Surviving the Workday contributor, GhostGirl, wrote a post on meeting anxiety a while ago that has received many hits recently, and even some new comments. This makes me wonder if our recession is causing us to be more anxious about meetings in the workplace.
Generally speaking, I think meetings make people anxious when they don’t know know what is going to happen at the meeting and what their role might be. Will I be called on? Will I need to lead a portion of the meeting? Should I do anything to prepare for the meeting? This leads to a sense of uncertainty about the meeting, which can cause anxiety. As a meeting organizer, you can address these concerns by clearly assigning roles in an agenda, which is distributed ahead of time. It seems obvious enough, but often is not done.
What makes you anxious about meetings?
October 26th, 2009 at 10:10 am
“Check-ins” make me anxious about meetings. We don’t have these in my workplace, but they are a fixture in some groups I belong to.
Will I say too much or too little? Will it be bragging? Will it be interesting? Will “I pass” come across as sulky? Should I jump in first and get it over with? If I wait till last, will everyone know I really don’t want to do this? Am I neurotic? These are some of the questions I’m wondering about as we go around the circle waiting our turns.
I understand one of the purposes of the check-in is to make the rest of the meeting more comfortable for the participants, and that works for me. I’m almost always more comfortable after it’s over.
October 26th, 2009 at 10:23 am
Oh, yes, the check-in! I’m only familiar with that in church contexts, but it’s very hard to hit the right balance of revelation. It does make me anxious to think of the right thing to say.
October 26th, 2009 at 2:50 pm
an agenda
now that’s a breath of fresh air
many bosses these days choose to work on the fly, without pre-issued agendas, no wonder people are anxious about meetings
and if a meeting is another opportunity for employers to check out who is ‘pulling their weight’ before making the next round of cuts . . .
if the boss does not operate in a transparent way following good business practise, a meeting is an opportunity to build the group’s fear
yep, there’s lots of reasons why meetings would make people anxious . .
October 27th, 2009 at 5:01 am
For one-on-ones, I told my group to make their own agenda, because the meeting was about them and not me. That seemed to help a lot.
Our big group meetings always followed the same agenda, so that shouldn’t have been a problem.
For everything else I would provide a rough agenda–maybe a three sentence summary of the goal and what I needed from them.
Yet despite all these, there is still the anxiety.
I think I have concluded that it’s sort of an extension of the “back to school” nightmare. You know, the one you have right at the start of the school year where you have forgotten your class schedule and have no map and are wandering the halls lost and confused. New things, no matter how ordinary, throw people off.
October 27th, 2009 at 6:08 am
What is with the current trend of no published agendas, no minutes? Lack of agenda makes me a little anxious, because I would rather be prepared (seems a better use of everybody’s time). Lack of minutes just annoys me, because two weeks later, nobody remembers what was decided (there’s not even an agenda to confirm it was talked about at all), and we do it all again.
October 27th, 2009 at 2:37 pm
That’s a lot of agenda-free meetings! Yes, a little transparency in process would help immensely.
January 18th, 2010 at 5:05 pm
I think meetings have become too formal these days instead of conversational…. everyone acts like they are these perfect business people with the perfect thing to say. It makes me anxious because I am a creative person and the obsessive structure of corporate meetings are chokingly stuffy! Don’t get me wrong, an agenda is good, but sometimes people think a meeting is better to present a very structured, dry topic, when an email laying out the facts might be better.