My supervisor has a virtual, one hour meeting every other Wednesday at 10 AM. I always dial in, but I never voluntarily speak. I listen just in case he calls my name, and then I’ll respond with a brief but professional response.
I have found that each meeting consists of people whining on and on about petty, first-world problems that can easily be discussed offline. I consider it a waste of time, and the opportunity cost for me is not insignificant. I wish he would simply send out an email once every couple of weeks instead of hosting a regularly-scheduled meeting.
Former job, yes. Absolutely worthless most of the time. No, it doesn’t improve morale for me to spend an hour playing two truths and a lie. Or, spending an hour watching my coworker K kiss the boss’s ass non stop.
I used to but then I started getting paid as a consultant. Very rarely do clients want me to sit on hold and not talk at lawyer rates and when they do I am very happy to cash the check
We have 3 weekly Zoom meetings, which are informative and necessary, as one of our very small team is overseeing a vital project out of country. Yet I still find them uncomfortable, being rather an introvert. But much less uncomfortable than in-person meetings. And I don’t miss our covid-delayed weekly lunches for the same reason, despite the team members being enjoyable people.
We have about 20 people. They are all good, nice people for the most part. About 50% are “just the facts, let’s do this as quickly as possible”. The other 50% are more into the social aspect, cheering each group on, asking questions that don’t really matter but show interest. The later group also seems to have a decent amount of vague complaints/suggestions that don’t really matter. Trivial stuff.
A lot of our meetings are a polite battle between keeping it short while not being rude and trying to get everyone heard.
I have 3 regularly scheduled (Zoom, for the time being) meetings at work. Two of them weekly, one of them every other week. One of the weekly ones, while I can see the importance of it for most of the attendees, really doesn’t have much relevance to my job, and I have no clue why I need to be there every week. The other two are informative and definitely worthwhile.
20 minutes every week. It’s not terribly important, but it’s not terribly intrusive either. About every 3 months I’ll have something to report to the bosses. About every 2 or 3 weeks, the bosses will have something to say to people that includes me.
Every week, the bosses will see that I’m present and co-operative: if I decided that I wasn’t going to be present and co-operative, they’d decide that I didn’t need to be present, and that they had no reason to be co-operative.
In my entire life I have never, ever been in a meeting that couldn’t have been a memo. The only reason to go is for the donuts. And don’t get me started on the bumfodder who has to ask a bunch of questions just as we’re all about to leave.
I have lots of regularly scheduled meetings. Some are weekly, some are monthly, some are quarterly. Most are worthwhile. The weekly meetings all end when we are done, so despite being scheduled for half an hour or an hour, they often run shorter.
I used to be on a team that had endless useless meetings. And we were always in a raging hurry to get stuff done, except we had to sit in meetings talking about how tight the deadline was instead of actually doing the work. Those drove me bonkers.
Then we hired a project planner, and she set up yet ANOTHER series of meetings. And to my astonishment, they were worthwhile. She would go through our agenda and find out what was preventing us from getting stuff done, or from making decisions, and move those pieces. It was amazing.
But the meetings my manager insisted on holding continued to be painful wastes of time.
Pre COVID they were more of a pain. Zoom meetings are actually easier because it’s always the same. In person there were hassles with equipment and scheduling rooms. Plus, it’s simply more taxing to have to attend them than on Zoom.
Meetings show the importance of PR. OTHER PEOPLE DO NOT UNDERSTAND YOU OR WHAT YOU DO. YOU MUST SHOW AND TELL THEM. In person matters.
I’m a math and computer guy, but for God’s sake, we need human contact.
I wish we had a regularly scheduled meeting! There are oh, 3.5 of us getting a new immigration law practice up and running in a large- established law firm, and it would be nice to brainstorm organizational issues live more often rather than in asynchronous slow motion.
Once a month or so, via teams. They’re useful and quick. Video is not obligatory, though I do turn mine on because I prefer having at least a few faces to see, so I’ll be one of them. No complaints.
It probably helps that our managers know that every minute we’re in the meeting is a minute we’re not doing the work they actually need us to do, and they’re pretty busy themselves.
It’s still useful having a catch-up so that everyone’s up to speed on specific issues. Reticent people could probably also bring something up - or back someone else up - more easily in a scheduled meeting than by starting a conversation in the teams chat.
I suspect I’d like real-life meetings in this job a lot less, despite the people seeming lovely and all - it’d take up a lot more time.
I have regularly scheduled meetings at work with all the direct reports to my boss, a one-on-one with my boss, quarterly meetings with the entire department, and when I’m on a project I have regular meetings about that. Overall, I’d say they were useful more often than not. The meeting with my boss’s direct reports give me an opportunity to learn about what’s going on throughout the company, discuss how we handle employee relations issues, and I can get input from other professionals about any issues I might be having. Once in a while there’s just nothing going on and the meeting is productive. But most of the time I get something out of it.
Everywhere I’ve worked there have been staff meetings once a week, which have always been reasonably useful, depending on who runs them. It is a good place to get the word from above, and you can ask questions or scorn it more easily in person than if you have to leave an email trail. It is good to build team identity, and a good place to hear what people are doing.
Many places had all hands meetings once a quarter where they gave out awards and also reported on what was going on. The last place I worked, which had a corporate culture of not giving a shit about people, didn’t have them, and I missed them.
Grants Committee Meeting every other week, Development Team Meeting once a month, All Staff every other month.
The Grants Committee meetings are critical. As the Grants Coordinator, I lead them, I set the agenda, and I pulled today’s meeting off in 30 minutes. I am damned good at running a meeting, thank you.
The Development Team Meetings are critical for everyone on my team except me. It’s usually discussion about fundraising events and campaigns which I don’t handle. I write grants. So I just sit there listening to my team talk about contacting the envelope printer and pulling donor lists and networking with people I don’t know. Sometimes I will give a brief report on what I’m doing. Sometimes my boss will ask me to do something. Not a lot going on there.
The All Staffs are a little more hit and miss. The camaraderie is good but the presentations are more geared toward direct service work, which I don’t do. For example the last one was a mandatory three hour training about how to ask clients about their Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity, and Expression (SOGIE.) It was interesting to learn about I guess, but not at all relevant to my job. Though I guess this stuff is good to know when a foundation asks what we’ve been doing to reach out to marginalized communities. I can think, “Oh yeah, we did that one training…” and write it in there.
But the frustration comes in at the line in front of the coffee, there’s always someone who stands right there and mixes their coffee like they’re trying to win a Noble prize in chemistry
It really depends. I’ve participated in regularly scheduled meetings with a forceful chair, excellent board papers, a tight agenda and focused participants which were exceedingly productive.
Unfortunately, meetings can very easily go nowhere (or are distinctly counter-productive) if all of these pieces are not in place. It only takes one difficult doofus who can’t focus and keeps derailing the discussion to ruin meetings. If you have a forceful chair who can shut them down effectively this can overcome the problem. If there is information required to make a decision that isn’t immediately available it derails everything. If there is no agenda and you’re not sure what you are there to do, there’s no point. The participants need as much is possible to leave their ego at the door. They need to be people who can put their point of view clearly and if necessary forcefully but who are also, after an issue has been fully talked through, prepared to say “okay the room is against me” and accept that and move on.
I have one relatively rambling meeting that I chair, every couple of weeks. But its rambling nature is somewhat deliberate because it’s largely just a “get our disparate team together for a bit of a chinwag, see what we have coming up, talk over work, etc” thing.
We have 3 30 min. team meetings a week, a weekly company-wide meeting (well, since we got bought out, it’s technically a division-wide meeting), and I run a bi-weekly regular meeting for a global focus group that runs a couple of hours.
They are absolutely all worthwhile. The broader-scope ones are less formal, and are an excellent way of keeping in touch with the wider company. The team ones are short enough to not be onerous, and often give the team a chance to brainstorm each other’s problems but also share successes.
I’m sorry the OP has a shitty supervisor who doesn’t moderate the meeting properly to cut down the first world problems.
Although, IMO, a small amount of whining is not a train-smash currently because … *points to burning world outside*