Imagine a meeting. You’re trying to focus on what’s being said, but all you can think about is “This is such a waste of my life. Why am I here?” The clock’s hands aren’t moving and you begin to suspect that the air has been sucked out of the room and replaced with sleeping gas. Sounds familiar?
While we’re all busy and keep running out of time, we can’t avoid getting sucked into black holes of pointless meetings that leave no survivors. Is it the way of the universe to force us to slow down or simply the price we have to pay for working with humans? Anyway, bewailing “Why, God, why?” isn’t going to solve the problem, so let’s talk about what might.
The best way to survive a pointless meeting is to avoid it. When someone sends you an invite to a meeting, does it mean you absolutely have to be there? Not really. All it means is that they think you need to be there. But they could be mistaken.
If you are not sure what the meeting is about and how your presence would add value to the discussion – check with the organizer. The last thing you want is to arrive to the meeting and find out that the main agenda item is one (or all) of the following:
- Let’s ask (insert your name here) questions he/she won’t have answers to.
- Let’s get (insert your name here) to commit to do more work.
- Let’s give (insert your name here) some news he/she won’t like.
So if you don’t want to be blindsided and find out how a deer in the headlights feels – make sure you know exactly what you’re walking into.
Let’s assume you were able to figure out what the meeting is about and believe it would be a waste of your time to attend. In that case, you should try to get out of it. Declining the invite is the most straightforward way of doing so. It helps to add a reason: “I already reviewed the document you’ll be walking through and have no comments”, or as simple as “I don’t think my presence is required – please proceed without me”. If they come back with “Nah, you should still come, we need you”, and further push-back is not an option, try to meet them mid-way and offer to attend the second half of the meeting. Attending the first half is risky – unless you have a solid escape plan, you may get sucked into the discussion and not be able to leave.
Things you should never do:
- accept the invite if you don’t have any intention of showing up; or
- accept the invite with the plan to bail out at the last minute.
Standing people up is just rude and will damage your reputation.
By accepting a meeting invite, you accept at least partial responsibility for ensuring that the meeting will be a good use of your time. Here are some things worth doing in advance of the meeting:
- Examine the agenda – what’s in it for you? Are there any points you would like to add to the list? If yes – check with the organizer if it’s possible.
- Do your homework – review related materials and come prepared to ask questions and make suggestions.
When at the meeting:
- Try to stick to the agenda – if pressed to go in a different and surprising direction you’d rather not explore at the moment, you have a full right to push back: “It’s important that we discuss this, but it’s not on today’s agenda and I don’t want to hijack this meeting. Let’s schedule a separate discussion”, or “I didn’t realize we were going to talk about the budget and not prepared to have this conversation now”. You may have to repeat this more than once.
- If agenda items that required your presence have already been covered and you feel you can’t add any more value to the discussion, it is acceptable to ask people at the table “Do you need me for this? Would it be all right if I left you now?”. More often than not, you will be excused.
Putting some effort into preparation will greatly increase the chances for having a productive meeting. However, we can’t control everything and everyone, and, sometimes, no matter what we do, even the most promising meeting can turn into a waste of our time.
Many of us have been in the situation enough times to develop a set of default survival strategies. Here are some of the most popular ones:
- “multitasking” – doing something totally unrelated to the topic of the meeting (like writing an article on how to survive boring meetings) while pretending to take notes;
- faking an urgent phone call as an excuse to leave;
- attempting to steer the discussion in another direction; or
- securing a seat close to the door and slip out of the meeting with an option to slip back in towards the end.
I have to admit that I resorted to some of these approaches on a few (very special) occasions, so it would be hypocritical of me to launch into “I am not condoning” sermon. Desperate times call for desperate measures – as much as we would like to be able to say “no, thank you” to anything we don’t need to attend, many times we simply don’t have a choice. One can only hope that, if we are appreciative of other people's time, they will extend the same courtesy to us, and the need to resort to such measures will diminish. Let's try :)
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#1 | Stefan | May 16, 2010 at 20:52
Hello Judit, Thank you for sharing your experience with others. I found some great tips in this article, that I could use. Keep on your great job and I am looking forward to more of your articles.
#2 | Judit Halin | May 16, 2010 at 23:42
Stefan, glad you found the article useful and thank you for taking the time to comment. Comments like yours keep me motivated and inspired :)