Here’s why people hate meetings.
- Boss tells you the meeting is urgent, then is always the last to show up
- Difficult to conceal the fact that you really have to take a nap
- “Let’s vote on whether to take a vote”
- Tray of squishy pastry things filled with weird flavored goop
- Agenda? What agenda?
- Usual signal for the end of the meeting is arrival of cleaning staff
- During your presentation, everyone’s watching cat videos on their phones
- Person next to you conducting personal hygiene keeps flicking stuff your way
- Discussion is so far off topic, no one remembers the original point
- Most important thing you get to do is answer the role call
- When there’s a motion to repeal the amendment to the previous motion to disallow, no one knows what they’re voting for
- Woman whose name you can’t remember keeps getting your name wrong
- Two words: long winded
- Guy on the speaker phone sounds like he’s in a coal mine
- Group rushes through a bad proposal so they can beat the traffic to the cottage
- After four hours, place smells like a locker room
And the top reason why people hate meetings is:
- Scheduling yet another meeting to finish everything off
From my experience I can say that most effective meeting depends on the meeting facilitator.
Most effective meeting occurs;
(1)Preparing ahead
-Communicate the venue, meeting objective and agenda to attendees ahead of time.
(2)Commence on time
Start and end on time. Start the meeting on time. If there is one other person present, start the meeting . Also don’t forget to end on time.
(3)Too much stuff in one meeting.
Don’t try to do all the stuff in one meeting. Plan your agenda so that it takes up about 75% of the allotted time. If one or few tasks takes more time, you still can end the meeting on time.
I think top reason why people hate meeting is “having meetings just to have meetings“.
I have 15+ working experience and seen that most meetings are useless and the same results can gain from having few calls. The manager can communicate the news through an email or call and there is no need for a meeting.
I’m one of those people with lots of meeting. I schedule most of them. Most of my work involves scheduling meetings. I found them vital for our business growth. The key for successful meeting is having a purpose and try to focus on that. If it’s status update meeting I try my best to finish it within 5-10 minutes.