How many of you get frustrated during meetings as it doesn’t live up to the potential? I believe many hands to be raised on this.
A colleague controlling the conversation. Someone struggling with the projector. And everyone staring at their watches.
Though meetings are a necessary part of everyone’s job and it should be conducted within a team and with management. Some meetings are productive and some leave the team members more confused. And you may come across certain type of people whose behavior will annoy you the most and is so distracting that it often ruins the productivity of meetings.
What are those blunt but innocent behaviors?
Here is an insight on the innocent behaviors of people that bring annoyance in teams during the meeting:
1. Someone who undermines everything others do
The person who lacks self-confidence is usually found stimulating everyone and everything. This kind of person will never appreciate others efforts and will make fun of everything. So, to avoid this, it becomes important to boost your co-worker’s self-confidence by talking about his efforts with everyone. Boost them and when the person tries to make fun of something ask them to present their own alternative ideas.
2. The person who says nothing and only nods
There are some people who don’t say a word during the meeting and just nods with the flow on what is being said. They do not present their ideas and do no brainstorming and even their presence is not felt by others. This happens primarily because they have this fear that everyone will burst out laughing if they start talking. In reality, everyone should participate and say during the meeting whether it’s of no use to anyone but it will show their participation in teamwork. There’s no point that the person attends the meeting and are not contributing.
3. You do not tell anyone what is the meeting about
Every meeting should have a clear purpose so that the outcome is more effective. If the team doesn’t know what the purpose of the meeting and what the desired action is, it’s going to be really hard for them to bring the idea up. So, whenever you call a meeting be sure that each team member knows what the meeting is about so that they come prepared mentally of what is going to be discussed there.
4. Give Everyone a Chance to Talk
Sometimes in a hurry of going back to desks for work and to save the precious time, it is tried that everyone else just listens and only one person will talk during the meeting. There is no chance given for everyone who wants to or needs to talk. It is required that everyone is given a chance to make sure everyone’s concerns and objections are addressed, and they get a chance to bring their ideas up.
5. Too many people for meeting
If there are too many people in the room, meetings will surely get out of control. They won’t be able to give much attention and take responsibility for what is being discussed in the meeting. But there is a benefit of too many people in the meeting as there will be a diversity of opinion. So try to keep the number of people to average, calling just those who are connected with the topic.
6. Not taking notes
Some people just attend the meeting, sit staring at the speaker and are least bothered about making notes. What is the use of coming to meeting them? There would be some important points that you need to discuss later or fix it in your work, but when you do not make notes there are chances you would forget considering it later. You can even capture your thoughts to words and see how interesting the meeting will become when you start making notes.
7. No follow-up of meetings
If the things discussed in the meetings are not implemented, the result of the meetings won’t be fruitful. Often the teams have an implementation problem. Though there are brilliant ideas discussed in meetings those ideas never make it out of the board room. So, better is to end each meeting by properly defining the action steps that needs to be taken and who is responsible for them.
Are you one of those showing the above meeting conducts? Just think how productive and interesting the meetings will be all these behaviors are eliminated from the meetings.
