Anima Leadership CEO Annahid Dashtgard says the main reason why meetings go awry is because managers often lack management skills.Duane Cole/The Globe and Mail
At a time of workplace upheaval, with employees being forced back into the office, a movement is building to challenge the time suck of poorly run meetings. Dubbed “meeting hygiene,” it’s a push to curb workplace huddles that run on too long, siphon off employees’ focus, and lead to no meaningful decisions.
More than a third of professionals said unnecessary meetings hurt their productivity, according to a 2022 survey from recruitment firm Robert Half. Employees hand over 18 hours a week to meetings, even though they’d prefer to decline a third of them, according to a 2022 report from organizational psychologist Steven Rogelberg and Otter.ai, a transcription software company.
Forward-thinking employers are pushing for more disciplined time limits, focused agendas and fewer people at the table. Shopify, the Canadian e-commerce company, did away with meetings of more than two people in 2023 and introduced a calculator inside employees’ calendars that tallies meeting costs in compensation dollars. Toronto creative agency Rethink launched “No Meetings Monday” in 2021, after bosses realized staff were prepping over the weekend.
Immediate supervisors are the reason turnover occurs – and there’s a surprisingly simple fix
As employers start to re-examine the corporate meeting, The Globe spoke with Annahid Dashtgard, chief executive of Anima Leadership, an equity inclusion firm, and author of Fire and Silence: A Roadmap for BIPOC Leaders, set to publish in February.
What does “meeting hygiene” mean to you when you’re coaching leaders?
I frame meetings as a reflection of how well organizational values and mission are playing out. They’re a metric: How people feel in meetings says everything about the organizational culture. Right there, it’s a microcosm. Unfortunately, meetings don’t have a good rep.
Why do meetings have a bad reputation?
The biggest reason meetings go down the drain is because managers often lack basic management skills. Good management is predicated on a range of emotional intelligence skills. A lot of managers over rely on content, facts, statistics and rationality – without having any awareness of their emotional state. This is what comes across more loudly to their team than the content of what they’re saying.
What’s the tone at meetings this fall, as bosses call employees back to the office?
We have this increasingly urgent, transactional pace of work, which views employees’ time like it’s a one-way thing.
A more relational way of operating is getting employee input. Where do they think their time is needed? What meetings do they need to be at? What works best with their own productivity schedule? When you solicit people’s input, they will show up in a different way.
Long commutes, pricey coffees, no desks: Bruce Daisley on rising employee pushback against back-to-office mandates
Today, people are showing up in meetings at half-mast with their cameras off. They’re distracted. Or they’re just there to check off a box. The meetings aren’t harnessing collective intelligence or creativity. They’re rubber stamping a preset agenda, which is a waste of time.
It reinforces employees’ attitudes of: “I’m not valued here, no one really cares about my opinion.” They start moving into quiet quitting mode.
Hybrid meetings are clumsy: people crammed into tight meeting rooms in downsized offices, their remote colleagues beaming in from afar with bad Internet connections. How does the setup affect the meeting itself?
In the virtual world, emotional tone gets amplified because people have less access to those body signals in the room.
The default for a lot of leaders is to rush right into the meeting content because of this sentiment that people feel over-Zoomified and tired of being online.
Ms. Dashtgard says poor meetings can encourage employees to move into ‘quiet quitting mode.’Duane Cole/The Globe and Mail
Actually, what this means is you have to curate your meeting more carefully. You need to use the time well, but also get people to connect. If people feel connected, they’re more likely to have their cameras on, participate and invest themselves, rather than dialling themselves out further, which is happening in a lot of workplaces.
What’s the inertia that keeps meetings from evolving?
A big factor is the current context – the pressure and urgency many industries are feeling. When we’re under pressure, stress and urgency, we default to what’s most familiar. That’s the industrial model of managing. Changing norms takes more energy, effort and time. Often it needs to be supported by institutional leadership.
To shift culture even a little bit, we have to recognize why shifting the meeting culture is important.
Research shows managers who institute five days in office are seeing high rates of quitting among senior-level staffers who prize flexibility, particularly women and racialized employees. What does this mean for the workplace? And does backlash to diversity, equity, and inclusion mean bosses aren’t particularly concerned?
To their own detriment. I look at the DEI pushback, and long-term, the dissatisfaction among these pockets is only going to grow. Unfortunately, the point at which workplace bosses will start to listen is when they start losing talent, expertise and people’s productivity.
The time economy – how we manage time, how we value employees’ time – this is another facet of inclusion and equity. Managers slopping this off their plates, it’s going to come back to bite them.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
