And they made a very good point! The gist of the question is based on a study from the New England Journal of Medicine in which one group of patients was told exactly what their surgery would entail, as well as what to expect during recovery. The other group was told nothing. Somewhat surprisingly, the group that knew what was going on complained less, required less medication, and recovered faster.
Like surgery, you’re “blind” during a conference call, and afterwards it’s basically all up to you—with some directions and guidance. So if surgery patients do better when they know all the details, well it makes sense that conference call participants would too.
To further duplicate the study, we should have a detailed agenda that’s distributed long in advance. We should also include the assignments and “take away” information that would have been covered in the conference. This is a bit counter-intuitive—“If we give them that, why bother with a conference call?” This is a good point.
Imagine this scenario: the participant gets the agenda, sees what they’ll have to do, and starts working on it. Worst case they get their part done early, before the conference call, and now we’re ahead of schedule. Now what if they look into their assignment and spot a flaw, a problem, or an opportunity?
Knowing ahead of time also allows our participants to better prepare for the meeting, joining the conference call with solid answers and great questions. And afterwards, they can jump right into their assignments because they weren’t ambushed in the conference call.
Try this method with your next conference call. Tell us a bit about how you prepared your participants, as well as if things were better or worse after the call.
