The Psychology Behind Meeting Overload
Ever wondered why meetings can feel overwhelming? Delve into the psychological aspects of meeting overload, exploring how it impacts productivity and mental well-being. Uncover the science behind this phenomenon and learn strategies to manage it effectively.
Bad meetings are the bane of the corporate world
and yet despite an overwhelming consensus that they’re often unnecessary and unproductive, many workplaces continue to struggle to avoid them.
- What will it take for us to break free from our collective addiction to meetings
- The power of psychology to help us transform how we act and interact.
Meeting FOMO
Deeply ingrained norms around what it means to be an “ideal worker” lead us to equate presence with productivity
- While it’s on managers to avoid these harmful behaviors, employees can work to overcome these fears by finding ways to demonstrate their value and engagement outside of meetings
- To encourage your team to decline unnecessary meetings, visibly decline meetings yourself
Meeting Amnesia
Schedule a short five-minute team debrief after key internal and external calls to ensure no one forgets what was discussed in the last meeting.
- Keep track of what was said and what was meant and share summaries with attendees and relevant stakeholders who weren’t present.
Selfish Urgency
Leaders will schedule meetings whenever convenient for them, without necessarily considering their teams’ needs or schedules
- Sometimes leaders even knowingly schedule meetings when their team has conflicts, forcing everyone to shift their calendars around to accommodate
- People are notoriously bad at recognizing opportunity costs
- Think about the opportunity costs associated with asking their teams to attend a meeting
Pluralistic ignorance
This bias leads us to continue to schedule and attend meetings even when everyone secretly agrees that they’re useless
- To overcome pluralistic ignorance, leaders should encourage their teams to openly share their frustrations and feedback, and they should work together to regularly identify and eliminate unproductive meetings
Meetings as Commitment Devices
An external deadline can be an effective motivator, but a meeting itself is often unnecessary
- Tell your team in advance that the meeting will be cancelled if the deadline is met
- If the work isn’t done in time, the meeting can still be helpful
The Mere Urgency Effect
When we are stressed, completing seemingly urgent (yet actually unimportant) tasks can provide some relief
- The solution? Make cancelling or ending early the default for recurring meetings.
- If you aren’t sure if a meeting is necessary, try not having it and see what happens.