I despise meetings.
Maybe it’s my natural impatience. It might be my inability to sit still for more than ten minutes at a time. It could be the four cups of coffee I drink every day before 9:00 a.m. Or maybe it’s just that I don’t like to be cooped up in a small room for any length of time.
While those all certainly play a part in my distaste for meetings, the truth runs a little deeper. I despise meetings largely because I’ve endured so many bad ones. Decades of them. So many, in fact, that I’ve come to learn that bad meetings are the norm and good ones are the exception. Let that sink in for a minute.
THE MEETING THAT COULD HAVE BEEN AN EMAIL
If you’ve been in an organization long enough, then you’ve attended a meeting that could have been an email. This happens so often that it’s become the stuff of urban legend. You can buy coffee mugs, candles, and even t-shirts proudly proclaiming, “I survived another meeting that should have been an email.” Bad meetings are like a rite of passage in most workplaces. If you haven’t survived a bad meeting, then you’re just a rookie. The FNG. You’re not anyone until you’ve earned the bad meeting badge.
The problem, however, isn’t with meetings, it’s with the people who organize and lead them. Like most workplace challenges, it’s a leadership issue. Typically, when you attend a meeting led by senior leaders, time constraints compel the use of an agenda and set outcomes. Calendar space is limited, and time is precious. They have places to go and things to do, and their schedules demand a high level of organizational ability.
But when you attend a meeting led by someone outside the senior leadership, it’s a roll of the dice. Either the people leading the meetings have no leadership skills whatsoever or no one has held them accountable for wasting others’ time. Sometimes, it’s both. You might get lucky, but it’s a safe bet that you’ve just crossed over into the Twilight Zone of meetings.
10 WAYS TO MAKE A BAD MEETING WORSE
Bad meetings are the standard in most organizations. It’s not that it takes a lot of work or effort to transform that standard. It doesn’t. It’s just not a priority.
Addressing that issue is relatively simple. A basic Google search will reveal page after page of tips on organizing meetings that matter. But if the standard is the opposite, why expend the effort? Why not just take a bad meeting and focus on making it worse? We’re already suffering, so how can you take that torture to the next level? Not surprisingly, there’s a list for that:
1. Don’t use an agenda.
Meetings should feel like a reenactment of the Lewis and Clark expedition, a true journey of discovery. I show up completely unprepared for a meeting I know nothing about. In fact, don’t even bother setting a time and place. Just email me when it starts and tell me that I’m already late.
2. Avoid setting a time limit.
The best meetings are those that ramble aimlessly, long past the load limit of the average human bladder. By not setting a time limit, you ensure that I am never quite certain when to excuse myself and you get to enjoy watching me squirm uncomfortably while you wax eloquently about meaningless, irrelevant issues.
3. Steer clear of expectations.
Only chumps bother to clearly establish the intended purpose or outcomes for a meeting. Vague expectations allow me to fumble my way through an agenda-less meeting like someone who inadvertently sprayed bear repellent in their eyes. Don’t mind me, I’m in agony but this meeting is awesome.
4. Choose an uncomfortable space.
If you really want to set the right tone for a meeting, choose a poorly ventilated space half the size necessary to accommodate the group, preferably with fewer chairs than required. Forcing me to stand in a pool of my own sweat for an entire meeting helps to set the proper mood.
5. Don’t assign a note-taker.
There’s no good reason to maintain an official record of meetings. Leave the accountability to the accountants. What happens in the conference room stays in the conference room, after all.
6. Skip any introductions.
Whatever you do, never introduce the other people in the room, especially if they are unfamiliar to the group or one another. Meetings should be like an elaborate game of Clue. Half the fun is trying to figure out who people are and why they are there. Colonel Mustard in the conference room with the inch-thick harassment complaint.
7. Use confusing body language.
If you want to get the best from your team, cross your arms and lean back in your chair when they speak. I especially like it when you spend an entire meeting either looking at your phone or constantly checking your watch, but my personal favorite is when you roll your eyes and sigh when someone mentions the workplace environment.
8. Shut down feedback.
The last thing you want is people interrupting an otherwise good meeting with new ideas or relevant concerns. You already know what you want to hear, so let’s try and keep any brainstorming to a minimum. I really enjoy it when you tell me put my questions in an email and I never hear from you again.
9. Never, ever, review the bidding.
Don’t be one of those clowns who recaps a meeting at the end or, worse yet, sets an action plan and assigns follow-up tasks. The only thing better than not knowing why I attended a meeting is leaving the meeting without any idea of what I should be doing next. Just email me a week later and ask me why I didn’t do the thing that I didn’t know I was supposed to do.
10. Close the meeting on your terms.
And by “your terms,” I mean suddenly and unexpectedly. My all-time favorite was the time you excused yourself and never returned. We sat in that broom closet of a conference room—which reeked of body odor and black mold—for twenty minutes before anyone realized that you weren’t coming back. That was a boss move.
If there is one thing missing from this list—the honorable mention among meeting unmentionables—it’s to ensure you choose the wrong briefer or facilitator. I prefer to have someone lead a discussion who possesses annoying vocal tics, someone who ends every sentence with “and everything” or habitually uses upspeak. This ensures I pay no attention whatsoever to what’s being said but instead obsess over how it’s being said. Winner, winner, chicken dinner.
