Rethinking Meetings - Emerging Nurse Leader

By Rose O. Sherman, EdD, RN, FAAN

All of us have probably had the experience of attending a meeting where there were no outcomes, and the conversation drifted way off the subject of the original intent of the meeting. Participants leave meetings like this feeling de-energized and perhaps even angry that their time has been wasted. It can become difficult to maintain enthusiasm and engagement when this occurs. Unproductive meetings are also costly to organizations in terms of staff time.

In a recent Remesh virtual focus group conducted by Deloitte Consulting for AONL, eliminating unnecessary or nonproductive was cited as a high-priority item to improve nurse manager recruitment and retention. Of all the ideas recommended, it is the easiest and least costly to implement.

In some organizations, numerous meetings are normalized, whether needed or not, into the culture. Sometimes leaders believe that the only way they can stay in the loop in their organizations is to personally attend all scheduled meetings. For some leaders, attending meetings will be the core of their work. But most leaders have many other responsibilities that get pushed to the side. This is especially true in the case of frontline leaders who now spend up to 80% of their day on staffing, scheduling, and recruitment. Little time is left to coach and mentor staff.

A good exercise we used in one organization I worked in was to calculate the cost of a meeting in terms of the time of participants. We found few meetings where we could honestly say there was a positive return on investment. With this knowledge, our default shifted to the question – what is the least costly way to accomplish the end goal here?

The Remesh findings were not surprising. So many frontline leaders are new to the role. New leaders are especially vulnerable. They are often inundated with requests to attend numerous meetings in their organizations. Without triaging these requests, it is easy to become overwhelmed, trying to be “everywhere.” They may not feel empowered to say no.

To begin rethinking meetings in your organization, I have the following recommendations for senior leaders:

View time spent on the unit as “protected time” and work to promote as much protected time as possible.
Review the meeting schedules of all frontline leaders to assess how much time is spent off the unit.
Develop a divide-and-conquer approach by assigning nurse managers to specific committees.
Work to shorten necessary meetings from one hour to 30 or 45 minutes.
Teach nurse managers to review agendas before a meeting to see if they need to be present.
Create good communication systems, so there is no FOMO if a meeting is missed.
Remind nurse managers that when they attend a meeting – they are giving up time that could be spent on other administrative activities.
Make it okay to say no to meetings.

Given the work demands in our current healthcare environment, rethinking meetings is low-hanging fruit to regain administrative time. Numerous meetings are embedded in the cultures of healthcare organizations, but this paradigm needs to be disrupted. Our nurse managers are overwhelmed and burned out. They are asking for our help and revisiting the need for meeting attendance is a good place to start.

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