Are Your Meetings Productive? Meeting Hacks from 200 Scientific Articles

Did you know that ineffective meetings waste about $213 billion every year? In a scientific study, psychologists from the Universities of Nebraska and Clemson summarized the research findings from 200 publications on business meetings.
Think for a moment. Meetings often fail because they are rushed or because we don't give them enough importance. Here are the key tips (quoted from the study by Mroz, Allen, Verhoeven, & Shuffler, 2018):

Preparation of meetings

Call a meeting only when necessary.
Schedule meeting length to fit with meeting goals and avoid long meetings.
Keep meeting size small by only including those whose expertise/knowledge is required (subject matter experts, stakeholders).
Match technology to meeting objectives but do not over-engineer.
Set clear goals and desired outcomes for the meeting. Prepare an agenda, make it relevant and circulate it in advance.
Come prepared. Ensure your technology is working and ready to go prior to the meeting start time.

How to lead goal-oriented and effective meetings

Arrive early and on-time.
Avoid complaining, dominating communication behavior, and inappropriate statements.
Avoid doing unrelated activities and/or being uninvolved. Avoid distractions and multitasking during the meeting.
Follow an agenda that lays out clear goals and outcomes for the meeting
Allow attendees to participate in decision-making process.
Actively encourage everyone to participate. Intervene when interpersonal communication patterns become dysfunctional.

Follow-up of meetings

Summarize the meeting and send out meeting minutes, action items immediately following meeting (if relevant).
Right after the meeting, briefly assess meeting satisfaction and quality so that you can improve future meeting design.
Enhance the organization's ability to be reflective and self-critical in order to optimize meeting culture.

Download the scientific research paper here:
pdfs.semanticscholar.org

Go back