Steven Rogelberg is an expert on something that takes place 55 million times per day – meetings.
Rogelberg is a professor of Organizational Science at the University of North Carolina- Charlotte, and his latest book is The Surprising Science of Meetings: How You Can Lead Your Team to Peak Performance.
Rogelberg is featured In the latest Pinkcast, and shares three tips for how to make meetings more effective – separate, stand, and shrink.
Separation means to create a clear separation between your job/task and the meeting. This can be done by having the leader being a good host, having snacks, playing music.
Standing suggests that you mix up a meeting, and offers some suggestions on how to do so. If you normally sit at a meeting, stand; have a walking meeting; brainstorm in silence.
Shrink refers to cutting the length of a meeting. Instead of going with the standard one-hour meeting (thanks to Outlook!), schedule the meeting for 48 minutes. Rogelberg mentions Parkinson’s Law, which states that work expands to fill whatever time is allotted to it. So if a meeting is one hour, it will take one hour. So take advantage of this law by setting a shorter time for the meeting, and even then, try and cut back some more to create some pressure. Research shows that teams perform better when they are under a bit of pressure.
I’ve written about meetings a few times:
Why Does Everyone Hate Meetings?
Time IS of the Essence, Apparently
Rogelberg adds to the list by providing some fresh insight on how to plan and execute a successful meeting.
Rogelberg offers his tips in an easy to understand manner, and seems to be a good storyteller.
OK, time to go, I told myself I would stop at 10:15, and it now 10:15 (at night; if it were during the day I probably would be going to a meeting.)
Here’s the Pincast interview:
Borden's Blather 