Theory – A meeting is a psychological and mental exercise more than it is a business necessity.
Meeting Musts
Meetings seem to be a necessary part of every professionals’ business existence. Regardless of company size or status, there comes a point in every project where multiple opinions, preferably proffered face to face, are required to make head way. I’ve never questioned this, because it just is.
Meeting Maturation
There was a time in my nascent professional career that I loved meetings. Meetings were new to me and they were a vehicle through which I achieved and demonstrated greatness, gathered knowledge, and satisfied my ego’s quota to feel needed. Simply put, meetings made me like a somebody, and as everyone who’s ever been entry-level knows, it’s easy to feel like a nobody when you’re answering phones, adjusting calendars, and doing absolutely nothing related to what you think you are capable of.
Entry-level came and went along with my love for meetings. Meetings have become tedious, time-consuming and just plain exhausting. Part of this is due to the fact that I left behind a very corporate time-is-money (so meetings are few) atmosphere and find myself in an all-hands decision making milieu. I do find value in both perspectives although I must confess to preferring the former, but simply because I was able to get more work done.
Meeting Mechanics
Regardless of meeting subject matter, number of attendees, or quality of discussion, a meeting can be structurally broken down as follows:
- Introduction of topic for discussion – Usually one person serves as the meeting lead and either shares a new direction, updates on an existing project, or presents a new strategy.
- On Topic Discussion – Opinions and feedback are generated as more people add to the discussion and introduce new or unresolved topic-related matters.
- Off Topic Discussion – Inherent to every meeting. Conversation will go in different tangents based on the individual participant’s interpretation of the topic and surrounding discussion points.
- (Optional) Synthesis and Take-Aways – An attempt to make the discussion add value to the topic.
Meeting Machismo
This is where my theory my comes in.
More often than not I’ve found myself in meetings that are like the weight room at Golds Gym. Everyone is conscious of everyone else. At the gym we’re conscious of appearance, shape, and muscle tone. At the office we’re conscious of wisdom, experience, and talent. At the gym we flex our muscles. At the office we flex our minds.
My struggle seems to be that meetings have evolved into mental battles and power struggles.
When I’m in meetings with execs, I occasionally get intimated by the male and female testosterone in the room. There is a very real fear that if I were to say the wrong thing, my expertise would be questioned. Continuing my gym analogy, when I’m surrounded by overly muscle-toned men, venturing into the free weights section feels like I’m opening myself up to weight (dumbell and body) scrutiny.
When I’m in meetings that I lead, I occasionally feel like the others at the table are searching for ways to prove me wrong.
Questions that come to mind are…
- Is it human nature to subconsciously feel good about oneself by making someone else look bad?
- It is natural to turn occasions of public display into pissing matches?
- I’ve been to some really great and worthwhile meetings, so what are the factors that eliminate the pissing match mentality and how does one make more meetings matter?
