Meetings Matter

Abstract

This study follows the idea that the key to understanding team meeting effectiveness lies in uncovering the microlevel interaction processes throughout the meeting. Ninety-two regular team meetings were videotaped. Interaction data were coded and evaluated with the act4teams coding scheme and INTERACT software. Team and organizational success variables were gathered via questionnaires and telephone interviews. The results support the central function of interaction processes as posited in the traditional input-process-output model. Teams that showed more functional interaction, such as problem-solving interaction and action planning, were significantly more satisfied with their meetings. Better meetings were associated with higher team productivity. Moreover, constructive meeting interaction processes were related to organizational success 2.5 years after the meeting. Dysfunctional communication, such as criticizing others or complaining, showed significant negative relationships with these outcomes. These negative effects were even more pronounced than the positive effects of functional team meeting interaction. The results suggest that team meeting processes shape both team and organizational outcomes. The critical meeting behaviors identified here provide hints for group researchers and practitioners alike who aim to improve meeting success.

Dynamics of Resistance to Change: A Sequential Analysis of Change Agents in Action

“…Future research should explore whether employee change talk similarly predicts behavioural change in organizational settings. Findings from team interactions in organizations suggest that this may be the case, particularly in the context of action-planning communication and subsequent team performance (Kauffeld & Lehmann-Willenbrock, 2012).…”

Social Dynamics at Work

“…As indicated in Table 15.1, he now needs to find ways to gather appropriate behavioral process data. Previous work on behavioral interaction processes in meetings has often relied on videotaped meeting interactions (e.g., Kauffeld & Lehmann-Willenbrock, 2012;Kauffeld & Meyers, 2009;Schulte, Lehmann-Willenbrock, & Kauffeld, 2013). Videotapes are especially helpful for analyzing meetings with multiple attendants.…”

“…One particularly useful coding scheme in the area of meeting interaction analysis is the act4teams coding scheme (e.g., Kauffeld & Lehmann-Willenbrock, 2012). The act4teams coding scheme is a mutually exclusive and exhaustive coding scheme recording time-event data.…”

“…This way the meeting researcher can actually investigate what happens during a meeting and how these meeting processes affect meeting outcomes. Previous research shows that analyzing the actual behavior of meeting participants helps us understand the specific within-meeting dynamics that can promote or diminish meeting satisfaction, team productivity, and overall organizational effectiveness (Kauffeld & Lehmann-Willenbrock, 2012).…”

The Upward Spirals in Team Processes: Examining Dynamic Positivity in Problem Solving Teams

“…We used a subset of the act4teams coding scheme for team meeting interaction, a procedure shown to be valid and reliable (e.g., Lehmann-Willenbrock & Kauffeld, 2010;Kauffeld & Lehmann-Willenbrock, 2012), to code the utterances and measure the variables of interest. In order to preserve the temporal order of the individual utterances within the meeting conversation, we used INTERACT software (Mangold, 2010).…”