Show notes
Ever left a meeting feeling more drained than before it started? That’s the dreaded meeting hangover. Brian Milner and Julie Chickering dive into why bad meetings have lasting effects—and what facilitators AND participants can do to make them better. Overview Bad meetings don’t just waste time, they drain energy, morale, and engagement long after they’re over. In this episode of the Agile Mentors Podcast, Brian and Julie Chickering unpack the concept of "meeting hangovers"—the lingering negative effects of ineffective meetings. They explore why bad meetings happen, the shared responsibility of facilitators and participants, and practical strategies for turning the tide. From fostering accountability to knowing when to walk it off, this conversation will help you rethink how meetings impact team dynamics and productivity. References and resources mentioned in the show: Julie Chickering#137 Stop Wasting Time with Guests Kate MegawHBR The Hidden Toll of Meeting Hangovers by Brent N. Reed, et al.When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing by Daniel H. PinkRemotely Productive by Alex PukinskisWorking on a Scrum Team ClassSubscribe to the Agile Mentors Podcast Want to get involved? This show is designed for you, and we’d love your input. Enjoyed what you heard today? Please leave a rating and a review. It really helps, and we read every single one. Got an Agile subject you’d like us to discuss or a question that needs an answer? Share your thoughts with us at podcast@mountaingoatsoftware.com This episode’s presenters are: Brian Milner is SVP of coaching and training at Mountain Goat Software. He's passionate about making a difference in people's day-to-day work, influenced by his own experience of transitioning to Scrum and seeing improvements in work/life balance, honesty, respect, and the quality of work. Julie Chickering is the brains and brawn behind JC Agile Consulting, believes that Lean and Agile practices are packed with potential — to enable positive culture change, business agility, and breakthrough results. Julie is a past president and board member of the Agile Project Management Network (APLN), a Certified Scrum Trainer (CST), PMI Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP), as well as a traditional Project Management Professional (PMP). Auto-generated Transcript: Brian Milner (00:00)Welcome back Agile Mentors. We're here for another episode of Agile Mentors podcast. I'm with you as always Brian Milner and haven't got to say this for a while. So I'm happy to say again, welcome back to the show, the fabulous Julie Chickering. Welcome back, Julie. Julie (00:15)Thanks, Brian. Glad to be here. Brian Milner (00:17)Yeah, very excited to have Julie back. Julie is a friend of the show. We've had her on multiple times and it's been too long. We just need to have you on more often again. So thank you for making the time and coming back. We wanted to have Julie on sort of as a little bit of a continuation from our last episode that we had with Kate McGaw. You we talked a little bit about facilitation there and there was a lot that we talked about initially to set that up to talk about Julie (00:30)Sure. Brian Milner (00:44)just the fact that there's an epidemic of bad meetings. There's kind of a harmful thing happening where it's extremely prevalent that meetings are going poorly. There's not a lot of attention that's given to this. There's not a lot of focus in a lot of organizations because it's such a prevalent issue. of our meetings being so bad. And Julie pointed out to me this Harvard Business Review article that sort of became a touchstone, I think, for what we wanted to talk about. It's called the hidden toll of meeting hangovers. And we'll link to this in the show notes. But the idea behind the article was just to say, they quoted a stat early on saying that they did a study and found that more than a quarter, 28 % of meetings left employees with lingering negative effects, such as impaired engagement and productivity. And so that's what they were referring to this sort of this meeting hangover, that bad meetings take a toll beyond just the lost time in the meeting. And that's kind of what we were talking about more with Kate is, you know, yeah, we want to make our meetings better, but there is sort of this ongoing lingering that, you know, from my reading of this and what I've experienced, kind of compounds, you know? One bad meeting then can lead to another bad meeting and another one and that feeling of anxiety and disconnectedness and like I said here, impaired engagement and productivity, those kind of grow and get worse and worse the longer that you have these bad meetings. So Julie, I'll just start with you and say, you know, when you read this article, what was it? What was it that really stood out to you, that jumped out to you, that made you think this was an important kind of area of focus? Julie (02:27)First of all, I love the title because I can relate to it. So when you're having a hangover, you just feel terrible, right? And this person that they talk about first, Jacob, about like, he was so frustrated when he left the meeting. So the introductory story when he was so frustrated when he left the meeting, he canceled his one-on-one right after because he knew he couldn't concentrate. And then he was just like so upset. for the rest of the day and talking about how he just didn't even want to work on the project anymore. So just this, I just got this physical sensation reading this around how it feels when you're in a meeting that's ineffective. And we've all been there and I could just like feel it in my body when I read this story. And I also feel like once you know what I, what an ineffective meeting feels like, the ineffective one is more noticeable and draining. yeah, so and then this this lingering effect of morale and just wasted, just wasted opportunity. And it feels like Brian Milner (03:32)Yeah. Yeah. Julie (03:47)in the corporate world, this is the norm. That we just have meeting after meeting after meeting that's just sucking the life force out of everyone. And then we wonder why nothing gets done. Brian Milner (04:00)Yeah, I mean, this article is packed with statistics and it's tempting for me to just kind of read them all off to you. I'm not going to do that. But there's a couple of things that kind of jump out to me. they talk about how around half of people have this feeling of that as a result of the hangover from the meeting, that they have negative or harmful impacts on their interactions with coworkers. They feel more disconnected from their team. and they want to spend more time alone based on the fact that, I went through this really kind of, there's no other way to say it, traumatic experience of having this really harmful, bad meeting. they connect the dots by saying, people will leave these meetings and oftentimes they will then go commiserate with coworkers and say, share their frustrations, which is helpful, it's good. But it also, you know, they noted here, this can kind of spread some feeling of negativity or hopelessness, you know, that it's always going to be this way. You know, yeah, I had a meeting like that as well. Boy, I guess this place is doomed. It's always going to feel like this. And so they have this kind of ongoing, as I said, compounding almost nature of it that one bad thing leads to another leads to another leads to another. And pretty soon you've got this really harmful, negative work environment and it's not necessarily something that's just happened. It's just the repetition of going through those things lead to this ongoing negative psychological impact in the organization. Julie (05:28)Yeah, I'm just smiling because I can just think of some meetings that I used to have a leader that would always show up late. Always show up late. We'd be halfway through the topic and then he would show up and we'd have to stop what we were doing and go circle back and just speed and you could just feel. the whole mood of the meeting change. We were actually making progress and we have to stop and we have to go all the way over. And this is constant. So what we would do afterwards is then have meetings after the meetings to complain about the leader doing that. The more adult thing would have been of course to say to the leader, when you do this, Brian Milner (06:15)Yeah. Julie (06:22)This is the outcome. Brian Milner (06:25)Yeah. So, so that's kind of, you know, what we want to talk about a little bit in here as well is, in the last episode, we, focused a lot on facilitation and the idea that, Hey, there's a lot of responsibility to the meeting organizer, whoever's facilitating this to not have it be this negative kind of environment. And I don't disagree with any of that, that we talked about in the last episode. I think there is a lot of that, that is true, but I think it's, it's. important for participants to not look at that as, it's all the facilitator then, right? I'm just a participant, I'm showing up and it's your job to get all this stuff out of me. And if the meeting goes poorly, that's entirely your fault. And I think it's important for us to recognize, no, if I'm a participant, if I accept that meeting invite and I'm here, I have a role to play. I have a contribution to be made and I can have, you Julie (07:14)Right. Brian Milner (07:19)as kind of Pollyanna-ish as it sounds, I can have a negative impact or a positive impact on this meeting. And I think that's an important kind of responsibility to take a hold of. Julie (07:25)you Yeah, I agree. And I think about that in a couple of ways. So actually, in both Scrum Master and Product Owner class, I remind them at the end of every meeting to ask two questions. The next time we have this kind of meeting, what would you want to do differently? But you gotta ask the question. And if you ask the question and nobody says anything, then they can't feel victim to a poorly run meeting. But you gotta be able to listen. You gotta be able to listen to it. Doesn't mean you have to say yes in the moment. It could be that you would follow up after, but just ask the question. What would you wanna do differently the next time we have this type of meeting And then ask them, what did they like? Brian Milner (07:48)Yeah. That's good. Julie (08:11)I used to do it the other way around. I don't know if I told you this story before or not, but do you remember Daniel Pink did the he was our keynote speaker at the Scrum Gathering, our conference a few years ago when he talked about. OK, when he talked about timing. OK, so something he said is like, yes, he said, as people, if there's two, if there's good news and bad news to always start with the bad news first. And end with the good news, because as people, we remember the last thing we talked about it. Brian Milner (08:20)Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Julie (08:40)So if I say to you, okay, the next time we have this type of meeting, what would you want to do differently? And nobody says anything. Okay. What did you like? And then they leave going, we actually got something done. Unless of course we didn't get anything done. Brian Milner (08:57)That's awesome. Yeah. I mean, I think about like how in classes, a lot of times when we talk about forecasting and estimation, you know, I make a little joke. It's not really a joke. It's the truth. But when I present, I've learned over the years when I present information to stakeholders about timings, I, know, if, if I do calculations and it says it's going to take between five and six sprints to do something, I've learned to say the maximum amount of time it will take is six sprints. there's a chance it could come in as soon as it's five sprints and yeah. Yeah. I mean, I learned to do that because what I say in classes, I've learned a lot of people stop listening after the first one. And I think actually though, I may be wrong. It may be more what you're saying that, you know, we, we remember the last thing that we hear. but it may be a combination, right? Cause if, if I hear the low number first and I I'm happy with that, I stopped listening and I don't want to hear the bad news. Julie (09:27)Brilliant! Brian Milner (09:50)So if I say the bad news first, it could take as long as this, but there's a chance it could come in earlier, then I'm leaving them with the good news that it could be this, you know, as soon as this, but they've set their expectation that, you know, it could take as long as, you know, the bad news that I gave them initially. So I don't know, maybe there's a combination of that there as well. But yeah, I agree with what Daniel Pink says about that. And timings do make a big, difference for sure. and how we present things. Julie (10:18)Okay, so a key though in that is that you can only ask those questions if you're staying within the time box and you've allocated time to actually ask the question. And like some of these things that came up as the root causes of like poor time management, like running over or stuff like that. If you're running over, nobody's going to really want to take the opportunity to give you feedback. So what do you think about, so what you talked with Kate a lot about when we talking about here is the role of the facilitator. And I think we should talk about what people can do if they are feeling like they're the victim of the lack of facilitation or poor facilitation. So what do think about that? Brian Milner (10:52)Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think we have several roles to play, right? I I agree. If I'm not the facilitator, then it's important for me to come into that meeting, well, knowing what the expectation is. know, like if I'm coming into a meeting as a participant, I don't think it's responsible. to show up to the meeting. And I've shown up to meetings like this, showing up with the attitude that, hey, it's not my meeting. It's the other person's meeting. You got me. I'm here. But now it's on you to get out of me, whatever it is that you're hoping to get. And maybe I put in very little prep work for it. So there is some kind of interplay here between the facilitator and the participant. Because you could say, well, that's the facilitator's responsibility to help you understand. Yes, it is. That's, this is what I'm trying to say is I, I think it's a mistake to shirk that responsibility entirely and say, I'm not the facilitator. Don't look at me. Right. If, if they didn't ask me to prepare or, or, you know, here's what I need you to, to, come prepared to talk about. Well, then I've got a bad facilitator and you know, we're just, we're hopelessly going to be in a bad meeting. No, when I get the invite, you know, Kate said last week, you know, Julie (12:17)Mm-hmm. Brian Milner (12:22)You can decline invitations to meetings. You don't have to accept every meeting invite that you get. But if you do accept it, I think that there's an accepting of responsibility there to say, all right, I'm going to be a participant in this meeting. What do you need from me? And in advance, making sure you talk to that meeting organizer and saying, hey, I agree. This is probably a good thing for us to meet about, but I want to prepare. I want to know that I can come to this meeting armed with information that's going to be helpful to others and I can play my part. So meeting facilitator, meeting organizer, what did you have…
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