 If it seems like you’re spending a good chunk of your work week in meetings, you’re not alone. Meetings have increased in both length and frequency over the past 50 years, according to an article published in the Harvard Business Review. One example: on average, executives spend nearly 23 hours a week in meetings, up from less than 10 hours in the 1960s. And yet, as we spend more of our work time in meetings, we don’t necessarily feel more connected or better prepared to do our work. The same Harvard Business Review article found that 54 percent of people surveyed by the authors said that meetings resulted in losses in productivity, collaboration and well-being. We’ve all been there. When meetings are too frequent and badly run, it may seem like we’re in a never-ending, awkward episode of The Office. We’ve all sat through gatherings where Co-worker Eddy kept going on irrelevant tangents and shared bad jokes. We left the conference room wishing we had the last 60 minutes of our life back.
If we’re honest, sometimes the fault is our own. We can all think of times when we weren’t prepared or forgot to bring needed materials that were critical to the discussion at hand. Or maybe we showed up late, again and again. Or we invited the wrong person to attend a meeting. Repeatedly. The deal is this, we’re going to waste time in meetings. It’s life. There are kids, parents, snow days, health concerns, and technology fails that are always going to affect the cost of meetings. But we can do something to curb the other stuff: the poor behavior, the lack of planning, no semblance of purpose, unprepared people. We can help the teams that are so disengaged, they sabotage themselves. We can build trust. We can help make a team feel like a team. We can work really hard. We can learn and grow. We can connect. We can celebrate. After all, meetings are at the intersection of work and people. Meetings are where individuals come together and form a team or group that gets things done. It makes sense that if we want to do better work together, we need better ways to meet. On March 13, I’ll be presenting “The Culture of Meeting,” as part of our local chamber’s Business Training series. I’ll be sharing observations and techniques for how to conduct better meetings and, in the process, improve your work culture and productivity. I hope you’ll join me in person. (You can get your tickets here.) But, if you can’t, stay tuned. I’ll be sharing some of what I’ve discovered and experienced right here on the Reach Partners blog and newsletter. #BetterMeetings are possible. Trust me. – Rachel
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