This article was first posted on LinkedIn in October 2019.
During our professional life, most of us have attended hundreds, if not thousands, of meetings. Meetings are part of work and corporate culture, particularly in the US. According to Steven Rogelberg, an organizational psychologist at the University of North Carolina, most professionals attend approximately 15 meetings a week. The best estimates suggest that there are about 55 million meetings a day in the US alone.
There are about 55 million meetings a day in the US alone.
Steven Rogelberg
The 3 Syndromes
In many meetings, the shared goal is for participants to identify a set of solutions and agree on the best one. There are usually a few recurring issues with those meetings:
- The Smartest-Person-In-The-Room Syndrome. Some participants might feel the need to score points with the boss or the team by proposing solutions that sound smart. Their goal is not to find the best solution or to contribute to a better understanding of the issue. They want to impress others and to increase their authority by pushing the meeting toward their proposals. Their ideas look intelligent and smart only in the limited and peculiar context of a meeting. In any less scripted context, the same ideas would be easily dismissed with a simple, common-sense sentence. Often, the result of such meetings is a low-quality choice or a sub-optimal decision that pleases the egos of those involved and temporarily consolidates their authority.
- The Compromise-At-Any-Cost Syndrome. Reaching consensus among participants on a single solution or decision requires a compromise among competing options. There are reasonable compromises and bad compromises. A good compromise is when the adopted solution has a better pro-con ratio than each candidate solution. Typically, as the meeting approaches the end, the pressure to reach a compromise rises. The focus gradually shifts from selecting the best solution to choosing the most inclusive option, the one that minimizes the number of people or departments in disagreement. The result is often an unfortunate compromise that brings together everybody at the expense of the quality and effectiveness of the adopted solution.
- The Fake-Decision-Process Syndrome. According to Jen Sandler, an anthropologist at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, the meeting is often not where a team really makes decisions. It is instead a place where a boss, clearly lacking self-confidence, simulates a consensus-building process to impose their choices. The meeting facilitator moves the team toward an apparent consensus by rewarding contributions, aligning with the pre-selected outcome, and dismissing all contrary opinions and observations. Those meetings passively confirm a decision made by someone else beforehand while spreading responsibility among all participants.
The Cure
Clearly, it’s not a conference room etiquette issue. There are easy ways to avoid those three common meeting-room syndromes. I’m not talking about conference room design guidelines or seating protocol for meetings. Here are the best recommendations I was able to gather:
- Make sure that everybody has access, within a reasonable timeframe, to the detailed meeting agenda and to complete information about the topics to be discussed. Steven Rogelberg recommends framing the agenda not as a list of topics to discuss, but as questions to answer. Before starting the meeting, check that everybody has read the documentation and is fully aware of the agenda.
- Invite the right people. Think about who should be in the meeting, based on what will be discussed and what decisions will be made. Make sure the expertise you need is present by inviting the right people for the task.
- Create an environment focused on collaboration that welcomes and encourages honest, constructive confrontation. Facilitate a frank discussion in which ideas are evaluated on their merits, not on the authority of the originator. Pursuing a non-confrontational approach at any cost can deprive the meeting of any value. According to Priya Parker, a group-conflict-resolution facilitator, unhealthy peace can be as threatening to human connection as unhealthy conflict.
- Always set a clear goal for the meeting. “Monday Afternoon Sales Meeting” is not a purpose; it’s a category. The more specific you are, the more likely the meeting will reach a decision, possibly a good one. Priya Parker recommends limiting the agenda to topics that can’t be discussed effectively by email or chat.
- Set a maximum duration for the meeting (possibly less than one hour). Do not extend the meeting over the scheduled length. According to Steven Rogelberg, psychological research shows that a little bit of pressure can increase focus on optimal performance. If the meeting did not reach consensus by the end of the allotted time, close the meeting and schedule a new one with a more specific agenda and, when possible, with only a subset of participants.
The reputation of meetings is so poor that many people simply avoid holding them, such as Mark Cuban and Elon Musk. Some companies have instituted no-meeting days to give employees a chance to do their work without being pulled into the conference room.
In a meeting, unhealthy peace can be as threatening to human connection as unhealthy conflict.
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