Every single day, an estimated one billion meetings take place across the globe. For top corporate executives, gathering around conference tables or inside virtual video rooms is not merely an occasional duty—it is their primary occupation. Chief executive officers routinely spend nearly three-quarters of their total working hours locked in meetings, while managers dedicate the vast majority of their time to planning, scheduling, and chairing these sessions. Across much of the industrialized world, meetings serve simultaneously as the steady metronome that structures the modern work week and as a persistent menace to daily productivity.
Despite the monumental amount of time and economic resources invested in workplace gatherings, organizations have historically understood surprisingly little about what these sessions actually accomplish, or how to make them truly worthwhile. For decades, meetings were viewed as a chaotic, elusive subject that defied rigorous scientific examination.
That dynamic, however, is rapidly shifting. Once considered a obscure niche within academic research, "meeting science" has blossomed into a vibrant, fast-growing subdiscipline among organizational and social psychologists. The field’s expansion has been greatly accelerated by the widespread adoption of remote work, which has created vast digital archives of recorded virtual meetings that provide researchers with unprecedented swaths of behavioral data. In studying these interactions, researchers are gaining a fascinating window into the fundamental mechanics of human behavior, cooperation, and workplace hierarchy.
At their core, workplace meetings address foundational human desires to connect, communicate, and collaborate. Throughout human history, individuals have gathered in shared spaces—from prehistoric caves and open fields to village squares and town halls—to coordinate labor, exchange ideas, establish consensus, or simply converse.
Within academic literature, meeting scientists define their subject with specific precision: a meeting is an organized gathering of individuals who come together with an explicit goal or structured agenda. As organizational psychologist Liana Kreamer of the Florida Institute of Technology notes, meetings serve as a micro-stage for analyzing the dynamics of human interaction. Kreamer, who coauthored a comprehensive review spanning over three decades of meeting science in the Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior alongside University of North Carolina at Charlotte researchers Steven Rogelberg and Jon Gray, emphasizes that meetings represent a foundational element of how human beings organize and interact as social entities.
To unravel what makes a meeting succeed or fail, researchers primarily rely on two scientific methodologies. The first is traditional survey research, in which scientists ask workers retroactively to evaluate their experiences, emotional states, and perceived productivity in real or simulated meetings. The second, more granular approach involves analyzing precise linguistic patterns, body language, and verbal exchanges recorded in audio and video files. Nale Lehmann-Willenbrock, an industrial and organizational psychologist who serves as director of the Center for Better Work at the University of Hamburg in Germany, highlights that analyzing these exact behavioral interactions is where the true essence of team dynamics is revealed.
In one notable experiment, Lehmann-Willenbrock and her research colleagues extracted detailed interaction data from video recordings of corporate decision-making meetings. Their analysis uncovered a stark operational pattern: when meeting leaders asked questions with genuine, respectful, and attentive inquiry, team performance improved significantly. Conversely, when leaders posed questions but failed to listen attentively to the answers, team effectiveness plummeted.
Leading with Listening
While many findings in meeting science may sound like common sense on the surface, researchers emphasize that daily workplace behavior frequently strays far from these ideal practices. Among the most consistent findings across decades of literature is the critical importance of active listening.
Active listening requires more than passive head-nodding or silent acquiescence; it demands that a listener visibly pay attention and provide thoughtful, constructive feedback. Lehmann-Willenbrock points out that the transition to virtual communications has inadvertently damaged this dynamic. Because virtual meeting software encourages participants to mute their microphones whenever they are not speaking, natural conversational cues and active listening behaviors are frequently suppressed entirely.
The balance between speaking time and listening time also exerts a profound impact on how a meeting is perceived. Research demonstrates that meeting leaders and meeting participants routinely walk away with wildly divergent assessments of the same session’s success.
"Often, leaders talk the most, which is also why they often think their meetings are pretty good," explains Lehmann-Willenbrock. Kreamer similarly stresses that while leaders must provide structure and guidance, they should actively refrain from dominating the conversation. Effective facilitators must continuously monitor their own proportion of speaking time to ensure that quieter team members have space to contribute.
To optimize meeting outcomes, evidence-based research offers a clear checklist of practices that leaders should implement before, during, and after a session. Stage-setting begins long before attendees enter the room. Leaders must carefully select an appropriate physical environment—taking into account lighting, room temperature, and physical comfort—and invite only those individuals whose presence is strictly necessary. Furthermore, leaders should establish clear goals, distribute a structured agenda in advance, guarantee that the gathering starts and finishes on time, and deliberately allocate time for informal conversation before diving into formal agenda items.
Allowing time for pre-meeting social interaction yields measurable dividends, particularly in digital environments. Lehmann-Willenbrock’s empirical studies demonstrate that pre-meeting small talk significantly predicts overall meeting effectiveness, functioning as a vital warmup phase for introverted or more reserved participants. By breaking the ice informally, introverted employees feel far more comfortable making substantive contributions once formal discussions begin. However, because spontaneous pre-meeting chatter is rare in virtual spaces, researchers advise leaders to establish explicit norms, such as opening virtual rooms early or designating the first few minutes of a session for informal personal check-ins.
Engaging Attendees
To maximize participation and ensure all perspectives are heard, meeting facilitators can employ structured collaboration methodologies. Kreamer strongly advocates for a strategy known as "silent brainstorming" or "brainwriting."
Instead of opening the floor to a traditional, verbal free-for-all—which often favors dominant personalities—silent brainstorming utilizes a shared virtual document or chat room where all attendees simultaneously type out their ideas in silence. Kreamer points to research demonstrating that silent brainwriting consistently yields higher quality and a greater quantity of ideas than open verbal brainstorming.
In academic and practical settings, Kreamer utilizes this method with her own students to brainstorm research projects. By observing each other working quietly in a shared digital document for ten minutes before opening the room to collective discussion, shy participants can contribute freely without fear of being interrupted or struggling to articulate complex thoughts on the spot.
Recent scientific inquiry has also begun examining how meeting structure impacts neurodiverse employees. Zofia Walters, a doctoral student in industrial organizational psychology working alongside Kreamer, has conducted research examining the specific needs of workers with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD).
Walters surveyed 147 corporate employees across various industries regarding their recent virtual meeting experiences. Participants provided detailed feedback concerning perceived meeting effectiveness, post-meeting fatigue, emotional state, camera usage, and the amount of time they spent multitasking, such as responding to emails. Respondents also noted whether they had a formal or informal diagnosis of ADHD.
In findings slated for publication, Walters discovered that individuals with ADHD reported significantly higher levels of meeting fatigue and poorer emotional states compared to their neurotypical peers, particularly when required to keep their cameras turned on for extended durations. Interestingly, the data also suggested that multitasking during long meetings may function as a necessary self-regulation mechanism for individuals with ADHD, helping them manage underlying feelings of boredom or hyperactivity.
The responsibilities of leadership do not terminate when a meeting adjourns. To guarantee that spent time translates into organizational value, leaders must systematically follow up. In a paper published in Organizational Dynamics, Lehmann-Willenbrock and her coauthors concluded that post-meeting success requires clearly communicating assigned action items, taking verifiable steps to execute decisions made during the session, and routinely evaluating employee satisfaction and engagement.
The Downsides—and Upsides
The structural fatigue caused by excessive meetings is well-documented in psychological literature. Studies consistently reveal that employees anticipate feeling less productive and emotionally drained when their workdays are heavily congested with back-to-back meetings, particularly when their core jobs require deep, complex cognitive focus.
Cognitive scientist Ava Scott of the University of Copenhagen notes that organizations frequently resort to calling meetings as a default reflex without explicitly clarifying the desired outcomes. This lack of intention leaves participants feeling that the gatherings are largely purposeless.
Scott’s research examining corporate employees at Microsoft revealed that recurring meetings are the primary source of aimlessness. Study participants described successive recurring meetings as virtually indistinguishable from one another, taking on a repetitive, dreamlike quality. Scott argues that when a recurring meeting lacks a distinct objective, it serves as a clear signal that taking up valuable employee time is unjustified. Recognizing this drain on organizational energy, major companies like Shopify have taken the radical step of systematically purging all recurring meetings from company calendars.
Yet, despite their widespread unpopularity, empirical data suggests meetings may offer profound long-term career benefits. A study led by Harvard University economist David Deming analyzed survey data collected by Norstat from more than 9,000 workers in Norway. Published by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), the study examined the relationship between meeting frequency and long-term career trajectories.
Deming and his research team discovered a strong positive correlation between high meeting intensity, subsequent wage growth, and on-the-job skill acquisition. While the correlational nature of the study cannot definitively establish direct causality, the authors hypothesize that frequent meetings serve as critical transmission channels for institutional knowledge. Meetings afford junior staff direct exposure to senior colleagues, offering rare opportunities to observe high-level decision-making and absorb complex operational skills.
Despite the substantial financial costs meetings impose on high-wage corporations, the economic benefits appear to outweigh the investments, leading the study’s authors to famously conclude that meetings function as the "broccoli of work"—frequently unpalatable, but ultimately nutritious for career development.
Strategies for Success
To improve the immediate atmosphere of workplace gatherings, researchers have evaluated the strategic use of humor. When humor is authentic, positive, and supportive, it can alleviate tension, encourage creative risk-taking, and bolster overall team performance.
However, observational research conducted by Lehmann-Willenbrock across two German corporations indicates that humor is only effective when participants already possess a established baseline of psychological safety and familiarity. Colleagues must know one another well enough to feel secure making and receiving jokes without fear of misinterpretation or social penalty.
Furthermore, the freedom to use humor is heavily moderated by power dynamics within organizational hierarchies. Science educator Vita Stout, alongside bat research colleagues, examined comedy usage at the 2022 International Congress for Bat Research in Austin, Texas. In findings published in Proceedings of Biological Sciences B, the researchers transcribed the exact timing, context, and audience responses to jokes delivered during scientific presentations.
While the study concluded that well-timed humor can foster community and social connection in professional settings, it also highlighted a distinct demographic imbalance: older, established male researchers made jokes far more frequently than early-career scientists or individuals from underrepresented backgrounds. The findings demonstrate that humor in formal gatherings is often a privilege exercised predominantly by those who already occupy positions of authority.
Beyond conversational dynamics, physical timing plays a pivotal role in meeting success. Meeting organizers must account for natural human circadian rhythms by avoiding scheduling sessions during the post-lunch physiological energy dip. Lehmann-Willenbrock acknowledges that even academic institutions routinely ignore these biological realities, frequently scheduling critical committee meetings at hours when participants are most physically exhausted and digesting food.
Similarly, scheduling practices must remain sensitive to personal and family obligations. Calling mandatory late-afternoon sessions—such as scheduling meetings at 5:00 p.m.—creates acute friction for working parents and caregivers who must balance personal responsibilities alongside professional expectations.
Finally, emerging research highlights clear cultural disparities in meeting expectations and etiquette. In a study examining 1,432 corporate workers across six countries, Lehmann-Willenbrock and her collaborators evaluated how participants reacted to scenarios where leaders or colleagues arrived five, ten, or fifteen minutes late.
The findings revealed striking regional differences: workers in the United States and the Netherlands reported high levels of frustration and irritation when a meeting leader was late, whereas participants in China and Chile demonstrated significantly greater tolerance for the same delays.
Kreamer notes that cross-cultural analysis remains one of the largest unaddressed frontiers in meeting science. Because the vast majority of existing meeting research over the past three decades has been conducted within North American and Western European cultural contexts, it remains unclear whether established best practices apply universally across global workforce cultures. Expanding research into broader international contexts remains an urgent priority for organizational psychologists—a task that will inevitably require gathering researchers together for many more meetings to come.
