"Many employees, one third of their working hours are in bad meetings, which means six lost weeks a year!"  Micke Darmell talks about meetings and he believes that civil servants spend time on bad meetings at a cost of SEK 170 billion every year!

We agree, maybe it's time to do something about this.

The meeting culture of many organizations leads to stress, ill health and a great waste of time - why then does this continue? Let's fish a little below the surface around these (contradictory) behaviors. The big question is; what is it that keeps this going?

Meetings can be about the need for status in those who participate. By sharing your views on important issues with your colleagues, telling them what you achieve and taking the initiative in meetings, you show how important you are. This is done, among other things, through long and detailed PowerPoints. Taking center stage elevates your brand to the skies.

We can also see more needs that the meeting form fulfills, above all our need to belong to a group. In other words, there are strong factors that maintain the current meeting behavior and it is these that we need to address in order to break the habit.

Like Micke, we believe it is time to take a greater grip on this in the workplace and adopt a common policy for meetings. Here comes Yesbox tips for a healthier meeting culture:

  1. Be sure to prepare one clear agenda which is linked to the set goals for the business.
  2. Start the meeting by prioritize which items are most important on the agenda.
  3. Require everyone to be prepared and have done what is expected - if not set the point on the agenda.
  4. Set up exact holding times for both the meeting and each item.
  5. Have a clear one follow-up so that the work progresses towards the goals at each meeting.

In addition, we of course need to work with a culture where each employee knows their role, the company's goals and that employees' social needs are met. We are more controlled by our subconscious than we think and our basic needs sometimes play a trick on us. Therefore, it is important to understand subconscious driving forces in order to then be able to make real changes in practice.

We work based on a model developed by David Rock from the Neuroleadership institute, which describes our needs. It assumes that our social needs are at least as strong as our survival needs, for the simple reason that in the beginning we were so dependent on each other for survival that you didn't actually survive social exclusion.

The SCARF model shows that meetings are a way to fulfill one or more of these needs, but above all the need for status.
Something that also affects your status is having many appointments booked in your calendar, which indicates that you are an important person. And who hasn't given up sighing over the number of emails you receive per day, while at the same time tarnishing your reputation as a high achiever.

Is it also the case that the form of the meeting itself gives you predictability in a changing world - you know that you are doing the "right" thing during the time that the meeting occupies? By understanding our driving forces and creating a clearer meeting discipline, we get the tools we need to create a healthier meeting culture.

* David Rock has found from brain research the five factors that are the basis of our social needs and calls them SCARF. Yesbox is based on SCARF/STARS in many of our tools. Read more here

Read about STARS/SCARF here

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Kicki Molin