Make Meetings More Human, Please! Part 1
We spend a lot of time meeting, without really meeting.
That is, we spend a lot of time assembled together with colleagues in a virtual or physical meeting room without really knowing those with whom we are gathered.
We don’t know who they are, what they care about, what they’ve experienced, what they value, or what their talents are. We probably don’t know what they’ve just come from or what they are carrying. We don’t know if they are distracted or worried.
But never mind all that. It’s time to be a professional and get to work.
We feel compelled to get to work.
We are afraid not to get to work.
Often someone, if not everyone, in the meeting makes sure that we get to work. No matter our background or cultural values, we have all been assimilated into this way of doing business. Don’t distract with anything personal. Don’t waste time. Focus on the purpose of the meeting. Show your value and remember, action is valued most. We’ve all learned to adhere to these rules.
With a strong time orientation, with a drive to get things done, we dive in. We stick to the agenda. We don’t waste time on chit-chat. We stay focused. We don’t venture questions outside our scope for fear of rebuke. We have to get this work done and get to the next meeting.
If some new idea comes up as part of the discussion, some deviation from what was expected, then we schedule another meeting. After all, we have deadlines to meet, the mounting pressure of our competition or our constituent’s expectations, and So. Much. To. Do.
You may be thinking, “Well of course this is what we do. Otherwise, we’d get nothing done. What else would we do?”
But this is not the only way to run a meeting or to work, and it is not even the most functional. Not for the short term nor the long term. Not in a way that will sustain a culture where people want to stay and work and where we are not losing people to burnout and suffering the high costs of turnover and replacement.
It is not functional because we human beings don’t want to be treated like gears in a machine.
Instead, according to my research interviews and lots of feedback from clients and audience members around the world, most people want these kinds of experiences:
We want our leaders to treat us as human beings, not dehumanized machines.
We want leaders and team members who are interested in us and want to get to know us as people.
We want to be accepted for who we are with varied life experiences, identities, and preferences, not expected to hide or to conform to a narrow set of interests or ways of being.
We want opportunities to learn and grow, not to be stuck with no opportunity to develop.
We want to be heard if we have an idea or contribution, not to be ignored or told to stay in our lane.
We want to be psychologically safe on our team and able to take risks to speak up, not be punished or marginalized if we do.
We want compassionate support if we face a personal crisis, not told to leave our personal concerns at home.
We want leaders who will stand up for us consistent with our shared values, not ignoring mistreatment for expediency.
When our leaders and teams make sure these things happen, we can get to work. We deliver on our commitments. We improve and innovate. We go the extra 10 miles if needed on occasion. We become the rare 15% who are engaged rather than the 85% according to Gallup who are not.
We can adopt many practices to help us be more human at work. For better or worse, meetings are the building blocks of our organizational lives. And actually, meetings can be important opportunities for creating human-centered cultures and effective workplaces rather than dehumanizing experiences.
At A Human Workplace, one simple meeting practice we embrace to help humanize meetings is The Check-In. You can read more about it at the link. Give it a try and let us know how it goes.
Meanwhile, how do you make meetings more human?
