Why Meetings Stink (And How You Can Fix Them)

Meetings are…not fun. Usually.

You know the scenario. You’re hard at work accomplishing your daily tasks, sipping your fresh cup of dark roast coffee with a hint of French vanilla creamer, and you’ve got some light instrumental music playing in your headphones. It’s 9 a.m., and you’ve brushed off the sleepiness of the morning and finally gotten into your work groove.

Then, all of a sudden, you get an email from the higher-ups saying that an impromptu meeting has been called for, you guessed it, RIGHT NOW.

You’re suddenly pulled out of your workflow and immediately have to shift your focus to whatever this meeting is about. And to make matters worse, by the end of the meeting you find out that it wasn’t even necessary for you to be in the meeting in the first place; it focused on someone’s else’s work responsibilities, not yours!

This, my friends, is why 9 out of 10 times, I hate meetings. I find them big time wasters, workflow interrupters, and oftentimes unproductive to the office environment.

If you don’t believe, just look at the statistics:

• 33.4% of meeting time is considered unproductive by meeting participants
• The most common complaint about meetings is they are inconclusive and result in no decisions being made.
• The average meeting length is between 31-60 minutes, followed closely by 1 – 1.5 hours.

But, there are solutions to this problem. There are ways to make meetings suck less and be more productive. If you want to cut out meetings altogether, we’ve got tips for that, too. Keep reading to find out how to make the best of your boring meetings!

Keep Them Short

Sitting through a long meeting is a frustrating thing. 1. You don’t even want to be in this meeting anyway and 2. you already finished talking about the important stuff 10 minutes ago, and now people are just chatting! Long meetings are not only boring, they also keep employees from working on the tasks they need to complete for that day. It could potentially make their work day even longer than normal. Keep your meetings short, and don’t linger on unnecessary talking points. Keep it short, sweet and to the point!

Relax

Whether you’re the person who called the meeting, or the person on the other end having to sit through the meeting, being calm, cool and collected are three goals to remember. Chances are, no one else really wants to be at the meeting either, so why stress about it? If everyone in the meeting keeps their cool and relaxes, even when discussing important topics, the meeting will go a lot smoother.

Don’t Call Them Out Of Nowhere, Unless It’s An Emergency

Have you ever had a meeting sprung on you out of nowhere, right when you’re in the middle of completing an important work task? It’s the worse feeling in the world. Not only do you have to stop everything and go to the meeting, you also run the risk of losing your train of thought. When you come back after the meeting, your work groove could be completely squashed! If you’re going to call a meeting, it’s best to give everyone at least 30 minutes notice. That way, they can find a stopping point, and won’t come to the meeting in a flustered state. Emergencies happen, and sometimes you can’t help but call an impromptu meeting, but try to think of others in non-life threating situations.

Allow Everyone To Have A Say

In every meeting I’ve been in, it never fails that there will be one person in the meeting who does most or all of the talking. If they have a lot of great info to present, it’s a good thing. But what if they’re taking up someone else’s talking time? You can’t let one person dominate a conversation to the point that everyone else feels like their opinion doesn’t matter and their voices aren’t being heard. If you called the meeting, know when to call on others to speak up. If you’re the person trying to get your voice heard, don’t be afraid to take ownership of the meeting and speak up!

Explore Other Ways Of Communicating

Meetings aren’t always the best solution for discussing ideas. You can also make use of different tech to accomplish your brainstorming sessions and project progress reports without having everyone leave their workspace! Software like Slack, a messaging app for groups, and Google Hangouts, another messaging app that has video chat functionality, make it easy for ideas to be passed around without everyone having to take time out of their busy days to go to a meeting. Even email can be helpful (although, getting tons of emails a day is also rather annoying. But that’s an issue to be discussed on another day). There are plenty of alternative ways to communicate, you just have to go out and explore.

Meetings aren’t all bad. Sometimes, they are actually productive, and not huge time wasters. Find out if meetings are worth it for your company and your employees, and develop a strategy that works for everyone!