all that inspirational. This is why in
my book I titled the chapter agendas are a Hollow Crutch,
because so often leaders think by having an agenda that
they're a good meeting leader, and they're not. So that
to me is kind of a fun surprising finding. Another
(22:52):
I think interesting finding is to me has always been
this idea that when you survey people coming out of
a meeting, there is one person who says that was
really good, and that person is the leading leader, the
meeting leader. The meeting leader seems to have this inflated
sense of how well the meeting went, and why wouldn't
they right, they are talking as much as they want.
(23:15):
And so this disconnect, though, I think is really important
because given this disconnect, meeting leaders aren't all that motivated
to make many changes to how they run meetings because
they think it went pretty well. So overall, they generally
think the meeting problem is due to others, not themselves.
Speaker 1 (23:34):
How can we overcome that? How can we give leaders
a bit more of a clear idea of what's going on?
Speaker 2 (23:41):
Yeah, So, like I'm working with this company called Cairos.
Kairos and this Canadian company. They're really cool and basic.
What they do is they've created a solution where leaders
can actually see how they are at running meetings and
then they're given feedback and they're provided with tools and
tricks and tips to address the feedback they received. So
(24:05):
a technology solution, I think is a great way of
addressing the issue. But then there's lower fidelity solutions as well. So,
for example, the meeting leader can every once in a
while survey their people and ask them what's going well
not so well, and ideas for making the meetings better.
Speaker 1 (24:21):
Right.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
Meetings are shared experiences. Leaders know that people are frustrated
by meetings, so if you position yourself there's someone interested
in solving it. It's a great reflection on you.
Speaker 1 (24:31):
I love that advice, Steven. I am so glad that
you agreed to meet with me for a second time.
You are such a fountain of knowledge when it comes
to meetings, and I so appreciate your time. I hope
I've used it respectfully. I let you do most of
the talking, so I did that.
Speaker 2 (24:49):
Yeah, you're a great facilitator. I totally feel so, and
that's why I decided to do it again. So thank you,
appreciate it, and yeah, thank you for helping bring the
science to your audience.
Speaker 1 (24:59):
Thank you so much. I hope you love this chat
with Stephen as much as I did. There are definitely
a few strategies I think we can all implement into
our next meeting. If you want to learn more about Stephen,
you can check out his website Stepnogelberg dot com. He
has a ton of resources there to help you out
(25:20):
with your next meeting. As well as links to his books,
which are awesome and believe it or not, he doesn't
make a single cent from his book sales because he
donates everything he makes from them to cancer research. You
can find a link to his website in the show notes.
If you like today's show, make sure you get follow
on your podcast app to be alerted when new episodes drop.
(25:43):
How I Work was recorded on the traditional land of
the Warrangery people, part of the cool And Nation.
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