Why do Meetings Get Such a Bad Rap?
Unproductive, ineffective meetings seem to be the norm – particularly if you ask the professionals that, on average, attend more than 60 of them each month. While meetings can be the most effective way to move a business forward, increase sales, disseminate important information to large groups of people and brainstorm for new ideas, they can also be a huge waste of time and resources, which is often the case. This is particularly true for companies that do not use meeting planners or professional facilitators.
Here are five pitfalls of unproductive meetings and why they should be avoided:
1. Unproductive meetings frustrate executives, managers and employees.
2. Unproductive meetings are the cause of billions of dollars of lost work time across industries.
3. Employee stress increases as they spend more time in ineffective meetings and have less time to complete their work.
4. When employees perceive that management places higher priority on meetings that have little value than on the individual work employees provide, productivity and morale drop.
5. When meetings are ineffective, more meetings are required to meet the initial objectives.
Folks who do not use professional planners and facilitators, or who have not attended well-planned meetings truly have no experience or model on which to attempt to base improvements; therefore, the cycle of meetings getting progressively worse continues. This has created a situation where meetings have a terrible reputation and most participants expect to have a less-than-ideal experience and attend only half-heartedly.
Meeting planners have to work hard to overcome this idea, but will also be the driving force in bringing meetings back to their deserved level of respect as they continue to come up with new, innovative ways to improve meetings.
