I just came back from a meeting this evening, and I got to thinking about what was or wasn’t accomplished. It also got me thinking about meetings in general and how useless they are sometimes. These are my thoughts:

1. People love to hear themselves talk. This has been evident in almost every meeting I’ve been a part of. They don’t really care if what they say will add any benefit or value, but because they think they sound intelligent they will say it anyway. Why? Because they like to hear themselves talk.

2. People also like to speak in very broad and general terms. They do this because then they won’t actually have to do anything specific. They may sound very impressive (refer to #1), but they can leave the actual work to someone else. These people also like to philosophize.

3. A meeting is usually called for some specific reason, yet the meeting rarely accomplishes what it set out to do. This is perhaps the most amazing observation I’ve made. Even though the meeting hasn’t really accomplished anything, the participants will walk away feeling like they’ve gotten something done and been productive during the day. And of course they’ve been productive, they’ve been busy all day in meetings, right?

4. If for some reason a meeting has actually accomplished the very thing it set out to do, it will rarely end early. People will find something useless to talk about since they don’t want to go back and actually get some real work done. And the best part about this is that everyone knows what they’re doing, but it will remain unspoken.

Although the tone of this hasn’t exactly been all that positive, you can learn a few things about your personal involvement in meetings. Make sure you’re not one of those people described above. You’ll be so much more productive.

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