“Walk out of a meeting or drop off a call as soon as it is obvious you aren’t adding value. It is not rude to leave, it is rude to make someone stay and waste their time.” – Elon

When you join a new company or organization you quickly learn that many things are not as advertised in the corporate handbook. You will discover in your day-to-day interactions with your leadership and your peers that things are often broken. One of the more corrosive components is toxic meeting culture.

There are lots of definitions and examples of toxic meeting culture, but I define it as:

A critical lack of trust

It’s not just indicative of poor planning and consideration of time, it’s also a signal that there are trust issues top to bottom.

Receiving invitations that blow up your entire plan to actually do things, is one of the most frustrating parts of professional life.

Meetings that land (without warning) on your calendar with the following crappiness:

  • lacking a clear agenda/goal
  • longer than they need to be, and repeat
  • too many attendees
  • are a venue for leadership monologues
  • lacking a request to participate or ask for feedback ahead of time
  • no pre-read or trackable artifact, notes, or supporting context

How to escape it. Decline meetings that lack clarity on goals, specific contributions from you or your team, or are void of any documents that serve as a communication vehicle that limits the amount of meetings you’ll need to have in the future.

It’s not always possible to avoid meeting toil, however, you can simply practice good meeting hygiene by being more thoughtful about how you write up a request for a meeting.

Polite, detailed, flexible - These are the qualities of good meeting hygiene, that assume very little and are likely to have a better impact on recipients. Additionally ask yourself why you’re having this meeting and what you REALLY hope to achieve with it. I think you’ll find that you don’t trust people and you’re looking to “check in” on how specific projects are going.

If you’re too busy to consider the impact of a meeting, then you’re busier than you need to be.

Thanks for reading,

Pete