Americans average six hours per week in meetings. And managers especially spend considerably more time in them. But attendees rate as many as half of the meetings they attend as “poor,” and organizations in the US waste an estimated $213 billion on ineffective meetings annually.
Americans average six hours per week in meetings. And managers especially spend considerably more time in them. But attendees rate as many as half of the meetings they attend as “poor,” and organizations in the US waste an estimated $213 billion on ineffective meetings annually.
What are the keys to effective meetings? Researchers at the University of Nebraska and Clemson University reviewed almost 200 scientific studies of meetings published in the last decade. Their conclusions, published last year in a Current Directions in Psychological Science journal article, offer a roadmap for getting meetings right.
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Based on their review of the science of meetings , here is a checklist:
Meeting Design
Leader and attendee responsibilities
The decisions made prior to a meeting set it up for success. What happens during the meeting is where the real challenge of meeting effectiveness comes into play.
Attendee responsibilities
Leader responsibilities
Much of what we do and think is influenced by the social context and the behavior of others. So, meeting success will be largely shaped by those around us.
Research shows that actions taken well after a meeting ends can make or break attendees’ perceptions of meeting success.
Short term
Long term
Attendees’ satisfaction with meetings isn’t useful only for improving the efficiency of meetings. It’s also a significant predictor of employee job satisfaction and engagement at work.
