Why we secretly love meetings

But they create psychological safety. Everyone feels like they can speak up, and if someone is left out or pissed off, other people pick up on that and bring that person back into the conversation.

Teams that do this succeed because people feel comfortable enough to throw out crazy ideas instead of self-censoring. Great ideas can come of it. What do you think? Less meetings or messy meetings? Tell us what works for you! What started as a battlefield repair tool has truly become an iconic American fix-all, helping DIYers and professional contractors out…. Why am I even here? Sound familiar? Every time your employees pull up their work calendars, they feel an overwhelming sense of dread.

Their to-do list is piling up but their workday hours seem to be decreasing. Unfortunately, this is the reality for many workers, especially since the pandemic has resulted in people spending more time in meetings. When employees are forced to sit through a pointless meeting, they get frustrated and need to cool off afterwards. This leads to debriefing and commiserating with colleagues, which compounds frustration and actually makes the meeting anxiety worse.

Cutting back on the number of meetings your team has to deal with each week can be a game changer for someone who already has way too much on their plate.

The National Bureau of Economic Research found that since the onset of the pandemic, the number of meetings per person has increased by Additionally, due to this increase in meetings, the length of the average work day has increased by With so many people working from home, companies have often defaulted to holding meetings to keep in touch.

The results showed that people tend to multitask more often in recurring meetings than ad-hoc meetings. These are obviously not productive or effective meetings that are having a real impact. Next, you need to figure which of those meeting types are deemed valuable, and in what context. If ad-hoc check-ins are happening multiple times a day, it can seriously damage productivity and lead to anxiety and exhaustion.

Cutting down the number of meetings and ensuring the right people are in the meeting are great places to start. Here are a few other common reasons why meetings may be unnecessary, whether pre-planned or ad-hoc:. Looking for more insights? We also share guidance for how to make each one async. In order to radically change and save your culture from dissatisfaction and burnout, you need to take a top-down approach and practice what you preach.

Work-life balance is extremely important. The first option is to institute company-wide meeting-free weeks except for a few critical meetings that are valuable, if absolutely needed.

Now, your team has an entire week that can be completely dedicated to deep work with little to no interruptions. Deep work means that your team can actually focus on one task for an extended period of time—distraction-free. This leads to higher quality work in a shorter amount of time. Perhaps the first half of each day is dedicated to distraction-free work while afternoons are open for meetings.

Or, consider this: data shows that people prefer to schedule meetings around mid-morning, from 10ampm. However, with this option, the times may vary from employee to employee.

For example, say your employee, Jane, has to pick her kids up from school around 2pm, but she continues working when they return home.

Jane may prefer to hold meetings earlier in the day while her kids are at school. On the opposite end of the spectrum, Melissa has made a habit of going to her local coffee shop for deep work every morning. There can be periods of silence to give everyone the chance to think or read together. The point is: meetings do not have to be what meetings always have been. An intriguing study in the MIT Sloan Management Review found that most employees had complained to colleagues about meetings.

However, most of these complainants also admitted in private that they did not hate meetings as much as they said publicly. Maybe one hidden benefit of meetings is that they give us something to complain about together. Five reasons we secretly love meetings. British workers waste hours a week in meetings, according to a new survey. How much do we really hate meetings?