The Leader Lab

13Meetings Mastery

A bittersweet fact about life is that it is short. Time is precious. So it's startling to realize that the average employee spends 20–40% of their work time in meetings. Throughout a typical career, that's up to four years of life spent in a meeting. This isn't a bad thing in and of itself. Meetings can be where we come together to achieve great things. We can engineer new ideas together. We can learn from each other. We can celebrate together. We can help one another make tough decisions. We can feel the camaraderie of laboring side by side to achieve goals we couldn't reach alone. Great managers know how to lead great meetings like these.

Alas, most people say that about half of their meetings are a waste of time (Rogelberg 2019). In case you weren't keeping count, that's about two consecutive wasted years of life. Bad meetings also drain energy, creativity, engagement, and money. A study of 19 million meetings found that bad meetings cost the participating companies half a trillion dollars – that's 11 zeroes worth of money (Doodle 2019). This is sad news. But the good news is that we've seen managers learn to rapidly achieve meetings mastery and pass on these skills to their team. Leading meetings well is also a tipping point skill that spills over into better communication, influence, decision-making, inclusion, productivity, negotiation, conflict resolution, and public speaking.

Let's begin with a look at a typical meeting on Mia's team. Then, throughout ...