We’ve all been there—that meeting that never needed to be a meeting in the first place is now meandering along like a slow, slithering snake.
Rather than waste your team’s time with a traditional 30- or 60- minute meeting, organizational psychologist Steven Rogelberg suggests that leaders embrace the 15-minute “huddle.” This timeframe, along with a focused agenda, can yield positive results based on existing research on limited human attention spans and meeting fatigue.
According to Rogelberg’s TED Talk, the 15-minute meeting is already common in the tech world, with some companies even mandating that it can not go longer than that set timeframe. Here are 10 reasons from his talk that you should consider the 15-minute meeting:
Leaders can be highly responsive – rather than settling into a long day of meetings, they can meet with colleagues for 10 to 15 minutes to solve one problem.
Teams can keep momentum – a quick morning update on progress can be more useful than a weekly check-in where details may get lost as the week goes on.
Celebrate key wins – everyone loves instant gratification, and a quick celebratory update can be rewarding for the team.
Key metric tracking – hold a check-in on your school or institution’s goals and how you are performing against them each week.
Problem-solving session – identify any obstacles that are impeding progress or roadblocks that the team could help get around.
Reinforcing current initiatives – if your school or institution is focused on collaboration for example, hold quick discussions to collaborate or discuss ways to add collaboration into workflows.
Time to connect – rather than reporting to a leader, use the time for the team to communicate with each other and talk about how to support one another.
Coordinate with other team members – rather than hold less frequent, but longer meetings, smaller meetings could save time on larger projects to set expectations and shorter deliverable dates.
Create “magic time” – hold 15 minutes each week to discuss any critical issues that may arise so you can be responsive if discussion is needed.
Progress against goals – for individual employees, a leader can also use this approach to check-in on key priorities, rather than running through a list of performance measures all at once.
And 5 final tips for conducting a 15-minute meeting:
Keep it short – don’t go over time and stick to your promise of a short meeting.
Have attendees stand so everyone is engaged.
Make sure the shorter meetings are helping you replace longer ones.
Schedule the meeting at the same time each day or week (whatever your cadence is for that particular meeting)
Re-evaluate the effectiveness and need every few months.
