Ep261: Meetings Don't Have to Suck: Learn a Better Way to Create and Collaborate | with Dr. Steven Rogelberg

Optimize Yourself

My guest today is Dr. Steven Rogelberg who is an organizational psychologist and author of the new book, Glad We Met: The Art and Science of 1:1 Meetings, and according to Adam Grant, Dr. Rogelberg "knows more about how to improve meetings than anyone on earth." He has helped a number of leading organizations including Google, Facebook, Amazon, Pfizer and Warner Brothers.

Now, we all know that meetings often get a bad rap and according to Dr. Rogelberg, it's not just us. It's bad everywhere. In this episode, Dr. Rogelberg and I dive into the underlying reasons why we struggle at meetings and why we still need to crack the code to have better meetings. We also talk about why meetings are so important in any organization, including the creative space, despite our collective aversion to it. More importantly, Dr. Rogelberg shares how you can reclaim your time, energy, and creativity using different strategies to make meetings productive, engaging, and even (dare I say) enjoyable.

Regardless of the industry you are in, my conversation with Dr. Rogelberg will help you transform your meetings from soul-sucking snooze-fests to dynamic hubs of productivity and collaboration so you can have the bandwidth to do great creative work.

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Here's What You'll Learn:

• Why we struggle at meetings
• Why it's hard to change the way we do meetings
• What makes meetings for creatives essentially similar to other industries
• The connective tissue that universally makes us bad at meetings
• Why doing a round-robin in a meeting is a bad idea
• The alternative strategy to satisfy our need for genuine connection and why it works
• How to build team cohesion and have better meetings (versus the other way around)
• The reasons why not everything can just be an email
• How to figure out if a topic should be a meeting or an email
• How to have better meetings (for creatives)
• Why meeting about meetings (and training on meetings) is important
• How to help make better meetings as an attendee

Useful Resources Mentioned:

Glad We Met: The Art and Science of 1:1 Meetings by Dr. Steven Rogelberg

Parkinson's Law

Kairos

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Guest Bio:

Dr. Steven G. Rogelberg

Dr. Steven G. Rogelberg, an organizational psychologist, holds the title of Chancellor's Professor at UNC Charlotte for distinguished national, international, and interdisciplinary contributions. His last book, The Surprising Science of Meetings: How You Can Lead Your Team to Peak Performance (Oxford) was recognized by the Washington Post as the "#1 Leadership Book to Watch for" and featured on CBS This Morning, Freakonomics, HBR, NPR, WSJ, and BBC World. He was the inaugural winner of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP) Humanitarian Award and just finished his term as President of SIOP, the largest professional organization in the world for I-O psychology.

Show Credits:

This episode was edited by Curtis Fritsch, and the show notes were prepared by Debby Germino and published by Glen McNiel.

The original music in the opening and closing of the show is courtesy of Joe Trapanese (who is quite possibly one of the most talented composers on the face of the planet).