Your Next Meeting: Waste of Time or Career Opportunity?

Everybody hates meetings. Or so it seems. Actually, meetings are important and a properly conducted meeting provides vital information, excellent team-building opportunities, and maybe even some especially good chances for networking.

But meetings often go wrong. Lately, a good deal of writing and several popular seminars are devoted to just how meetings go wrong. While poor organization, ineffective presentations, and various unfortunate personality interactions are factors, the biggest problem with meetings is that participants in the meeting fail to express their true feelings.

This failure can range from something as simple as not contributing a piece of information that might make a difference to a course of action to a far more complex unwillingness to express a vague sense of unease about a proposal or decision.

The Abilene Paradox is a good example of what social psychologists call "groupthink." The basic premise involves a group of people who agree to an action that none of them really wants because each participant believes his or her position runs counter to the preferences of the group. The problem occurs when none of the participants is willing to express their feelings.

If you are entry level to mid-level in your organization, speaking up effectively in meetings can bring you consistent good notice if you follow a few simple rules.

First, do not harm...

Ill considered, poorly timed and uninformed comments can do far more harm than good. In fact, the fear of making a comment that is ill considered, poorly timed and uninformed is exactly what keeps most people silent at meetings.

Be prepared

To overcome the fear of appearing foolish, pay close attention to what is happening at your meeting. If you can look over an advance agenda, do it. If you or your work group is responsible for some part of a project, be sure you are update on the progress and know about any issues that may come up in the meeting.

Think about possible solutions to any particular problems the meeting may address and decide which solutions you think will work better and why. You may also want to consider which solutions you think will not work at all and why.

Pay Attention

Pay attention not only to what is going on in the meeting, but also to pay attention to what is going on with you. Can you or your group meet goals and deadlines being proposed? Do you agree with points of view being expressed? Does a particular course of action make sense to you? Does a particular discussion make you feel anxious, worried, pressured or uneasy?

Take Responsibility for your comments

When you express your ideas, avoid all forms of "you" statements such as "How are you going to handle...?" and "You haven't taken into consideration..." and "You're going to need to..."

Instead, make "I" statements such as "I'm wondering how we can include..." "I'm concerned about...Do you have any thoughts on that?" "I'm thinking of other high priority projects my team is working on and this deadline seems really optimistic to me. Is anyone else feeling a little overwhelmed?"

Afterwards

After you have made your comments and after the meeting, take every opportunity to let the members of the group know you fully support the group's decisions and do your best to complete your part of any assigned tasks. At all costs, avoid any participation in after-meeting gripe sessions.

Whether or not you like meetings depends largely on you. If you recognize meetings as an opportunity to build relationships with co-workers, move projects forward, and expand your contributions to your organization, meetings can become a valuable part of your career development strategy.