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Speaker 1: Professor Stephen Rogelberg is one of the world's leading experts

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Speaker 1: on workplace meetings, and he knows that one of the

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Speaker 1: biggest deciding factors on whether a meeting is successful or

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Speaker 1: not is the ability of the person leading the meeting.

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Speaker 1: Whether it's making the meeting all about themselves or failing

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Speaker 1: to plan in advance, there are plenty of pitfalls that

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Speaker 1: can undo a meeting for a leader. Additionally, there are

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Speaker 1: also some key traits that all successful meeting leaders have

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Speaker 1: in common, and Stephen is an expert on them. All.

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Speaker 1: Welcome to How I Work, a show about habits, rituals,

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Speaker 1: and strategies for optimizing your day. I'm your host, doctor

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Speaker 1: Amantha Imber. In today's quick Win episode, I speak with

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Speaker 1: Stephen Rogelberg about what the best meeting leaders have in common,

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Speaker 1: that some people make when running a meeting and the

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Speaker 1: different kinds of strategies a good meeting leader can use

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Speaker 1: to get the best results.

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Speaker 2: Well, let me frame it this way and our research

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Speaker 2: the best meeting leaders appear to have something in common,

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Speaker 2: and what they have in common is a similar mindset,

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Speaker 2: and that mindset is a mindset of stewardship. They're a

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Speaker 2: steward of others' time. The thought of people leaving their

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Speaker 2: meetings saying it was a waste is so uncomfortable to

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Speaker 2: them that they act with intentionality. And this intentionality is

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Speaker 2: instead of just you know, dialing the meeting in using

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Speaker 2: default calendar settings, right, you're making choices. You're saying, Okay,

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Speaker 2: I'm having this meeting, this is how long I think

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Speaker 2: it should be, this is who must be there. So

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Speaker 2: you're just being intentional. And furthermore, one of the things

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Speaker 2: I talk about in my book is this idea of

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Speaker 2: a pre mortem, and a pre mortem is where you

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Speaker 2: start to think about what are the potential challenges and

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Speaker 2: problems that could arise in the meeting? And given that,

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Speaker 2: how should I design the meeting? And so it's just

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Speaker 2: stepping back and giving it a little bit of thought.

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Speaker 2: And interestingly, we act with intentionality all the time when

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Speaker 2: we're meeting with important stakeholders because we don't want those

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Speaker 2: people to leave the meeting saying that was a waste

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Speaker 2: of time. But we typically don't act with intentionality when

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Speaker 2: it comes to meeting with our peers or directs. So

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Speaker 2: this intentionality is just saying, all right, people are giving

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Speaker 2: me the biggest gift. They have their time, so how

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Speaker 2: can I honor that time? And so the decisions are

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Speaker 2: you know, tightness of invites ordering of the agenda, right,

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Speaker 2: hit the most important things first, you know, not the

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Speaker 2: superficial stuff.

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Speaker 1: Right.

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Speaker 2: Keep the meeting as short and tight as possible. You

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Speaker 2: can always find more time to meet. But we know

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Speaker 2: from Parkinson's law that work expands to fill whatever time

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Speaker 2: is a lot to do it, So keep it tight,

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Speaker 2: you'll get it done. And those are some really important

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Speaker 2: intentional design factors to keep in mind.

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Speaker 1: What else have you found that the best meeting leaders

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Speaker 1: have in common?

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Speaker 2: So that's the main one, but then there's other ones

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Speaker 2: that fall from that. For example, facilitation when one of

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Speaker 2: the best predictors of people's perceptions of an ineffective meeting

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Speaker 2: is the leader doing more talking than the attendees. The

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Speaker 2: more the leader talks, the more the ratings go down.

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Speaker 2: And that makes a heck of a lot of sense, right,

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Speaker 2: because the leader is supposed to be facilitating. That's their job, right.

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Speaker 2: They've called this party together and their job is to

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Speaker 2: get these voices out. It doesn't mean that they can't

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Speaker 2: talk during it, but mean it does mean that they

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Speaker 2: shouldn't be dominating because they invited people. If they dominate,

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Speaker 2: the meeting could have just been an email. So that

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Speaker 2: propensity to facilitate is really critical. And what underlies that

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Speaker 2: is this desire to listen right, to truly engage. And

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Speaker 2: and then the other characteristic of really good meeting leaders

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Speaker 2: is they understand that meetings need an end. Ding. So

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Speaker 2: we know meetings end, right, everything ends, but an ending

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Speaker 2: is something different, right. An ending is where you stop

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Speaker 2: three to five minutes before the end and you say, okay,

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Speaker 2: well did we actually decide and for each of these things,

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Speaker 2: who is the dri the directly responsible individual and what

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Speaker 2: did we not decide? You know, so we know that

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Speaker 2: these are things that we have to discuss at another time.

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Speaker 2: At the same time, during this ending, you're recording this

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Speaker 2: key information so your non attendees can stay in the loop.

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Speaker 2: So that is another key thing that really differentiates excellent

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Speaker 2: meeting leaders from not so excellent meeting leaders.

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Speaker 1: What else can we do during a meeting to get

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Speaker 1: the best outcome, whether that be facilitation techniques that work,

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Speaker 1: or other strategy that you found.

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Speaker 2: I mean, facilitation is absolutely the most key, but you

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Speaker 2: know there's lots of different ways to have a meeting,

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Speaker 2: and so, for example, silence in meetings is phenomenal. The

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Speaker 2: research shows that when people brainstorm in silence typing directly

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Speaker 2: into their computers, they generate nearly twice as many ideas,

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Speaker 2: and the ideas tend to be more creative, right because

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Speaker 2: everyone can talk at once and you're not influenced by

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Speaker 2: that very first thing you hear. So a meeting leader

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Speaker 2: can say, okay, depending on what we're trying to solve,

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Speaker 2: maybe silent brainstorming could be really meaningful. Again, depending on

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Speaker 2: what you want to solve, Sometimes a standing meeting is

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Speaker 2: really a helpful. Standing meetings generally take half as much

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Speaker 2: time and yield the same quality decisions. You might choose

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Speaker 2: to get people into pairs before the conversation. What we've

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Speaker 2: found is that when you tell people, hey, again, to

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Speaker 2: pairs and start to talk about this problem or issue

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Speaker 2: for just three minutes and then we'll all come together.

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Speaker 2: When you do that and then you return to the

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Speaker 2: big group, people are participating, right, you've kind of greased

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Speaker 2: the rails. So that's another technique that could be super helpful.

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Speaker 2: So there's lots of choices, and that's I think a

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Speaker 2: really key takeaway for your listeners is that we need

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Speaker 2: meeting leaders to think about things and make choices. You know,

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Speaker 2: we have around a billion meetings a day around the

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Speaker 2: globe and they generally all look the same. That's not good, right,

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Speaker 2: Let's mix it up. Let's change it up and position

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Speaker 2: yourself as a leader as part of the solution, as

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Speaker 2: opposed to being part of the problem.

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Speaker 1: I hope you enjoyed this little quick win with Steven.

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Speaker 1: If you'd like to listen to the full interview, you

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Speaker 1: can find a link to that in the show notes.

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Speaker 1: If you like today's show, make sure you get follow

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Speaker 1: How I Work was recorded on the traditional land of

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Speaker 1: the Warrangery People, part of the Cooler Nation

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Speaker 2: Two