What Your Staff Meetings Say About Your Business
6 minute read.
I’ve been in a decent amount of meeting rooms in my life. Not as many as those managers who think that meetings are the answer to everything, certainly (more on them later). I don’t personally conflate meetings with automatic productivity, but I’ve been in a decent amount of them nonetheless. I’ve definitely been in a lot of training rooms. One of the benefits of being an external trainer is the exposure to different cultures, processes and attitudes I get to observe over a cross-section of businesses.
In my experience, the meeting room – and the training room alike – almost always serve as a microcosm of the overall business. Consequently, it’s amazing what 5 minutes of observation can tell you about the business as a whole.
A few of the patterns I would personally identify:
What time everyone arrives at the meeting says a lot about culture.
This one is probably the biggest, hence I’ve put it first. If everyone arrives in a timely fashion to a meeting or training session, it’s a good indicator that processes are taken fairly seriously by everyone. Further, especially if people are early, it tends to suggest that people are invested in their jobs; they want to be there; they see value in the meeting, and they respect their boss/es enough to give them their valuable time.
On the counter end, when people are consistently late, it says to me that they are arriving at the meeting or work as a prisoner rather than a volunteer. It’s an underlying passive aggressive defiance – sometimes directed towards their boss, sometimes out of apathy towards the whole company.
This one point alone gives you a lot of insight into the current state of the business. If people have not bought into their leaders, processes, product or culture, they won’t take meetings seriously enough to get there on time. Put another way, if I don’t care about what I’m doing, I’m not going to be in a rush to manage my time and arrive when I’m supposed to.
How many superfluous meetings are held says a lot about leadership…
Meetings can be fantastic – when they have a clear agenda, a defined process and actually achieve some outcomes. And yet, we have all been to a meeting that we left wondering what else we could have done with that hour or 3.
When we have a mountain of meetings but nothing ever seems to get done in them, in my experience it usually connects to one of the following traits of the leadership:
The leader has no idea how to lead. Someone told them there should be meetings, so they hold meetings. The holding of the meeting is the only outcome they’re looking for. This kind of incompetence usually transcends into other areas of their leadership and has a major impact on the business.
The leader has a big ego. They thrive on the control they have in being able to set meetings and demand that people listen to them. Usually means they’ll be rabbiting on about themselves. See also: Narcissistic leadership.
The leader has great intentions but is stuck in the ‘friend zone’ (see my article on the management friend zone here). Hence, they have a meeting where they want to achieve X, but because they don’t want to be impolite they let the team take over the meeting with jovial or unrelated discussion. Next thing we know, the meeting is over, we haven’t achieved what’s needed, so another meeting is set. The cycle continues. The whole company descends into a schedule full of meetings and incessant ‘busyness’.
…And then there’s the case where people don’t hold any meetings…
Worth mentioning also is the team that never holds any meetings. Interestingly, we tend to see the same representations of leadership here; the incompetent leader, the egotistical leader (this time the leader is simply far too busy to speak to the team right now); or the friend zone leader who feels bad about asking the team to set aside time for a meeting. No-meeting cultures tend to be a little more individualistic, with a lack of collaboration and accountability on part of the team.
How many people contribute in meetings says a lot about culture and leadership
Sometimes meetings are taken over by one or two particularly enthusiastic individuals. Everyone else can feel as though they’ve been taken hostage in this scenario, because they’re stuck in this room listening to these two people talk to each other and they aren’t allowed to leave because apparently it’s their meeting too and hopefully they’ll be set free soon.
If there is only a small portion of people who ever contribute to meetings or training sessions, this can speak volumes about the culture of a business. Does the majority feel as though they are allowed to contribute? Do they think their opinions will be respected or valued? Are they allowed to share a dissenting view? Or would this have a negative impact on their underlying social contracts with colleagues and superiors?
Needless to say, the companies that encourage everyone to speak up when they have something relevant to say, and don’t encourage the same people to speak for the sake of hearing their own voice, tend to have cultures that are more open, respectful and collaborative.
How the meeting ends says a lot about processes
When meetings have specific agenda points and end with specific action points or takeaways, they become valuable. In my experience, teams that hold their meetings this way seem to be more focused and outcome-oriented in general. They’re more likely to be consistent with processes, and during a meeting, they’ll say what they mean (because they know there’ll be action points set for it later). There is usually more of a culture of accountability with this kind of team – as opposed to the ‘ideas team’ that talks a big game in meetings knowing nothing will ever come to fruition. Ending a meeting with clarity and determined next steps shows that people are invested and focused on execution.
How long a meeting goes says a lot about priorities and leadership
I had a boss once who had the ability to turn what could be a 3-minute chat into a 3-hour meeting. When I wasn’t absorbed in the frustration this created, I was a little impressed by their meeting stamina.
The key point here is not that there is an ideal time span for internal meetings. Some meetings don’t need to be more than a few minutes long. Others should take an hour. Others still take even longer.
It all depends on what the purpose of the meeting is. However, when a designated time is set for the meeting, that time should be thoughtfully constructed in the first place (based on the purpose of the meeting). Accordingly, as far as possible one should stick to the time frame of the meeting. Meetings that consistently go way over time tend to indicate a lack of respect for people’s time, and leaders that propagate this kind of approach seem to demonstrate a lack of priorities and efficiency more generally.
There’s no perfect structure for how often, how long, or what’s covered in staff meetings. That’s going to depend on the goals and other elements specific to the industry, company, and team. It’s worth considering, though what kind of habits are being demonstrated in your own staff meetings – and what that might be able to tell you about the state of your team more broadly.
Can you think of any other observations you might make in a meeting that gives insight into the broader team or organisation?
Sonia
This blog post was originally posted on my training website, Statusone.com.au, on June 11, 2019. I have since been moving some of my favourite blog posts from there over to here, as this is now my ‘content hub’ and I want you to have access to some of the cool stuff I’ve written about before. You can still check out the Status One site if you’re interested in corporate training if you want. Also, don’t forget to sign up for the newsletter below for updates and weekly exclusive content.