The Surprising Science of Meetings

How You Can Lead Your Team to Peak Performance

By: Dr. Steven G. Rogelberg

Narrated by: L.J. Ganser

Length: 5 hrs and 19 mins

Publisher's summary

A recent estimate suggests that employees endure a staggering 55 million meetings a day in the United States. This tremendous time investment yields only modest returns. No organization made up of human beings is immune from the all-too-common meeting gripes: those that fail to engage, those that inadvertently encourage participants to tune out, and those that blatantly disregard participants' time.

Most companies and leaders view poor meetings as an inevitable cost of doing business. But managers can take heart: Researchers now have a clear understanding of the key drivers that make meetings successful. In The Surprising Science of Meetings, Steven G. Rogelberg, researcher and consultant to some of the world's most successful companies, draws from extensive research, analytics and data mining, and survey interviews with over 5,000 employees across a range of industries to share the proven practices and techniques that help managers and employees enhance the quality of their meetings. For those who lead and participate in meetings, Rogelberg provides immediate direction, guidance, and relief, offering a how-to guide to change your working life starting today.

©2019 Steven G. Rogelberg (P)2019 Gildan Media

No PDF download for supplements

Let’s be honest, if you are listening to this book you want a bullet list of items to do to make your meetings more effective. You also want to refer to the graphs and charts that are mentioned in the book. Rather buy the book than the audible if you need this - the audible version doesn’t come with any of this.

Other than that it is a pretty good book

Helpful, accessible, high-quality tips

Great book for two reasons: (1) the suggestions are well-organized to make them easy to find and implement, and (2) the suggestions are based in actual research findings! I'd strongly recommend buying the physical copy of the book for the tools at the end (and to more easily peruse each chapter's takeaways), but I enjoyed listening to the audiobook as a way to get a good overview of the science-based recommendations offered. Dr. Rogelberg has thought through all different types of meetings, including teleconferences and walking meetings, and I think everyone who has to run a meeting will find something of use here.

Why is there no PDF to download?

The physical book has templates, charts, illustrations presumably to get the full value out of this book. I expected to be able to download these when I purchased the audiobook. Yet there is no companion PDF or other files with this information. What gives?

So-so content

Material is helpful, but it could've been presented in a much more concise manner. It's too wordy and I found myself getting bored and thinking.....get to the point. The thing that I DID NOT LIKE is that the PDF's for the forms and assessments that the author references in the hard copy are not available for download. If I knew that ahead of time i probably would not have bought this on audible.

Written for a pre pandemic world!

The author gives some very good information in this book. In fact I wish I had read it years ago. But too many of the technics are based on in person meetings with all participants sitting in one room around a conference table. This is a thing of the past for my team. The author does include one short section regarding video meetings but not much innovative thinking is offered in that section. In fact, the author comes across as inexperience in the online meeting world. But it’s a good book if we ever get back to running meetings around a conference table like we used to. A good read that time has passed by already.

Must Read

I found this book to be very eye-opening. never realized how much time we spend in meetings and how we need to improve them.

Doing meetings the right way!

Wow. Totally recommend this for any one who has daily meetings. The fact that the recommendations are based on evidence makes this a really powerful book!

Needs an attached PDF

There are several items that shouldn't have been read. Mostly the items at the end of the book. An attached PDF would have been better suited. Otherwise, an excellent set of insights and recommendations for running effective meetings.

It was ok

Listened to this book because a co worker recommended. It had a few good takeaway points but overall it was a little more drawn out than it needed to be.

Interesting research paired with practical advice

Interesting research paired with practical advice on a topic that affects us all -- Meetings! There are so many business books out there that espouse opinion or anecdotal evidence. Here is a book with advice based on actual scientific findings. The topic is relevant to everyone. We all have to either attend or lead meetings. We all hate them, but what I discovered from this book is there is tons of research out that can help us do it better. The author provides lots of fascinating statistics about meetings (blown away by how much time and money we waste in meetings) along with results from all sorts of studies done all over the world. The best part is that he offers practical advice on how to make meetings better based on all this research. Everyone should read this so meetings can stop being so miserable.