When Meetings Create Frustration

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Ever wonder why some meetings run smoothly and achieve their goals, while others drain your energy and time?  

When a kickoff or implementation meeting gets derailed by someone who wants to question what we’re doing. “What if we tried this instead?” or “Hey, I know the event is 2 days away, but what if we did X?” That can make the meeting organizer frustrated and stressed. It makes the person suggesting the ideas feel unheard, and devalued, when all they wanted to do was to help and contribute, and they had the best of intentions! 

The solution is in understanding your “working genius.” Once we understand where our passion lies (which stages of work energize us, vs. drain the life out of us) we can change the language about the types of meetings we invite people to: “I need to have everyone put on their Wonder and Invention hats today for this brainstorming session. We aren’t implementing or launching anything yet, we just want idea generation!”

Or: “This is our launch meeting. We WILL discuss how we are rolling this out, what we’ll measure, and the tools/timelines. It is NOT the time to get derailed by new ideas, or having people now suggest better ways to do this. That ship has sailed and we won’t revisit it for 6 months.” 

During the meeting, when someone says “Hey what if we did X?”....it’s appropriate to say, “We’re aren’t “W-ing or I-ing now, (Wonder/Invention) but remind me before our quarterly review to see if we should make any changes moving forward.” 

Those people offering their suggestions are critical to progress AT THE RIGHT TIME. We need to pull them in when we are brainstorming, but once we’ve committed we can’t allow the Wonder/Invention geniuses to hijack a meeting from its purpose. Each genius is needed but when they are inserted at the wrong time in getting work done it creates frustration, inefficiencies, and even animosity. I’m happy to explore how this might help your team.