Escaping from drudgery: how to make meetings useful

The tone used in meetings is important, but potentially tricky. While joking can help lighten the atmosphere and bring useful informality, there can be a fine line between humour and inappropriate comments or micro-aggressions.  

As it is now commonplace to have hybrid meetings, where some participants are in person while others are Zooming in from elsewhere, managers face a greater challenge of ensuring that everyone feels included. It’s easier for someone remote to feel disengaged – or to disengage themselves – compared to someone sitting with the manager and other co-workers in the same room. Those less-engaged individuals may miss out on expressing their voice and opinion, and there is also an enhanced risk that they won’t be recognised for their contributions to collective work. 

“Our research during the pandemic found that the rise in low-quality meetings reflected employees multitasking during meetings, such as checking emails while half-listening to the conversation,” says Thomas. “Low-quality meetings translate to lower productivity, and multitasking can raise stress levels because employees aren’t really focusing and mastering one task, so that can increase anxiety even if it’s through the employee’s own multitasking action.” 

This research with the Vitality Research Institute, as outlined in another MIT Sloan Management Review article, found a 7.4% average increase in the number of meetings from June 2020 to December 2021, during the heart of the pandemic, but there was also a decrease in the average number of hours spent collaborating with others even though the total hours worked hardly changed. The research was based on a study of more than 1,000 employees of wellness and financial firm Vitality across all business units and 4 locations in the UK. 

While that research found a short-term boost of productivity during the pandemic, owing mostly to the reduction in commuting times due to home working, what soon emerged was a “subtle shift in work practices – the way we collaborate, communicate, and manage”, the article said, adding that “those almost imperceptible changes had direct consequences for employee wellbeing”. 

Regular one-to-one meetings with other team members can be very useful to managers and other employees, as it’s important to know what people are working on, what enthuses them, and which tasks are less enjoyable – as adjustments can be made that fit both individual and organisational needs. 

But knowing what people do on the job is just one aspect of knowing the person. While it’s important to mind the line between curiosity and intrusion, there are proper ways to inquire about a person’s hobbies or other interests outside of work. Sharing one’s own interests (like a favourite sports team, or recommended book) can help get others to open up in reciprocity.  

Such discussions about hobbies and other off-work interests may be more difficult in large teams or when people work in different countries and different time zones, so Thomas suggests checking with people on what check-in scheduling works best for them – whether week, monthly or otherwise – and managers also need to ensure that they don’t overload themselves with such meetings. 

An academic article cited by Thomas in the book chapter finds that showing reciprocity and the building of reciprocal norms matter in inter-organisational matters by building trust, including the role of both small and large actions in the trust process. For example, people can commit to tasks if they see others doing so in a fair way. Meeting intelligence relies on the ability to attribute tasks while recognising the load of every participant. 

“The trust literature has treated reciprocity in general terms, as a simple response, stating merely that trust is a reciprocal process whereby trust builds incrementally when trust is given,” said that academic paper, which focused on trust-building in an inter-organisational project in the construction industry. “However, reciprocity may have a more profound role in the trust development process. 

“Reciprocity is defined as a social norm that dictates that an action performed by one party requires a repayment by the other and concerns both expectations and behaviour. Reciprocity is different from trust since reciprocity does not concern benevolence but is merely an expectation of behaviour. The desire to uphold the norm of reciprocity may then lead to trust and commitment because positive reciprocity contributes to the building of positive expectations.” 

Says Thomas: “Reciprocity is a core concept in organisation theory, because we are hardwired to help when we have been helped ourselves. This creates a positive cycle.  

“Meetings can play a key role in building trust among individuals and across entire teams by sharing knowledge, taking stock of what has been done well or less well, and setting up a plan to move forward.”

As the book chapter says, echoing the coffee mug: “We’ve all been in meetings that could have been an email!” Managers should thus establish a purpose for a meeting beforehand, and be transparent about the goals of such a meeting through an advance agenda.  

Thomas and his co-author say the 3 key purposes of a meeting often revolve around: 

1. motivating a team in terms of culture and identity (addressing the question ‘what makes us special and unique?’), and helping to “maintain the team’s stamina when an objective seems distant” 
2. allocating tasks, including who can best execute a plan 
3. brainstorming, or solving complex problems and situations 

“On this last point, it’s really important that such meetings allow all employees to think creatively about an issue when the solution isn’t obvious,” says Thomas. “We urge managers to reduce bounded rationality or a person’s cognitive limits by collecting the views of a broader range of individuals. Meeting participants who are able to think freely and express those thoughts freely can identify the blind spot in another person’s thinking – including the manager’s thinking.” 

The reason for keeping to a time limit is clear: rambling meetings that go on seemingly forever are not only a waste of time for participants, but they can make people dread the prospect of a future meeting and end up being stressed about what remains undone on their to-do list in the meantime. 

And remember that knowing the purpose of a meeting, while essential, is not sufficient. It can be very frustrating to attend a meeting that ends at no real conclusion or practical way forward. The result of such inconclusive meetings is often, to head-shaking by disillusioned participants, yet another meeting. So Thomas stresses that the purpose of a meeting should be accompanied by an understanding of what realistically can be accomplished within the established time frame. 

As with parties, invitations to meetings can be tricky – not everyone can or should be invited, though omission can lead to hurt feelings. A clear policy on meeting invitations is therefore useful: invite the best people to share ideas on the specific agenda point, the people best placed to make decisions on the agenda item, and the best people to act upon the decisions taken. 

“Such a policy may not eliminate mistakes as it is not always obvious who needs to be invited, but it explains to everyone in the organisation that there is a policy for meeting invitations and it has been adopted in the interest of time-efficiency and the best way to make and implement decisions,” says Thomas. “Of course, such a system will work only if managers know their organisations thoroughly in order to determine the best people to invite for insight, decision-making and implementation.” 

As apprentices in all trades learn from masters, people new to conducting meetings can learn a lot from those more experienced – so Thomas suggests asking if you can be invited to meetings chaired by another more experienced meeting chair. “Watch, listen and take notes,” he says. There is plenty to be learnt on how to enable participants to a meeting, and create a culture of mutual exchange. 

Meeting intelligence is like a muscle. Paying attention to feedback from those at your own chaired meetings can help develop the skill. “Soliciting participant feedback in your meetings can also help demonstrate that participants’ points of view matter to you and make them feel appreciated,” says the book chapter. “This can be combined with honest self-assessment – observing what engaged your participants, what topics triggered them, and how they reacted to your input.”