Center for Meeting Effectiveness

These interviews are customized, structured sessions concerning individual meeting experiences. For the needs assessment, the interviews provide a robust window into individual-level experiences in meetings before training/intervention. The post-training sessions provide reactions to the training and individual-level descriptions of changes resulting from the training. Additional interviews are often required to obtain a clear picture of the organizational meeting culture.

An expert meeting observer attends a team meeting and uses a checklist to identify best practices and problematic behaviors. Team leaders receive a one-page summary of the observation identifying things to start doing, stop doing, and continue doing. These are used during the needs assessment to identify patterns of behavior that require attention during training. These are also used post-training to determine how effectively skills are transferred into the team setting and to assist with coaching sessions.

The CME meeting climate survey uses validated, reliable metrics for assessing individual- and team-level meeting experiences. The survey is administered as part of the needs assessment and post-training evaluation to provide a benchmark and measure change for a variety of key performance indicators, including meeting load metrics (such as meetings per day/week) and meeting experience metrics (such as satisfaction/effectiveness of meetings).

In our customized workshops, we use the knowledge we gain about your organization to provide best practices, tips, and tricks about how to improve meeting experiences and address meeting overload. Each workshop includes instruction and demonstration. We conclude each session with a reflective process that allows for building individual and team intervention strategies, which creates buy-in from all participants. An expert meeting observer attends a team meeting and uses a checklist to identify best practices and problematic behaviors. Team leaders receive a one-page summary of the observation identifying things to start doing, stop doing, and continue doing. These are used during the needs assessment to identify patterns of behavior that need attention during training. These are also used post-training to determine how effectively skills are transferred into the team setting and to assist with coaching sessions.

Each team has its own meeting culture that usually has some similarities to and differences from other teams within the same organization. As such, we offer team coaching sessions where we take a deep dive into a team’s meeting experiences and flow. These sessions are usually paired with a meeting observation or two to provide appropriate background for the coaching session.

Many of the organizations we work with want one-on-one coaching for their executive team or for specific team leaders. In these sessions, we discuss the leaders’ experiences in meetings, identify key issues they are dealing with, and provide science-based recommendations for how to proceed with their meetings. For team leaders, we often recommend a meeting observation to be paired with a coaching session.

As meeting scientists, we also specialize in data composition, analysis, and interpretation. For the Adaptive Improvement Model services, we complete a needs assessment report and a final comparative analysis report after the post assessment. All analyses are included. However, clients often request additional analyses on data we collect or analyses/interpretation of their in-house data. For these requests, we base our cost structure on a sliding scale depending on the complexity and skills needed for analysis and interpretation.

Our software uses calendar data and a feedback system to obtain objective and subjective experiences with meetings. This, paired with AI-based coaching, allows us to identify and resolve meeting weaknesses.

Meeting design

• Call a meeting only when necessary
• Schedule meeting length to fit with meeting goals; avoid long meetings
• Keep meeting size small by only including those whose expertise/knowledge is required
• Match technology to meeting objectives—use rich media (such as videoconferencing, teleconferencing) for virtual attendees

Leader and attendee responsibilities

• Set clear goals and desired outcomes for the meeting
• Prepare an agenda and circulate it in advance
• Make sure the meeting is relevant to everyone invited
• Come prepared by reviewing agenda
• Ensure technology is working and ready to go prior to the meeting

Attendee responsibilities

• Arrive early (or on time)
• Avoid complaining, dominating communication behavior, inappropriate verbal statements
• Avoid doing unrelated activities and/or non-participation
• Appropriately use mute functions and limit background noise (virtual)
• All attendees have their cameras on (virtual)
• Speak up if meeting technology/software is not properly functioning (hybrid)

Leader responsibilities

• Follow an agenda that lays out clear goals and outcomes for the meeting
• Start the meeting on time
• Avoid distractions, multitasking during the meeting
• Allow attendees to participate in decision-making process. If a decision is already made, let everyone know
• Actively encourage everyone to participate
• Intervene when interpersonal communication patterns become dysfunctional
• Provide instructions on how to access the virtual meeting space (virtual)
• Acknowledge comments in the chat (virtual)
• Ask for feedback from online participants throughout the meeting (hybrid)

Short term

• Send meeting minutes, action items out immediately following conclusion
• Briefly assess meeting satisfaction, quality immediately following conclusion to inform future meeting design

Long term

• Incorporate meeting satisfaction as a component of organization-wide employee engagement/satisfaction surveys
• Have leaders critically examine routine meetings to determine their necessity and value