How a Focus on Purpose Can Make Meetings More Efficient and Effective
Identify Moments to Connect and Provide a Sense of Belonging
My own purpose is to wrangle ideas and people to make work an engaging, expanding, and empowering experience for all of us. And no matter your field, innovativeness, or role, meetings are a part of work. So, it’s important to me to help folks on my team, and far beyond, use meetings to achieve that purpose— or at least not take away from it!
Research shows that since March 2020, employees are attending 13% more meetings, to which 14% more people are invited. These increased meetings, along with longer work days, reduce employee well-being:
- 70% of employees report that this has been the most stressful year of their career.
- Two-thirds of employees report losing an hour a day of productivity to COVID-19-related stress, and a third report losing two hours.
Even before the pandemic, job stress was estimated to cost American employers $300 billion a year, which will sound low when we learn actual 2020 data.
There are many things that we can and should do to make work less stressful and more engaging, expanding, and empowering. But change starts with specific, tangible actions, so let’s consider this mushrooming meeting time first and how we could make meetings more purposeful and thereby less stressful —or even stress-mitigating.
How Can I Be a Purposeful Manager?
First of all, let’s review the notion of purpose itself. Purpose is why you are here: where your skills and interests overlap with the needs of the world. Being purposeful is about applying that “why” to the everyday moments of your work and life: getting our kids (or elders) dressed, choosing your investments, and, yes, setting a meeting agenda. It can be helpful to write a unifying statement that describes your individual purpose. But that statement is a work-in-progress over the course of a lifetime, not a prerequisite for acting purposefully today.
Why Does Being Purposeful Matter?
Acting in line with a purpose generates positive impact — it makes things better in three…
