The Agony of Meetings

In my first few years of teaching, my department head would hold what seemed to me to be interminable meetings. They were mostly pointless, and after a day of teaching, I would find myself heading home late with a pounding headache.

In due course, I became a department head, but remembering those meetings early in my career, I can confess that I may have strayed too far in the other direction by holding vey brief meetings. Partly, it was also because we were in a bused rural school and many teachers carpooled, and I didn't like to keep other teachers waiting.

And then there were the department heads meetings. Thank the almighty that they were held during lunch hour under time constraints. The free lunch was also a bit of a sop.

But they were still an ordeal, held because it was expected by the principals' bosses. The material could have easily been covered by a one page memo, for they were never about gathering input from the staff but just about disseminating whatever the principals wanted to say or do.

And, of course, as I have shared many times, I am an introvert. I don't mean to bang on about it, but when FB showed me this link, 12 Things That Annoy Introverts, of course I had to click. Of the twelve points in the post, it was the one about meetings that jumped out at me and caused me to recall some of my experiences. In point of fact, I seldom experienced a good or worthwhile meeting. Unless maybe I ran it.

Meetings annoy introverts, especially when the meetings would be better off as an email or a group message. When meetings seem to have no purpose, they are even more annoying. If you’re working with introverts on your team at work, do your best to utilize digital communication before setting up endless meetings.

The problem is often compounded if the meeting is a last-minute or unexpected meeting. Introverts often look at their schedules for the day to determine when they’ll have time to get their work done alone. If their four-hour block of time is suddenly broken up by a one-hour meeting, they’re prone to getting annoyed.

Well, that is one take and true enough, but I can't really be sure that my dislike of meetings has much to do with introversion but rather with some bad experiences of tedious, low-quality events. I did not so much dislike the concept of meetings as I didn't appreciate the useless, time-wasting aspect of so many that I was forced to endure. By all means, call a meeting if there is a need, and if one has to be held just for form's sake because it is expected, then make it as efficient and worthwhile as possible.