Lessons - Your Company Culture Is Killing Itself | Dr. Steven G. Rogelberg - Chancellor’s Professor at UNC Charlotte

In this lessons episode, discover how bad meetings are silently sabotaging your company culture and draining your top talent. Learn why ineffective meeting habits emerge, the hidden costs they bring, and how to foster a culture of intentional productive meetings that drive innovation and results. So I'm very curious because you're you are an organizational psychologist. That's the that's the that's the term used to describe that the work you do. So you study organizations, you study companies, but I'm assuming you also can very easily understand how an individual action in an organization and what causes them to do. A certain thing that's that's the premise of your work really, but I'm curious if bad meetings and bad corporate culture is is that something that is accidental or would you say that in some cases this horrible meeting culture is really just to make people feel busy and to make people feel like they're doing something and I again I'm equating it to these large companies where you can hide under the rate. Are as long as you've seen to have some activity not start up where if you are contributing everybody knows it if the meetings aren't moving the needle everybody knows it because you're not hitting your revenue milestones you're not closing your next round you you see that often or is that just an edge case. So we actually have some research on that I'm sure you do and and what we found and it's pretty horrible is that those employees who are low in something called accomplishments driving. These are people who tend not to be very goal oriented for people like that the more meetings the better they actually derive satisfaction they feel better about their days and their jobs when they're having meetings, but this is for the people who aren't goal oriented and to no surprise those people who aren't goal oriented those are your worst performers not your best performance course yeah. For those people who are goal oriented high accomplishment striving yeah meetings have a take a toll yeah and it drains them fatigues them and I think what a lot of organizations just don't realize is that. The cost of bad meetings is not something they should ignore it's not just the cost of doing business it's highly problematic you will lose your top talent right top talent lease organizations that have bad meetings you will disengage your people you will create tons of rework more meetings to resolve uncompleted noncompleted meetings uncompleted meetings. In fact there was even a study done that looked at organizations that really do a great job in their meetings and this is small as well as large and what they found is that those organizations that do prioritize doing meetings well actually we're making more money they actually were more innovative and. So it just speaks to the effect that while we think about meetings is being places of drain and it can be meetings done well are actually places of gain not just for people but for teams and for the broader organization and you've and I think that you know you mentioned in most corporate cultures are a lot of corporate cultures. You walk into these horrible meeting scenarios where there's only one person that walks away but you have been anybody who's listening to this has been in these meetings where you do feel consensus and you do feel communication was clear and articulate and action steps were very very tangible and you all walk away knowing exactly what you do. You also everybody who's listening to this will also have those times when they all go to a meeting and it seems like an hour of your life just like boof like gone and nothing is clear and I I guess we don't all we're not all low performers or people that aren't goal oriented but we always sometimes you fall into these traps. And I think it's maybe because we don't have the system sort of you know you know this we fall to the level of our systems and to the level of our preparation so you know we don't have these systems we get tired and we get fatigued and then we go into a meeting or you know we're well meaning but then nothing really gets communicate like it literally happened to me yesterday we had a meeting on Monday. It should have rectified a whole bunch of stuff and then we had to and then in the WhatsApp chat we're talking about it nobody's clear on anything we had another hour and a half yesterday like this is this this drains people and this is a tangible hourly cost attributed to that meeting. So let's talk about what like what good is because we're going to go we're going to go deep we're going to talk about meetings and then I know your latest book is focusing on one-on-ones and we will go there as well and why those are so important and talk about how to do those properly because I think they're probably another level of nuance that's required for a leader who doesn't even get trained on how to do a group meeting how do you go into this one-on-one session that's a whole other ball game. Let's talk about just like set this set to stage what is good look like if you're looking at all these different companies that you study and these different organizations like I see in the news you know Shopify put a dollar counter on their meetings that's interesting. I mean you hear the things like I don't know if it's Amazon or Tesla with Mosque you can't have a meeting that's more than you know the amount of people that could eat a pizza or whatever it goes home. Yeah that Amazon. Okay so what is what is good look like good is a meeting that where what is being discussed is highly relevant to everyone in that room. That the people who are invited were invited because they have a perspective on what's being talked about their voice matters. So they look at the content ago I'm really glad I'm there so that's obviously the key so it's the right topic the right people in the room not bloated not extra people not nice to have but keep it folks on must have. Then the leader starts the meeting sharing a vision and set of hopes around the meeting the meeting leader thanks people for attending and expresses gratitude because when people give you their time you should be grateful for it so therefore it kind of starts in a more positive tone. Then the leader is actively facilitating they're making sure they're not privileging their voice over everyone else's in fact they're trying to foster constructive conflict we want disagreement of ideas. And they're focused on the most important items in fact they've structured the agenda so that the most important things happen first not at the end. And so they're actively engaging they've set the stage they've created the norms people are invested because it's all relevant to them right they're invested because the room isn't just stacked and stacked with other bodies so they're dialed in. And then the meeting has a proper close and this goes to your comment that you made about your meeting a very common problem is that meetings don't have an ending they just end. And the best practice is five minutes to go in the meeting the leader stops and just says okay here's what we decided here's who the DRIs are which is Apple talk for directly responsible individual here's our outstanding issues and this is how we'll pursue completion of those. Therefore everyone goes saying okay this has been resolved this has been resolved this is still in progress great those points could then be communicated to all those nice to have people that we kept out of the meeting because we want to respect their time so we're now keeping them in the loop effectively. So that gives you a sense of what a good meeting happen happen what good meeting looks like and when you have those you're good like you're glad to be there yeah and so you know I I almost go back to let's say professional American football right there's meetings all the time I love the sports analogies it bleeds over all the time to right. Every play on offense there's a meeting that team could not do their job if they didn't huddle and have a meeting and quarterbacks received trading on how to have those huddles to make that short amount of time really productive and it can be and so if you have a clear sense of purpose you have the right people there you're focused you are dialed in right because even at the end of the huddle there's a proper conclusion. That's more or less that is the proper meeting that's the format and it actually you know it's funny it doesn't seem incredibly intricate and complicated but it seems like it has lost on a lot of people is it is it personalities of individuals that take over a meeting when there is no de facto system is that usually how yeah okay it just becomes chaos. And but I want to I want to build on your first your your preamble to your question because I think it's a really important thing you hit upon which is there's a lack of intentionality when it comes to meetings and we just invite people in fact we over invite people and then we dial it in we're an auto pilot when it comes to meetings but here's the really intriguing thing. Is that we're not an auto pilot when we're meeting with stakeholders that really matter to us when we meet with our bosses boss when we meet with a key customer we're very intentional the thought of those people leaving the meeting saying was a waste of time is so disconcerting to us that we make sure that the meeting is a good use of time but when we meet with our directs and our peers that same level intentionality just goes away. And in my books I talk about this notion of stewardship at the best meeting leaders recognize that inherently there are steward of others time and when you embrace that notion the thought of people leaving your experience saying that was a waste is so disconcerting to you that you will make sure it's not you and amazingly being a good steward can just take a couple minutes of time with practice and I want to make a connection to you. You are in the business of being a good steward I'm thinking of it as you say it yes. You know as a podcast host very successful podcast you are prepared you think about it you don't overthink it right and as we were designing this it's not like you created this script that we have to follow but you thought about it you thought about the story you thought about how to involve me where to tap into my expertise right you were intentional and I was suspect given your level of experience it didn't take much time. But that few minutes of intentionality elevates the entire experience and then we're done we say that was a satisfying meaningful experience. Thanks for tuning in if you found this valuable don't forget to hit that subscribe button so you never miss an episode and if you want to dive deeper into this conversation check out the links in the description to watch the full episode see you in the next one.