Although meetings are very important, a lot of people (including myself) do not like them. Here are a few of the personal reasons that I dislike attending meetings...
Usually the organizer of the meeting is not very organized or prepared.
Meetings most often do not start on time, nor do they end on time.
There’s usually someone that wants to go on a long tangent about something that is not relevant to the meeting.
There’s usually someone that will make up the craziest question just to ask a question.
In most cases there’s no accountability for following up after the meeting.
There’s usually someone arriving late...which disrupts the meeting.
There’s usually no designated person taking notes at the meeting.
People can be sensitive, so sometimes a person can get unintentionally offended.
Most meetings are usually not productive.
There’s almost nothing worse than an unproductive meeting. I’m sure that you all can relate to some or all of my reasons above, and I’m sure each of us have contributed to a meeting being unproductive. Just remember, once our time is spent, it’s gone forever and we can not get it back.
Every organization needs to have meetings. The question is: What can you and I do to make our meetings more productive? Here are our possible solutions...
Prepare for the meeting: Write down what we would like to get out of the meeting. Get our questions ready before the meeting.
Be on time for the meeting.
Speak Up: Bring up what’s working well and what’s not working so well.
Be prepared to offer solutions.
Follow up after the meeting.
Don’t make unnecessary assumptions.
It takes the entire team to make a meeting go well, but one person can turn a meeting an absolute train wreck. So be the person who will make the meeting more productive, don’t be the person wasting everyone’s time. Time is precious and there’s money to be made and fun to be had, so let’s not waste any of our precision time sitting through a boring meeting that’s not going to generate any results.
~Matthew
