What negative patterns do you come across in meetings that lead to non productive outcomes and what advice would you give those participants responsible?<p>What mistakes did you make yourself in meetings that you have corrected as you progressed in your career?
My experience of meetings and their players.<p>The Sheriff; my way or the highway.<p>The Bluffer; Yip, that’s been done.<p>The Hard Worker; Always segways to their latest piece of work.<p>The Brain; Says little, has manufactured outcome of meeting before the meeting started.<p>The Joker; Makes everyone laugh, is heard the least.<p>I’m personally trying to be a little bit less the joker and the hard worker.
Planning meetings because $thing has to be discussed, but failing to organize the meeting, set an agenda or scheduling meetings without any planned outcomes and takeaways.<p>The latter half of this isn't always possible, but lately in my career I've made it a point to never call a meeting that doesn't bring up at least 2-3 things that will be/need to be acted upon or looked into by someone (even if I'm that person) based on what gets discussed.
I try and ask myself these questions every time I attend a meeting:
- Why am I here?
- How could I avoid being here next time?<p>If you aren't providing value or the meeting is not providing value to you then you shouldn't be there. Perhaps the meeting shouldn't even exist? If this could have been a slack message or email or perhaps part of another existing meeting then you also shouldn't be there.
Not so much being a bad participant, but something I've found are developers who propose a solution to a problem outside of a meeting, but when it's then thrown out to the group for suggestions they remain quiet. Hard to know what advice to give for building confidence.