Suffering from “meeting exasperation?” Design better meetings.

Small things that can make big differences to people

9 min readJan 4, 2022

It’s the end of another WFH year (for me), and the start of a new year.

I’ve been reflecting on ways of working as I do my annual planning work. As a writer and novelist, I’m happy with my progress and clear about things I’d like to accomplish in 2022.

As a design leadership consultant, 2022 will be a year of upheaval about what I do and how I work. Content creation and looking more deeply at things that impact digital and design team performance will form a larger part of that transformation.

Which brings me to the focus of this article: meetings.

Spurred on by a combination of reflection on previous years, a desire to address issues that impact a team’s performance and culture, and a post on LinkedIn from a peer of mine, Trenton Moss, about committing to being on time for meetings, I wanted to get a few of my own thoughts down.

None of this will be groundbreaking, but it may serve to remind us about the importance of good meeting skills.

So, what exactly bothers me about meetings?

In the above post, Trenton asks people to commit to attending meetings on time. While he’s right that if you commit to a meeting you should attend on time, the ability to do so is sometimes predicated on an ecosystem of meetings where their structure may well (in part) cause the issue of lateness that he addresses.

Things that I observe about meetings across various companies, include:

Meetings can often be organized by people who need updates, or feel disconnected from their team’s work — not always requiring a meeting
Invitee lists can be extensive ensuring anyone with an atom of input is involved — and lest someone feel left out
Little or no consideration of people’s time — “ah, there’s a gap in their calendar, let’s use it.”
No consideration of consolidating meetings — each meeting is the act of an individual organizer — people can spend full days together in meetings
Lack of proper agendas — no, the name of the meeting isn’t an agenda
Endless discussion with no direction or leadership
One person dominating the discussion (sometimes the organizer)
Lack of focus leading to no outcomes by the end of the meeting
Or conversely, someone attempting to salvage the meeting at the last-minute causing meeting over-runs
No gaps between meetings — how many days are “back-to-back?”
Frustration and late arrival of participants to their next meeting.

While this last is the focus of Trenton’s post, there are many reasons and considerations as to why someone may be late to a meeting. Granted, subsequent meetings are disrupted by late arrivals, but just for a moment, imagine the frustration felt by a late arrival who carries any of the above issues on their shoulders into your meeting.

Being late isn’t a crime, but being held up due to poor organization is bad meeting management

It’s important to note here that a) not all meetings are poorly structured, and b) not all people are late because they have poor meeting experiences. Some people are simply poor timekeepers or have other life issues going on that cause them to be singly or chronically late to meetings.

What other forces impact meeting success?

Though many of the above observations are endemic to meetings over time, other factors have crept into the already fraught meeting infrastructure — the pandemic and working from home.

“…around 50% of meeting time is effective, well used, and engaging — and these effectiveness numbers drop even lower when it comes to remote meetings.” MIT Sloan Management Review article — The Surprising Science Behind Successful Remote Meetings

I am by nature an introvert (INFP if you are really interested). Working from home has greatly appealed to me. Unlike thoughts expressed by many over the last couple of years on social media about the lack of work social contact, I enjoy the fact that my “friendships” and social contacts have gravitated back to people I’m not currently working with, whom I enjoy seeing and socializing with in person (when environmental conditions permit).

I feel a certain rebalancing has taken place for me. Work is work and life is life.

However, as one of only 16 different personality types (MBTI), I recognize not everyone feels as balanced or settled. One trend I have observed in meetings is how they are now even more easily derailed by socializing and the kind of banter that would normally take place in an office between meetings, over lunch, after work, sitting across from one another. I’m not saying that prior to the pandemic meetings didn’t contain a social element — but I believe that this element has “amped up” during the pandemic as workers are forced to work from home and lack the social context of being in an office.

It feels as though this has led to further disruption and breakdown of the already frail structure of meetings.

Why are these things an issue — after all, we have bigger problems, right?

For those of us working remotely, meetings are the glue that bind us together. For the last couple of years, they have also served the purpose of water cooler and lunch chats, across the desk banter, and other comings together that people normally experience in an office environment.

However, where meetings are poorly structured, this added weight of responsibility has the potential to break down and disrupt our ability to both do and deliver our work as well as maintain those all-important social structures.

This last point is reflected in a recent article titled The Surprising Science Behind Successful Remote Meetings in the MIT Sloan Management Review — where they state that “…experiencing a poor meeting can even result in meeting recovery syndrome, where employees lose additional time and productivity mentally recovering from a bad meeting.”

Finding a balance between holding meetings that deliver intrinsic value to the business and create the kind of contact that people feel is lacking in their daily work routines is important to delivering a culture in which everyone continues to feel valued and engaged.

A recent Harvard Business Review article titled The Psychology Behind Meeting Overload, goes on to state that “…managers in one survey reported 83% of the meetings on their calendars were unproductive, or that US-based professionals rated meetings as the “number one office productivity killer.””

Who are the key actors — who is responsible?

In many ways, we all are responsible. Everyone has a role to play in ensuring that we are able to hold successful meetings when we need to, and deliver the right level of engagement because we have to.

As meeting organizers, we are responsible for:

Ensuring that when we ask for people’s time, we consider what we may be taking them away from doing
Scheduling meetings only if an email, message, report or other form of communication won’t do
Providing clarity about what we are trying to accomplish
Timekeeping and focusing on achieving meeting outcomes

As meeting participants, we are responsible for:

Letting people know if we can or cannot attend in a timely manner
Showing up on time if we have agreed to attend
Coming to the meeting with the right information and be prepared to participate
Be concise and considerate of other people’s input, thoughts, and opinions

We are all players in the meeting game, and as a result, we can all contribute to meetings being successful or participate in sabotaging their outcomes.

How can we design a better meeting experience?

We need to understand what problem(s) we are solving for first. Are we trying to create meetings that lead to better outcomes? Work outcomes? Cultural outcomes? Are our meetings now meant to incorporate elements of social interaction to plug the gap of working remotely as well as focus on business outcomes?

You can see why the problem becomes quickly complicated.

To even begin to address Trenton’s issue of people showing up to meetings on time, you first need to ensure they can do so.

So, let’s start with that one first as it focuses on the mechanics of attending a meeting.

To arrive at a meeting on time, it is reasonable to assume that:

Any prior meetings will need to finish on time
On time may mean not scheduling meetings for a full 30 minutes or 60 minutes (for example)
People will require time between meetings for bathroom breaks, to get a drink, respond to urgent queries, prep for your meeting, stand up and move about — yours isn’t the only meeting they will attend that day
Meetings scheduled around lunch or other natural breaks should take those things into account

It is equally important attendees let the organizer know in advance about their attendance status, so everyone isn’t waiting for someone with no intention of showing up.

But more specifically, as meeting organizers, how can we design for better meetings? Consider some of the following:

Does it need to be a meeting? Consider whether you simply require updates or if gathering people together is necessary in the first place.
Who needs to attend? Be ruthless about protecting people’s time. If they don’t need to be there, mark them as optional and explain in the meeting invite not everyone needs to attend.
Do you have a clear agenda with necessary outcomes? Provide a clear agenda with a list of the decisions / outcomes that need to be made. This provides clarity to all attendees about why they are meeting.
Will people have enough time to prepare for the meeting? Ensure people have enough time to prepare to get the outcomes you desire.
Have you scheduled a meeting during lunch or some other natural break time? If your company doesn’t have a policy around this, try to have some principles you live by as a team that respect people’s time.
Is it a meeting or a working session / workshop? Be clear about the meeting type if you want people to be prepared and get to the right result.
Are the same people attending other meetings? It’s not uncommon for the same group of people to attend the same meetings — work smarter, combine efforts and try to eliminate this silo mentality to meetings.
Are you managing time in the meeting? If you are unable to time keep, delegate to a member of the team. Stick to the agenda and take new items offline as they may not always be relevant to everyone attending.
Does everyone have a voice in the meeting? Give everyone a chance to speak so that they feel valued and engaged.
Are outcomes captured and actioned? Follow-through is important for people to feel meetings and the discussions they engender have value.
Do people have enough time between meetings? People should be able to manage personal needs without fear of persecution for showing up late.

As meeting participants, we also have a role to play. Consider some of the following:

Do I need to attend the meeting? If you are unsure, discuss it with the meeting organizer in advance.
Have I responded to the meeting invite? It’s not difficult to click Accept / Decline / Tentative. It gives them time to reschedule if necessary.
Do I understand the agenda? Prepare for items that pertain to your work. If you don’t have time, let the meeting organizer know in advance.
Is this meeting a repetition of others? If you are in several meetings with the same people, suggest a combined meeting to the organizers.
Am I focused on the purpose of the meeting? Try to stick to the agenda, provide clear, concise answers and allow other people time to speak.
Was I assigned actions? If you are assigned actions, ensure you understand them and can deliver against them.
Am I on time and prepared? Not doing so reflects poorly on you and impacts others who have made the effort.

Final thoughts

As stated at the beginning, none of what you’ve just read is groundbreaking. I’m sure as you read through this, you thought to yourself “of course this sounds like the right thing… why does it need to be said?” And yet, how many of us attend meetings on a daily basis where even basic common sense, aren’t being applied?

Sometimes it’s the simplest things that we get wrong — the things we do on a regular basis that we take for granted. We need reminding of why we need to take the small things seriously. It’s the accumulation of getting the little things right — or wrong — that make all the difference in how we perceive ourselves, our peers, colleagues, managers, and others.

Let’s take the time to be better meeting organizers, participants and to design better ways for us all to work together. Let’s make the little things count.