Tearing Your Hair Out in Meetings

This meeting is driving me INSANE 😡🤯

I regularly take requests for my #HackingAcademia series: today's request was one of many about how to deal with meetings where you're frustrated beyond belief, and want to tear your hair out.

As someone who was driven nuts by this for much of my early career, but less often now, I have no easy solutions. I can however contribute a bunch of different perspectives that might help a little, as they did for me, when those wiser than me shared them.

These include:

✅ validating that many people feel this way regularly: it's a very normal feeling of frustration

🧩 the meeting organizer / runner may well not have wanted the gig in the first place, or felt like they're not capable: they've nevertheless offered to step up when asked: this is a distinct and frequent occurrence that won't always be obvious to you as attendee

💬 if the organizer is doing a noticeably horrendous job (goes for anything, not just meetings): they could just be having a really bad day: check that they're OK!

🔄 the shoe has been on the other foot at some stage: whilst you'll be aware of others getting frustrated in some of the meetings you've run, I can guarantee there are other occasions where you didn't pick up on the frustration

🧠 sanity preserving tip: whilst it's tempting (and true to some extent) to directly equate the 2 hours you spent in a meeting as wasted time you could have used to do other important things, if you do this too often and too much you'll go insane. Check out a little bit mentally!

⚖️ whilst in theory being surrounded by super colleagues who are amazing and much better than you at everything sounds nice, it's also overwhelming, and often demoralizing - how can you contribute? So when someone isn't that good at something, remind yourself it's an inevitable byproduct of being somewhere where you can provide real value and contribution.

📢 provide tactful and polite feedback and suggestions to improve processes, but don't break yourself, especially as an early career individual, to completely transform an organization's entire process culture overnight (unless you're in the executive!)

🎯 meeting frustration is partly a byproduct of the perspective and role you bring to a meeting: senior mentors and leaders are often more likely to see fumbled meetings and missteps as an essential development opportunity for the individual: learning often has a bit of "collateral damage" - you in the meeting - obviously getting the balance right is key.

🎈 for yourself, aim for "good enough" engagement rather than excelling, to depressurize the situation and lower your expectation bar

🗣️ once you've cooled off, talk to the more experienced meeting-goers for a second perspective!

💻 YouTube link: https://youtu.be/y6l4UxhLvo8

#meetings #organization #frustration #stress #timemanagement #leadership #collegiality #communication #careeradvice