# The Real Reason Your Meetings Are Terrible (And It's Not What You Think) **Related Reading:** [More insight here](https://skillcoaching.bigcartel.com/blog) | [Further reading](https://ethiofarmers.com/the-position-of-professional-development-courses-in-a-changing-job-market) | [Other recommendations](https://mentorleader.bigcartel.com/advice) Look, I'm going to say something that'll probably get me unfriended by half the project managers reading this: your meetings aren't terrible because people check their phones or because you don't have the right agenda template downloaded from some productivity guru's website. They're terrible because you fundamentally misunderstand what a meeting actually is. After twenty-three years of sitting through more corporate gatherings than a wedding planner, I've reached a controversial conclusion that most business consultants won't tell you. Meetings aren't about information transfer. They never were. If you think your weekly team catch-up exists to share updates, you're running a very expensive email thread with uncomfortable chairs. ## The Anthropology Lesson Nobody Asked For Here's where I'm going to sound like that lecturer who made cultural studies interesting: meetings are tribal rituals. Always have been. When our ancestors gathered around fires to decide whether to hunt mammoth or gather berries, they weren't just exchanging data points. They were reinforcing social hierarchies, building alliances, and performing their roles in the group dynamic. Modern conference rooms are just climate-controlled caves with whiteboards. The problem is we've forgotten this. We schedule "quick sync-ups" and wonder why people get restless after five minutes of status updates. [More information here](https://www.alkhazana.net/2025/07/16/why-firms-ought-to-invest-in-professional-development-courses-for-employees/) about how traditional business practices often miss the human element entirely. I learned this the hard way during my consulting days when I was brought in to fix a "communication problem" at a tech startup in Melbourne. The CEO was convinced their daily standups were inefficient because people kept going off-topic. After sitting through exactly one meeting, I realised the "off-topic" conversations were the only part where real work was happening. Sarah from design would mention her weekend hiking trip. Then Mike from development would ask about the trail. Turns out they'd been struggling with a user interface problem that needed someone who understood outdoor navigation. The "inefficient" chat about hiking routes led to their breakthrough solution for mobile app wayfinding. That CEO almost fired me when I told him to stop timing his meetings and start paying attention to what was actually happening in them. ## The Four Types of Meetings (That You're Probably Mixing Up) Most organisations run exactly one type of meeting: the information dump. Someone talks, everyone else pretends to listen, decisions get postponed until the next information dump. It's like Groundhog Day but with more PowerPoint. **Ritual meetings** are about belonging and identity. Your Monday morning all-hands isn't really about project updates – it's about reminding everyone they're part of the same tribe. The actual information could fit in a two-paragraph email. [Here is the source](https://sewazoom.com/the-role-of-professional-development-courses-in-a-changing-job-market) for research on workplace culture and belonging. **Discovery meetings** are for genuine problem-solving and creativity. These should feel messy and unpredictable. If you can predict exactly what will happen in your brainstorming session, you're not brainstorming – you're performing a pre-written script. **Decision meetings** exist to actually choose between options. Revolutionary concept, I know. But here's the thing: if you haven't done the discovery work separately, your decision meeting becomes a discovery meeting with a artificial deadline. Hence the endless circular discussions about solutions nobody fully understands. **Execution meetings** coordinate action. These should be short, specific, and boring. If your task coordination session is inspiring and energising, you're probably making it more complicated than it needs to be. The tragedy is watching teams try to do all four in the same sixty-minute slot. It's like trying to eat dinner, brush your teeth, read the news, and have sex simultaneously. Technically possible, but you're not going to enjoy any of it. ## Why Your Meeting Room is Sabotaging You Let me paint a picture that'll make interior designers weep: twelve people crammed around a rectangular table, half facing windows that create glare on their laptops, the other half squinting into fluorescent lighting that makes everyone look like they're dying of consumption. Someone's presenting on a screen positioned so far from most attendees that they need binoculars to read the text. This isn't a meeting space. It's a hostage situation with catering. The [Further information here](https://www.floreriaparis.cl/the-role-of-professional-development-courses-in-a-changing-job-market) reveals how physical environment affects professional interactions far more than most realise. Yet we wonder why people seem disengaged in rooms that were clearly designed by someone who's never actually attended a meeting. I once worked with a company that moved their leadership team meetings to a cafe. Not because they were trendy or trying to be hip, but because their boardroom had become a psychological prison where nobody felt comfortable disagreeing with the CEO. The informal setting didn't just change where they sat – it changed how they thought. Within three months, they'd made more significant strategic pivots than in the previous two years. The barista noise wasn't distraction; it was cover. People felt safer voicing concerns when they weren't sitting under corporate portraits of previous executives who all looked mildly disappointed. ## The Phone Checking Epidemic (And Why Shaming Doesn't Work) Here's my second controversial opinion: people don't check their phones during meetings because they're addicted to social media. They check because your meeting isn't worth their attention. Before you start composing angry responses, hear me out. When someone pulls out their device mid-presentation, they're not choosing Instagram over your quarterly review because Instagram is inherently more compelling. They're escaping because you've failed to give them a reason to stay present. The human brain is constantly asking: "What's the most valuable thing I could be doing with this minute?" If the answer is "literally anything else," people will find literally anything else to do. [Personal recommendations](https://ducareerclub.net/why-companies-should-invest-in-professional-development-courses-for-employees/) suggest that engagement drops dramatically when people don't understand their role in a discussion. I've run meetings where phones never appeared. Not because I banned them, but because I made sure everyone in the room knew exactly why they were there and what they could contribute. When people feel genuinely useful, they stay genuinely present. The phone checking usually starts with one person. Then spreads like a virus. But it's not peer pressure – it's permission. The first person to pull out their device is essentially announcing that this gathering isn't worth anyone's full attention. Everyone else just follows suit. ## The Agenda Myth That's Killing Your Culture Every meeting productivity article tells you to create detailed agendas. Most are wrong. Not because agendas are bad, but because the agendas they recommend are terrible. The typical meeting agenda reads like a restaurant menu written by robots: - Review action items from last meeting (10 minutes) - Project status updates (20 minutes) - New business (15 minutes) - Next steps (5 minutes) This isn't an agenda. It's a recipe for boredom with precise timing instructions. Real agendas answer one question: "What do we need to walk away knowing, feeling, or deciding?" Everything else is just administrative theatre. The best meeting facilitators I know often don't share their agendas at all. Instead, they start by asking the room: "What would make this hour worthwhile for you?" Sounds risky? It is. But risk is what makes meetings worth attending. When people don't know exactly what's coming next, they pay attention. When they know they might be asked to contribute something unexpected, they stay engaged. I learned this from watching how surgeons run pre-operation briefings. They don't spend ten minutes reviewing what everyone already knows. They focus intensely on the unknowns, the risks, and what could go wrong. Everyone leaves knowing exactly what matters most. ## The Virtual Meeting Paradox Remote meetings revealed something fascinating: most in-person meetings were already virtual. People were physically present but mentally somewhere else, just without the honesty of muted microphones and turned-off cameras. The pandemic forced us to admit what we'd been denying for years – that presence isn't the same as participation. [More details at the website](https://fairfishsa.com.au/why-companies-ought-to-invest-in-professional-development-courses-for-employees/) explore how virtual interactions changed workplace dynamics permanently. But here's what nobody talks about: virtual meetings are actually better for introverts and people who think before they speak. In person, the loudest voices dominate. Online, everyone gets equal audio space, and chat functions give written thinkers a voice they never had in traditional conference rooms. The companies that figured this out early started running hybrid meetings even when everyone was in the same building. Some people join from their desks even though they're ten metres from the meeting room. Not because they're antisocial, but because they contribute better when they can control their environment. ## What Comedy Taught Me About Meeting Management Three years ago, I started taking improvisation classes. Not for fun – though it was surprisingly enjoyable – but to understand how performers keep audiences engaged for ninety minutes without PowerPoint slides or detailed scripts. The principles translate directly to business meetings. Improvisers follow the "yes, and" rule: accept what others contribute and build on it. Most meeting leaders follow the "no, but" approach: shoot down ideas before exploring them fully. Comedians also understand timing in ways that corporate facilitators don't. They know when energy is building and when it's flagging. They can feel when an audience is ready for something new and when they need to stay with the current topic longer. Stand-up comedians read rooms better than most executives read spreadsheets. They adjust their material based on real-time feedback from their audience. Meanwhile, most business presenters stick rigidly to their planned content regardless of whether anyone's actually listening. The biggest lesson from comedy: if people aren't responding, it's not because they're difficult. It's because what you're offering isn't working for this particular group at this particular moment. ## The Meeting Metrics That Actually Matter We measure everything wrong. Meeting efficiency gets judged by whether it finishes on time and covers all agenda items. That's like judging a restaurant by whether the waiters delivered food quickly to every table, regardless of whether anyone enjoyed eating it. Better metrics might include: - How many people can clearly explain the meeting's purpose a week later - Whether decisions made actually get implemented - How many new ideas or connections emerged - Whether people volunteer for follow-up actions or need to be assigned them The accounting firm Deloitte famously tracked the cost per meeting by calculating hourly wages of attendees. Useful, but incomplete. They weren't measuring the opportunity cost of not meeting, or the long-term relationship building that happens in shared spaces. More importantly, they weren't measuring what I call "meeting momentum" – whether gatherings build energy and enthusiasm or drain it. Some expensive meetings are worth every dollar because they create clarity, alignment, and motivation that lasts for months. Some cheap meetings are devastating because they leave everyone confused and deflated. ## The Uncomfortable Truth About Meeting Culture Here's my final controversial take: your meetings aren't broken because you're bad at running meetings. They're broken because your organisation doesn't actually know what it's trying to achieve. Meetings are mirrors. They reflect the real priorities, power dynamics, and decision-making processes of your company, not the ones written in your values statements or org charts. If your meetings feel pointless, maybe your work feels pointless. If your meetings avoid difficult conversations, maybe your culture avoids difficult conversations. If your meetings prioritise looking busy over being productive, maybe that's what your organisation actually rewards. The best meeting improvement I ever implemented wasn't about agendas or facilitation techniques. It was helping a leadership team acknowledge that they were scheduling "strategy sessions" when what they really needed was couples therapy. They weren't disagreeing about tactics. They were disagreeing about fundamental assumptions about their business, their customers, and each other. No amount of meeting optimization was going to solve trust and communication issues that went back years. Sometimes the real problem isn't how you're meeting. It's whether you should be working together at all. --- **Other blogs of interest:** [Read more here](https://mentorcraft.bigcartel.com/my-thoughts) | [Sources](https://www.bestsermonoutlines.com/why-companies-ought-to-invest-in-professional-development-courses-for-employees)