【中英双语】你具备会议领导力吗？
最新研究发现，一次糟糕会议的不良影响可以让与会者持续抱怨好几个小时。这种现象被称为“会议修复综合征”。最后，领导者继续召开低效会议，并未做到人尽其用，最终可能会导致团队成员离职，自身的权力和影响力被削弱。
戴维是美国一家大银行的高级副总裁，也是一位能干的“面对面”风格管理者。然而360度反馈显示，他在“组织高效会议”这一关键指标上表现不佳。多名员工称他的会议“是一种煎熬”。他们抱怨他开会过于频繁，纵容少数人主导对话，并且没能创造让参会者真正碰撞观点、进行批判性思维的氛围。这些评论令戴维始料未及。他认为自己很擅长组织会议，至少和多数同僚相比是这样。
Dave, a senior VP at a large U.S. bank, was a strong one-on-one manager. However, 360-degree feedback revealed that he struggled in one critical area: leading effective meetings. Multiple employees described his meetings as “a time suck.” They complained that he asked them to meet too often, allowed a few people to dominate conversations, and failed to create an environment where attendees really wrestled with ideas and engaged in critical thinking. These comments took Dave by complete surprise. He’d thought he was doing a good job with meetings—Better than most of his peers, anyway.
戴维并不是第一个高估自己这方面能力的管理者。研究表明，每周高管花在会议上的23个小时中，平均有8个小时没有成效。大约90％的人承认在会议中做白日梦，73％的人承认他们利用会议时间做其他工作。然而，我自己和他人的研究表明，领导者始终对自己的会议评价颇高，与其他参会者的评价相比尤甚。例如，对1300多名管理者进行的电话访问显示，79％的人表示他们发起的会议极其或非常富有成效，但只有56％的人认为他人发起的会议同等高效。该结果清晰地证明了“问题没出在我身上”的态度。其他研究揭示了个中原因：在与北京大学童佳瑾（Jiajin Tong）合作的一项研究中，我发现最活跃的参会者是那些认为会议最有效和最令人满意的人。最活跃的人是谁？正是组织会议的领导者。
Dave is not the first manager to overestimate his abilities in this area. Research suggests that of the 23 hours that executives spend in meetings each week, on average, eight are unproductive. Some 90% of people report daydreaming in meetings, and 73% admit that they use meeting time to do other work. And yet research by myself and others shows that leaders consistently rate their own meetings very favorably—and much more positively than attendees do. For instance, a telephone survey of more than 1,300 managers found that while 79% of them said that meetings they initiated were extremely or very productive, only 56% said the same about meetings initiated by others—clear evidence of an “I’m not the problem” attitude. Additional research provides insight into why: In a study with Jiajin Tong of Peking University, I found that the attendees who are the most active are the ones who feel that meetings are the most effective and satisfying. And who typically talks the most? The leader.
当领导者认为他们的会议进展顺利时，就不太愿意征求反馈并寻求改进机会。因此，与会者在调查中抱怨的不相关议程、会议时间过长、缺乏重点等问题持续存在，导致他们心怀不满，并影响他们的敬业度。此外，会议还付出了高昂的相关成本。除了实际浪费的时间，仅在美国，每年会议支出超过了300亿美元。这还不包括员工本可以用来完成更重要、更创新或更有成效任务所付出的机会成本。而员工敬业度降低，会导致绩效、创新、服务受损，并影响他们帮助别人的热情和团队精神。
When leaders assume that their meetings are going well, they are less apt to solicit feedback and seek opportunities to improve. As a result, frustrations that attendees commonly cite in surveys (such as irrelevant agenda items, overly long duration, lack of focus) persist, leaving them disgruntled and disengaged. And the associated costs are significant. Apart from the actual time wasted—estimated to be more than $30 billion a year in the United States alone—there are opportunity costs of employees’ not working on more important, inspiring, or revenue-generating tasks. Reduced engagement has been shown to diminish everything from performance and innovation to service delivery, helping others, and teamwork.
最新研究发现，一次糟糕会议的不良影响可以让与会者持续抱怨好几个小时。这种现象被称为“会议修复综合征”。最后，领导者继续召开低效会议，并未做到人尽其用，最终可能会导致团队成员离职，自身的权力和影响力被削弱。
One recent study found that the effects of a bad meeting can linger for hours in the form of attendee grousing and complaining—a phenomenon dubbed “meeting recovery syndrome.” Finally, leaders who continue to run ineffective meetings, thereby failing to make the best use of the talent around them, might eventually see attrition on their teams and an erosion of their power and influence.
当这些后果被指出时，管理者往往都会有宣布取消所有会议的冲动。然而，尽管对大多数组织而言，削减会议数量并非难事，但“零会议”政策并不现实，而且适得其反。会议可以有效地汇集想法和意见，并鼓励员工在工作中的协同与合作。会议还能让个人形成更具适应性、复原力和能够自我引导的协调整体，在危机时期尤为如此。也许最重要的一点是：会议有助于建立和促进共识，从而成为集体能量与活力的焦点。
When consequences such as these are pointed out, a common impulse is to decree that all meetings should be eliminated. However, although most organizations have meetings that could easily be cut, a no-meetings policy is unrealistic and counterproductive. Meetings can efficiently bring together ideas and opinions and allow people to do their jobs in a more coordinated and cooperative manner. They help individuals form a coherent whole that is more adaptive, resilient, and self-directing, especially in times of crisis. Perhaps most important, meetings help establish and promote consensus, thus serving as a focal point for collective drive and energy.
因此，取消所有会议不是我们的目的，而是要消除无效或不必要的会议，并提高所保留会议的质量。领导者需要了解他们在会议中的优点和缺点，但大多数组织很少有举措来提高管理者这方面的自我认知。在参加一次大型人力资源会议时，我询问与会高管（其中许多人来自《财富》500强企业），他们中有多少人在员工敬业度调查中设计了有关会议效率的问题，或收集了关于会议领导力的360度反馈？结果没有一个人举手。在审视许多顶级公司的入职培训、领导力培养和高潜力项目时，我发现尽是些“如何”类书籍里的陈词滥调（例如，不要忘记设置议程）。一项研究表明，尽管现如今会议盛行，但75％的受访者从未接受过如何组织或参加会议的正式培训。
So the goal should be not to kill all meetings but to eliminate the ineffective or unnecessary ones and improve the quality of those that remain. To do this, leaders need to understand what they do well and not so well in meetings, but most organizations do little to promote self-awareness in this area. While presenting at a large HR conference, I asked the executives in attendance (many of them from Fortune 500 companies) how many included questions about meeting effectiveness in their employee engagement surveys or gathered 360-degree feedback about meeting leadership. Not one hand went up. In examining onboarding, leadership development, and high-potential programs across many top organizations, I’ve found little content on meeting best practices beyond the banal advice you’d see in any “how to” book (for example, don’t forget to have an agenda). One study found that despite the prevalence of meetings today, 75% of those surveyed had received no formal training in how to conduct or participate in them.
通过客观评估做出积极的改变并提高自己的会议技巧，是管理者的职责所在。以下是具体方法。
It’s therefore up to managers to make positive changes by objectively assessing and improving their own meeting skills. Here’s how.
评估过往表现
提高会议领导力，需要领导者能更好地审视自己。每次会议后，你不妨花几分钟进行反思，想想与会者的行为、对话互动，以及谈到的内容。你可以问自己以下问题：人们分心了吗？是否在私下交谈了？想想谁说得最多。是你吗，还是有另外一两个人？讨论是否偏题了？表达的所有意见和想法是否比较相似？如果你对部分或全部问题的回答为“是”，那就出问题了。同样重要的是要注意会议的积极方面，比如全员都出席了，以及进行了有意义的辩论。激励人们的要素有哪些？在未来的会议中，你如何做才能提高员工参与度？
Assessment
Better meeting leadership requires Better self-observation. Take a few minutes after each meeting you run to reflect. Think about attendee behavior, conversational dynamics, and the content that was covered. Ask yourself: Were people distracted? Conducting side conversations? Consider who did most of the talking. Was it you? One or two other people? Did the discussion stray to irrelevant topics? Were all the opinions and ideas that were expressed fairly similar? If you answer yes to some or all of these questions, there’s a problem. It’s also important to note the positive aspects of your meetings, such as full participation and healthy debate. What seemed to energize people? What could you do in future meetings to encourage that kind of engagement?
除了这些例行检查外，你还要定期听取参会者的意见。征求意见可以面对面进行，但一定要强调你需要坦诚的反馈，也可以使用技术来评估参与者的态度。例如，为了跟进360度评估，戴维进行了一项包括三个问题的在线调查，询问同僚和直接下属他在会议中的优点和需要改进之处，以及大家对会议的建议。
In addition to these routine scans, check in periodically with people who attend your meetings. You can do this face-to-face, making sure to emphasize that you truly want candid feedback, or you can use technology to gauge participants’ attitudes. For instance, as a follow-up to his 360, Dave conducted a three-question online survey to ask his peers and direct reports what was working well in his meetings, what needed improvement, and what suggestions folks had.
一旦你进行了反思，并征求了其他人的反馈，就能发现自己的主要优劣势，并制定改进计划。就我的咨询经验而言，我发现将重点放在两方面最有效：做好准备和提高参会积极性。
Once you’ve reflected on your own and solicited feedback from others, identify your key strengths and weaknesses and create a plan for improvement. In my consulting, I’ve found it useful to focus on two areas: preparation and facilitation.
做好准备
我们中很少有人会质疑这一观念：写报告、处理客户事务，以及很多其他商业活动都需要思考和规划，哪怕只花几分钟都有用。但在开会时，人们经常忽略这种最佳实践。特别是定期的例会，很容易流于形式，墨守成规。但是当你占用别人时间的时候，你理应适度进行“前期投入”。
Preparation
Few of us would question the notion that presentations, client work, and many other business activities require thought and planning, even if it’s just a few minutes’ worth. But people routinely ignore this best practice when it comes to meetings. Especially with regularly scheduled ones, it’s easy to simply show up and default to the usual way of doing things. But when you’re a steward of others’ time, you owe it to them to make some modest upfront investment.
召开会议前，你要强迫自己做出慎重选择。首先，明确召开会议的原因，并确定目标，为实现这些目标奠定基础。该过程可能包括要求其他人对议程设置提出建议。这样做不仅开会不容易跑题，还能提高人们的责任感和参与度。如果你没有明确的任务或议程表，最好就不要开会。
Before you hold a meeting, force yourself to make deliberate choices. First, know exactly why you’re convening and define your goals to set the stage for achieving them. This process may include asking others to suggest agenda items, which not only promotes relevance but also increases ownership and engagement. If you don’t have a clear mission or a list of agenda items, you should probably cancel.
一旦你知道为什么要开会，就需要决定能配合自己的参会者。与会者太多，会导致人多嘴杂或浑水摸鱼（即社会懈怠social loafing，指个人在“群体”掩护下减少努力的行为），更不必说后勤上的挑战了。但你也不能邀请太少人出席，导致必要的人缺席，或者让其他人感到被轻视。要找到平衡点，就必须慎重考虑关键决策者、影响者和利益相关者。你可以在会前询问“局外人”的意见，并向他们承诺分享他们的意见，并及时向他们更新进展，确保他们不会感到被孤立。你也可以考虑设置定时议程，让与会者仅参加与他们相关的部分。
Once you know why you’re meeting, decide who needs to be there to help you. Too many attendees can lead to a cacophony of voices or social loafing (whereby individuals scale back their efforts under the protection of a “crowd”), not to mention logistical challenges. That said, you don’t want to pare the invite list down so much that necessary people aren’t there or others end up feeling slighted. To find the right balance, think carefully about key decision makers, influencers, and stakeholders. Make sure that those outside the circle feel included, by asking for their input before the meeting and promising to share it and keep them in the loop. You might also consider a timed agenda, in which attendees join only the portions of the meeting pertinent to them.
接下来的关注重点是时间和地点。在同样的会议室、同样的时间以及同样的布置下开会，是人的本性。但这些习惯可能会令人麻木。你不妨创造新鲜感：比如选择不同的会场，在早上而非下午开会，调整会议时长（例如50分钟而非一小时），或改变座位安排，让每个人的邻座和对面都是新认识的同事。如果只有2-4人开会，不妨建议边走边聊。对于较大的团体，可以尝试站会——站会被证明可以提高会议效率和与会者满意度，但前提是会议时间很短（约15分钟），防止人们产生不适感。
Next, focus on time and place. It’s human nature to stick to the same room, same hour, and same general setup. But those routines can cause people to glaze over. Instead, find ways to introduce variety: Move to a different venue, meet in the morning instead of the afternoon, experiment with nontraditional time blocks (such as 50 minutes instead of an hour), or change the seating arrangements so that everyone is next to and across from different colleagues. For groups of two to four people, you might suggest a walking meeting. For larger groups, try standing, which has been shown to boost meeting efficiency and attendee satisfaction—provided the sessions are kept short (15 minutes or so) to prevent discomfort.
对于特别重要的会议，你的准备应该更加周到。你可以尝试“预先检验”的方法（也称为前瞻性后见之明）。你可以设想如果会议失败，反过来思考原因是什么。这样你计划会议的时候，就可以避免或减少问题的发生。
For high-stakes meetings, your preparation should go even further. Try having a “premortem” (also known as prospective hindsight), which involves imagining that the meeting has failed and working backward to ascertain why. Then plan the meeting in a way that avoids or mitigates those problems.
戴维的一大问题是，无论值不值得开会，每周组织的会议都太过频繁。这已经成了他的习惯，而不是出于真正的需要。所以他把会议频率调低到隔周一次，在不开会的那一周，设置“魔术时间”。 在这段空白时间内，每位团队成员可以选择埋头工作，或者就新出现的紧急状况召集临时会议。这样一来，会议数量减少，质量提高。尽管如此，戴维还有更多的工作要做：提高参会积极性。
Dave’s big issue was that he held too many recurring weekly meetings that hAppened whether he had a compelling agenda or not. He held them out of habit rather than necessity. So he changed the cadence to every other week, and in the off weeks created something he called “magic time”—a slot that everyone on the team agreed to keep empty for either heads-down work or an impromptu meeting should an urgent issue surface. This significantly reduced the quantity of meetings, while also improving the quality of those that were held. Still, Dave had more work to do: improving his meeting facilitation.
提高参会积极性
从与会者走进会议室的一刻起，你就该关注他们的积极性。因为人们经常将会议视为一种打扰，要被迫停下手头“真正的工作”，所以领导者的首要任务是提升与会者的存在感。有几种方法可以做到这一点：在门口问候与会者，表达对他们付出时间的感激，提供零食，播放音乐，并要求人们关掉手机和笔记本电脑。
Facilitation
Facilitation starts the moment attendees walk into the room. Because people often experience meetings as interruptions—taking them away from their “real work”—the leader’s first task is to promote a sense of presence among attendees. There are several ways to do this: by greeting people at the door, expressing gratitude for their time, offering snacks, playing music, and asking folks to turn off their phones and laptops. It is also important to start with a purposeful opening statement explaining why everyone is gathered.
同样重要的是，进行有意义的开场陈述，阐明召集所有人开会的原因。在谈话开始时，认可团体或个人的成绩，或提醒与会者“会议价值观”——已经商定的参会规则，例如保持发言简洁。所有这些技巧都能让人们感到受欢迎，并准备好解决手头的任务。
Consider recognizing group or individual accomplishments or reminding attendees of “meeting values”—previously agreed-upon rules of engagement, such as keeping comments succinct. All these tactics help people feel welcome and primed to tackle the task at hand.
谈话中，你应该抱持主人翁心态，提出问题，鼓励他人，以身作则积极倾听，征集问题并管理冲突。当然，领导者有时也需要提出自己的意见和指示，推动讨论进行。但促进积极性的关键在于，明白你主要扮演的是辅助角色。这确保会议真正能做到有商有量，与会者能畅所欲言，并且觉得自己对会议结果做出了努力。
As the conversation gets started, try to adopt a stewardship mindset, asking questions, engaging others, modeling active listening, drawing out concerns, and managing conflicts. Of course, leaders at times will need to offer their own opinions and directives to move the discussion forward, but the key to successful facilitation is understanding that you’re primarily playing a supportive role. This ensures that there is genuine give-and-take, attendees feel safe speaking up, and they leave feeling committed to the outcomes.
让参与者积极参与还有哪些技巧？你可以尝试为每个议程项目分配具体时间，看看是否有助于确保公平的发言时长。为了评估人们对某个想法感兴趣的程度，可以让他们举手表决。如果你认为匿名可能效果更好，也可以使用快速问卷App或网站。与会者用手机就能参与，然后分享并讨论汇总结果。为了防止团体迷思（groupthink），你可以考虑在会议期间加入几段沉默期，让人们在没有听到别人意见的情况下，提出想法或形成意见。例如，“头脑写作（Brainwriting）”要求个人先安静反思并写下想法，再大声说出来。研究表明，与头脑风暴相比，这种方法能产生更多的创造性思维。“无声阅读（silent reading）”也很有用。开会讨论前，让与会者阅读提案，可以增加他们对新想法的理解和记忆，从而提高他们的积极性。
What are some techniques for getting attendees to actively participate? Try using time allotments for each agenda item to see whether that helps ensure equitable “air time.” To gauge interest in an idea, ask for a show of hands or, if you think anonymity might help, use a quick-survey App or website to poll people using their cell phones. Then share and discuss the aggregate results. To prevent groupthink, consider incorporating periods of silence throughout the meeting to let people to come up with ideas or form opinions without hearing others’ thoughts. “Brainwriting,” for instance, involves having individuals quietly reflect and write down their ideas before sharing them out loud; research shows that this Approach yields more creative thinking than brainstorming does. Silent reading can also be useful. Asking attendees in a meeting to read a proposal to themselves before discussing it can increase their understanding and retention of the new idea—and thus their engagement with it.
戴维有两个关于积极性的问题需要解决：让更多人愿意发言，希望他们能进行真正的对话和辩论。为解决参与度问题，他开始定期提醒与会者，希望每个人都参与，并期望同事互相鼓励发言。他提前征求了人们的想法和意见，确保每个人的关切都会得到重视，或者询问人们是否愿意这么做。他还提议，让更沉默的与会者贡献想法，或领导特定的议程项目。当有人发言过长，他使用肢体语言进行提示，例如通过转移目光，或将肩膀转向别人，表明他需要其他人回应。当事态转好时，他会说：“我喜欢这次讨论，非常感谢每个人的参与”来强化正确的言行。
Dave had two facilitation issues to address: He needed to get more people talking, and he wanted them to engage in real dialogue and debate. To address the participation problem, he began to periodically remind attendees that he wanted everyone to be involved and expected teammates to encourage one another to speak up. He solicited people’s ideas and opinions in advance to make sure he highlighted their concerns, or he would call on people to share if they were comfortable doing so. He made a point of asking quieter attendees to contribute thoughts or lead particular agenda items. He used body language to signal when someone was starting to dominate the conversation—for example, by shifting his gaze and turning his shoulders toward others to indicate that he wanted their reactions. And when he began to see Better dynamics, he reinforced the behavior by offering comments such as “I’m loving this discussion and really Appreciate everyone’s engagement and participation. Thank you.”
为了推动团队进行更深刻和富有意义的对话，他有时会邀请一些人在会议中故意“唱反调”。如果目标是解决具体的问题，他会在幻灯片上匿名列出团队成员私下建议的所有选项，并就每个选项进行分组讨论。他有时还将评估问题与决策分开，确保辩论能顺畅进行，不会因被迫当场做出决定的压力而受阻——吉百利和波音等很多公司都青睐这一策略。
To push his team toward more robust and in-depth conversation, he sometimes Appointed people to play devil’s advocate in meetings. If the goal was to address a specific issue, he would create PowerPoint slides listing all the potential options privately suggested to him by team members (without using their names) and open each one to group discussion. He also sometimes separated the evaluation of an issue from the decision making, to ensure that debate wasn’t hampered by the pressure of having to make a choice on the spot—a strategy favored by companies including Cadbury Schweppes and Boeing.
重新评估
即使管理人员主动诊断会议问题，并学会更好地准备会议和积极鼓励参与者，依然有改进余地。所以这一过程还需要循环进行。戴维在实践了我描述的策略数月后，要求团队进行另一次坦率评估。好消息是，每个人都认为他组织的会议有了很大改善。但又有了新问题。一些与会者认为会议比合理的议程还要长，讨论有时漫无目的。所以戴维决定，将会议时间缩短5到10分钟，来创造更多的紧迫感和专注力。
Reassessment
Even when managers proactively diagnose their meeting problems and learn to Better prepare for and facilitate the gatherings they lead, there will undoubtedly be room for improvement. And so the process begins again. In Dave’s case, after a few months of experimenting with the tactics I’ve described, he asked his team for another frank assessment. The good news is that everyone thought his meetings had vastly improved. But a new issue emerged. Some attendees felt that meetings were still longer than justified by their agendas; discussions sometimes rambled. So Dave decided to shave five or 10 minutes off his schedules to create a bit more urgency and focus.
有趣的是，人们还提出了与会议无关的建议，指出了部门中的流程问题。起初戴维吃了一惊。但后来他意识到，在改变参会方式的同时，他也改变了团队的文化。他展现了自己是一个不故步自封、重视反思、学习、灵活性，并愿承担合理风险和尝试新事物的领导。员工也投桃报李，积极地帮助他解决问题。组织会议似乎只是管理者工作的很小一部分。但会议的积极变化可以为公司及其员工带来真正的收益。如果你的公司没有相关培训，那么你可以利用本文中的策略培养这项关键技能。
Interestingly, people also offered suggestions that had nothing to do with meetings but were designed to address process issues in the department. At first, Dave was taken aback. But then he realized that in changing the way he ran his meetings, he’d shifted the culture on his team. He’d shown that he was a leader who valued reflection, learning, flexibility, taking reasonable risks, not being complacent, and trying new things, and his employees were rewarding him with proactive problem-solving.
史蒂文·罗格贝格是北卡罗来纳大学夏洛特分校校长教授，在美国和海外以及跨学科方面做出了杰出贡献。他还是该校组织科学项目主任，并著有《会议的惊人科学：如何领导团队创造业绩巅峰》（The Surprising Science of Meetings: How You Can Lead Your Team to Peak Performance，牛津大学出版社2019年出版）。
