Corporate gatherings, often dreaded as unproductive daily routines, can actually be transformed into valuable, engaging sessions, according to author Rebecca Hinds. She suggests that AI tools and services have the potential to foster deeper connections and more effective collaboration among team members.
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</div>Rebecca Hinds has dedicated over 15 years to researching workplace meetings and collaborative efforts. More recently, her work has focused on how AI can either enhance corporate gatherings or, conversely, exacerbate existing inefficiencies.
In a study commissioned by Read.AI, Hinds discovered that when correctly applied, AI can boost engagement among women and junior staff. However, it can also negatively impact hybrid meetings, where in-person attendees tend to speak significantly more than their remote counterparts. This suggests AI could potentially worsen meeting dynamics if not handled carefully.
Hinds’ book, “Your Best Meeting Ever: 7 Principles for Designing Meetings That Get Things Done,” launched this month. She recently spoke with Computerworld to elaborate on how AI is reshaping meetings, sometimes for the better, but not always.
Why do meetings continue to be such a significant challenge for organizations? “Meetings are a key indicator of an organization’s overall health. Despite advancements in technology, changes during the pandemic, and fundamentally new ways of working, meetings have largely remained stagnant.
“Decades of research confirm that meetings frequently become arenas for highly detrimental status dynamics. Often, senior personnel or the highest-ranking individual present will sway outcomes even before the discussion properly begins.
“Meetings… persist in their antiquated forms while the rest of the professional world progresses.”
What is your primary insight into how AI currently influences corporate meetings? “The technology essentially magnifies whatever characteristics already exist within your company culture. If your culture has fostered meetings purely for information dissemination, AI will further facilitate broadcasting information to employees. The real issue isn’t a lack of information — it’s the challenge of discovering *relevant* information.
“Meetings should serve a precise objective, such as reaching a specific decision or engaging in a particular debate. The clearer we are on the purpose, the better we can bring forth the appropriate information.
“They should not be used as platforms for information exchange. That process can, and ideally should, occur asynchronously.”
Which types of meetings prove genuinely beneficial? “Effective meetings share three key characteristics: the work involved is intricate, emotionally charged, or carries significant risk. These scenarios warrant face-to-face interaction, as they depend on empathy, trust, and non-verbal cues. When communicating challenging changes, a live meeting is essential. When there’s sufficient ambiguity to necessitate quick, spontaneous exchanges, that’s the kind of collaboration that requires real-time interaction.
“If the workflow is straightforward and individuals merely need to complete their part of a task, a meeting isn’t necessary. What’s needed is clear process documentation and perhaps asynchronous updates.”
How are senior leaders leveraging AI to address meetings, and what are the implications? “Leaders are facing immense pressure to streamline organizational structures, leading to expanding spans of control. Due to this pressure, they are attempting to offload to AI many responsibilities that should be handled by managers.
“Meetings become one of these outsourced functions. Leaders are using AI to distribute summaries instead of attending meetings themselves, which fundamentally undermines the core purpose of collaboration. You cannot cultivate trust through a summary. You cannot convey vulnerability or establish psychological safety through automated notes.”
How can AI assist companies in cutting down on unnecessary coordination meetings? “AI holds immense promise if we can first accurately map out processes and then automate specific segments. Ideally, we should be conducting fewer coordination-focused meetings and more collaboration-oriented ones.
Historically, the issue has been a lack of clarity regarding processes, insufficient documentation, and certainly a failure to automate them. Meetings often act as a safety net to ensure processes function, when in reality, they should operate efficiently by default.”
In an AI-driven environment, what is the significance of meetings for simple human connection, like sharing a casual drink and brainstorming ideas? “It’s profoundly important. Human-to-human connection, and manager-to-employee connection, has been on the decline for years. Metrics such as loneliness and the percentage of employees who consider a colleague a close friend at work have all shown a downward trend.
“If we structure meetings effectively, they should be a primary venue for fostering that human connection. There’s nothing a manager can do that is more consistently impactful than the regular weekly one-on-one check-in, even if it’s just for 15 minutes. The goal of becoming more data-driven and efficient in our meeting design is to create space for those meetings and collaborative sessions that should *not* be highly efficient.
“If you’re in a creative session aimed at igniting innovation or enhancing team morale and camaraderie, that should not be a pursuit focused solely on efficiency. Our focus should be on authentic human-to-human interaction. In the best scenarios, AI empowers us to be more human in our interactions and in our meetings.”
How should organizations utilize data to refine their meetings instead of simply accumulating more metrics? “Firstly, it’s crucial to understand the purpose of the data. We need metrics that provide individuals with a clear indication of how a meeting is progressing and its likelihood of leading to a successful outcome. We don’t want an overwhelming number of metrics; rather, we want the *right* metrics that allow us to comprehend our own participation.
AI should be sophisticated enough to grasp the meeting’s objective and present pertinent information that facilitates progress. Much of this should ideally occur outside the meeting, as overloading people with information during the session diminishes their ability to engage personally.”
Beyond merely tracking who speaks most, what other meeting dynamics should organizations assess? “Meetings are breeding grounds for status dynamics that can severely impede outcomes. Senior individuals speaking first, dominating the conversation, and influencing the room — these patterns undermine effective collaboration.”
“New metrics focused on charisma and inclusive language can reveal insights we often lack any means of understanding, even intuitively. This capability allows us to rethink both meeting structures and our individual contributions to be more effective.”
What is the danger of substituting human involvement in meetings with AI-generated summaries? “The more we automate the inherently human aspects of collaboration, the more we lose the very qualities that make meetings valuable: spontaneity, creativity, vulnerability, and the development of trust. You cannot simply automate your way to improved collaboration.
“The ultimate aim should be to leverage AI to eliminate superfluous meetings, thereby ensuring that the meetings you *do* hold can be more profoundly human.”
