One thing that has changed considerably in workplaces of the last several years is how to run and meaningfully participate in a meeting. Many people do not enjoy this activity, whether in-person, hybrid, or online; yet meetings remain a fact of life for organizations in all sectors.
That makes the new book Running Effective Meetings for Dummies a crucial document for anyone tasked with running a meeting in whatever format needed and necessary. The authors are Joseph A. Allen, Professor of Industrial and Organizational Psychology at the University of Utah; and Karin M. Reed, CEO of Speaker Dynamics, and an Emmy award-winning broadcast journalist. I interviewed Allen and Reed for an article, “Navigating the New World of Hybrid and Virtual Meetings,” in the Summer 2022 ‘From the Front Lines’ section of Leader to Leader, where I am managing editor.
That article is about the research in two books Allen and Reed co-authored: Suddenly Virtual: Making Remote Meetings Work (Wiley, March 2021), and Suddenly Hybrid: Managing the Modern Meeting (Wiley, February 2022). Running Effective Meetings was published in late September, as part of Wiley’s for dummies brand. (Wiley is also the co-publisher of Leader to Leader, with the Frances Hesselbein Leadership Forum.)
I’m grateful to Karin M. Reed for answering my questions about the new book, and why it can be valuable in helping people thrive in the often thankless task of running meetings, and thereby strengthening organizations in today’s highly uncertain world.
Given that you recently published two separate books about meetings (hybrid and virtual), how would you characterize the research and thought process that you and Joseph Allen applied to the new book?
In some ways, it was a much easier process than the previous two that we wrote together because so much of the research had already been done. Prior to our work together, Joe had been studying meetings for decades and I had been building a name as the “On-Camera Coach” after my first book (with that same name) was published in 2017.
Our expertise collided when video became core to some, if not all, meetings due to the pandemic. When we wrote Suddenly Virtual, not only were we sharing our expertise with our readers, we were also sharing it with each other. I learned so much from Joe on meeting best practices during that writing process, and I hope I was able to teach him a thing or two as well. What was especially gratifying was when he could support with science what I saw playing out with my clients “in the wild.”
When we were asked to offer insights into hybrid meetings, we felt like we were researching and uncovering best practices for a kind of meeting that was evolving almost on a daily basis. A hybrid meeting can take so many different forms based upon the participant configurations and the technology available to support it. We highlighted the importance of meeting equity and how to ward off any potential imbalances. However, in many ways, that book is still being written as more organizations start testing out what works best for them.
Running Effective Meetings for Dummies allowed us to take all of our expertise, research, and data accumulated over both of our careers and meld them into the ultimate guide for any meeting and any modality, in-person, virtual or hybrid.
There have obviously been a great many books published over the years about different aspects of meetings, and yet the topic still seems to inspire dread, or something close to it, in many people. Since your new book was written in a very recent period that we can’t quite call post-Covid, how valid and relevant is much of the research and contents of books by other researchers/authors published pre-2020, before so many norms and rules changed?
So many of the meeting best practices that Joe has been talking about for decades still hold true today. Starting and ending a meeting on time. Having an agenda that is socialized in advance. Making efforts to pull out participation from everyone in the room (virtual and/or physical.) These best practices may seem like common sense but they are uncommonly practiced.
What makes today’s meeting environment more challenging are the wide variety of ways we can now meet. Each meeting modality requires a nuanced approach beyond the basics. However, if you can master the old meeting best practices, incorporating the new best practices required by a virtual or hybrid meeting will be a much easier lift.
How important is it for meetings (whether in-person/hybrid/virtual) to consider the specific meeting participants plus leader; including such factors as how well they know each other, how well they generally get along with each other, how regularly they meet, and if they all represent the same organization, or if they are from a mix of organizations?
The relationships of those in the meeting are a huge factor in how you handle a meeting… or even if you need to have a meeting at all. For example, if you need to ask a close colleague about a project you are jointly working on, that may just mean picking up the phone rather than sending off a calendar invite. We all have more meetings today than ever before. Eliminating any that aren’t absolutely necessary is a good thing. So what makes a meeting necessary? A meeting should be called if its purpose requires collaboration by multiple people.
Relationships also play into whether you should use video during virtual or hybrid meetings. For internal meetings, you may not need to turn the camera on if the topic of discussion isn’t too weighty and you know each other well. For example, if you say something sarcastic, your fellow attendees don’t need to SEE you roll their eyes. They know you are doing it because they’ve seen you do it many, many times before. But if there are new faces in the room, everyone should put their cameras on to help the newcomer put a face with a name and start building that bank of nonverbal cues. Another time to turn that camera on? When you are meeting with external stakeholders. Video makes you and your message more memorable and allows you to have more presence in the room.