3 signs your meetings have a culture problem

Meetings in corporate America are broken—and only breaking down more. Globally, people sit in three times as many meetings as they did before the pandemic, 60% of meetings are ad hoc, rather than scheduled, and 71% of people regularly multitask through them.

When poorly-run meetings become the norm, people begin to see them as a time with little value. But meetings are an opportunity to shape organizational culture, and not enough leaders are taking advantage of it. 

Most high-performing teams build strong relationships, show care for the whole person, have open and honest communications, listen to each other, clarify processes, and collaborate. These are all behaviors anyone can exhibit in meetings, but many don’t consider prioritizing them. 

3 signs your meetings need a reset

If you sit in a meeting, you see what the company culture is truly like. Sadly, I repeatedly see three main signs that your meetings have a culture problem.

1. Your meetings are draining, not energizing. According to research I’ve conducted, losing control over your schedule is one of the top drains on a leader’s energy. Overbooked schedules and ad hoc meetings in particular can be disruptive to the work you need to get done.
   
2. Your meetings are transactional, not relational. Transactional meetings focus on information download without any attention to connection or collaboration. A leader monologues over dense slides, there’s minimal discussion, and everyone else has their laptops out to multitask. Attendees are checked out and disengaged, and they take nothing away.
   
3. Your meetings have toxic positivity, not candid communication. Toxic positivity looks like discussions where leaders report that projects, initiatives, or systems are on track—even when things are breaking. The result is that no one discusses what truly needs to be handled to address issues.  

Sound familiar? You may need to redesign your meetings. Leaders can pick up three key actions to reshape their meetings—and reshape their team culture in the process.

1. Intentionally energize meetings 

For in-person meetings, get creative and change the physical meeting environment. If you are in a conference room, move all the chairs into a circle with no table or laptops. Hold meetings in different places, including outside. Have standing or one-on-one walking meetings. 

For virtual meetings, start the meeting with a check-in. What’s one thing that has energized you today? Speaking about energy infuses the meeting environment with energy.

2. Prioritize connection at the start

Dig in more with meaningful ways to ask the team about how they’re feeling. Consider these questions:

• How is everyone feeling on a scale of 1 to 10?
• What brought you joy recently?
• What area do you need the team’s help on?

3. Establish meeting agreements

Before the meeting, include a clear statement in the invitation about what your meeting is for: “Digging into the KPIs for our upcoming proposal,” “working through feedback on our monthly client check-in,” and “discussing the outcomes of our project delivery, along with what could work better next time” are all great places to start.

When the meeting arrives, the facilitator can check for alignment and establish meeting agreements. Try these questions: 

• How do we want to show up to get the most out of our meeting? 
• How could we achieve the purpose we just discussed?
• What agreements can we make to stay engaged throughout the meeting? 

The questions create a container of candid communication during the meeting. They invite everyone to be present, communicate openly, and be honest. Once leaders recognize that meetings reflect team culture, they can shift their attention to how each meeting can create not just a high-performance team, but a high-performance culture.

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