One of the first things I realized I needed to learn in my career was how to deal with meetings. How to avoid the unimportant ones, how to survive the mandatory ones, and how to not blow up the important ones. Let’s face it, meetings are both really valuable and really horrible. I have had times when I have been sitting in meetings waiting to make a valuable contribution to the enrichment of everyone, and times when I have been furiously doodling in the corner hoping that the fire alarm goes off. Probably the worst meetings I have ever been at have been on projects that have multiple businesses involved and I am aware that there is at least one person at that meeting whose purpose is to destroy the meeting, or even the project, because they have some money or equity sitting in a vendor company that they would love to bring in to replace the company you work for. Let me tell you, spending forty-five to sixty minutes staring at that person is not a great use of time, mentally or emotionally, but I have been there. Sadly, you may be there someday too.
So what the hell are meetings all about? Let’s see if we can break it down without filling a buzzword bingo card.
A meeting is a group of two or more people to either distribute information to increase shared understanding or to establish a plan of action. I think there are subtle nuances in there (achieving consensus on an action plan, daily metrics review, etc) but fundamentally you are attending a meeting to convey your knowledge to one or more other people, create a set of actions by a group of two or more people, or to learn something.
I use this filter for myself frequently. I really don’t like attending meetings because not enough people understand the point of the meeting they are in or don’t understand meetings in general.
So how do you know what you are supposed to do in a meeting? No one I know has a degree in meeting-ology. I don’t even think there was a 101 class in my university that talked about professional meetings. There are almost zero pages in the employee handbook for the first time employee on what to do in a meeting. And everyone has that moment when someone comes into their office/cubicle/shared-work-table-quadrant and says “Hey we are having a meeting and you should come with us” for the very first time.
Truthfully, at that moment you should squeeze your eyes shut, cover your ears, and yell “NOOOOOOOOOOO!” as loud as you can. It is good practice for the road ahead. You probably should not go to this meeting, but you will, and it will help to reinforce one of the first bad habits of professionals—just attending meetings for the sake of attending them. The sooner you cure yourself of this affliction the better off you will be.
When you are invited to a meeting you should try to understand a few things:
- What is this meeting about?
- Who is at this meeting?
- Why am I at this meeting?
- What is the intended takeaway from the meeting?
If you do not have good answers to these, you should decline the invitation. This serves two purposes: First, it will protect your sanity. Trust me on this. It will. Second, if someone thinks you should be at this meeting, then they will invite you again and then the onus is on them to come up with the answers above.
These are loose guiding principles and there should be some caveats. I hope I don’t get an angry email someday from someone saying “I have a deadline and I missed going to an all-hands meeting where everyone got a leather jacket as some sort of perk for a milestone because YOU said I should avoid all meetings!”
First of all, sorry about the jacket in advance. If that was what you took away from this article, you are doing it wrong. That is okay—many people are. All-hands meetings and staff meetings are very important, and maybe not directly for your day to day tasks, but they serve the organization in disseminating information and increasing employee engagement. Sorry for the buzzwords. Those random social gatherings and quarterly status meetings from the CEO serve a purpose and it may not be readily apparent to you early in your career. If the organization in question uses these tools effectively, they are awesome. They should be used deliberately and judiciously in order to benefit the organization and its people.
As an individual contributor early in my career I was very oblivious to meetings and their purpose. I would sit in a room irritated that I am not coding. I honestly completely missed the point. I transitioned into a role in a sales organization and it wasn’t until I was told by my boss at the time “Hey you need to stop looking so bored in our meetings” that I really began to think about it. We would be out meeting pre-sales companies and I was gathering data on what we should be doing to close the deal. Apparently I looked horribly disinterested and if the prospect meeting we were at was someone who had some degree of insecurity, then the presence of the disdainful techie was counterproductive to getting their business. I think that is the first time I realized that I had to start modifying my behavior in meetings.
Okay so what do we get out of all of this? Meetings are important. Meetings are also horribly broken. No one teaches you how to behave in a meeting and it is hard to figure out what meetings you should be going to. I got involved in student government in university and also participated in youth athletics as a parent coach. Both of these are valuable tools if you can take advantage of them in learning how to behave in a group and what types of structures are good (or bad) for a group of people.
Part of the reason I am writing these articles is to atone for professional sins of the past but also to hopefully help people develop tools for their own future.
I think that being able to participate effectively in a meeting is important. Unfortunately nobody really teaches it as a valuable skill.
I would love to hear your thoughts on the best things and the worst things about meetings!
