Ask HN: Advice for avoiding being a bad participant in meetings What negative patterns do you come across in meetings that lead to non productive outcomes and what advice would you give those participants responsible? What mistakes did you make yourself in meetings that you have corrected as you progressed in your career? |
The Sheriff; my way or the highway.
The Bluffer; Yip, that’s been done.
The Hard Worker; Always segways to their latest piece of work.
The Brain; Says little, has manufactured outcome of meeting before the meeting started.
The Joker; Makes everyone laugh, is heard the least.
I’m personally trying to be a little bit less the joker and the hard worker.
Also goes by "Brent"
The Blocker: stubbornly disagrees; rejects others' views; describes unrelated personal experiences
The Withdrawer: won't participate; talks to neighbour; self-appointed note taker; switches off
The Recognition Seeker: boasts; excessive talking; conscious of their status
The Topic Jumper: continually changes the subject
The Dominator: tries to take over; asserts authority; manipulates the group
The Special Interest Pleader: uses group's time to plead their own case
The Playboy: wastes group's time showing off; story-teller; nonchalant; cynical
The Self-Confessor: continually makes comments about own feelings and insights
We Only Come in Twos: a pair that turn up together and only talk to each other
The Bomb: discloses personal information distracting group from tasks
The Can't-be-Bothered: disinterested; messes about; test's the facilitator with disruptive behaviour
The Inquisitor; dives into the minutiae of any topic.
The latter half of this isn't always possible, but lately in my career I've made it a point to never call a meeting that doesn't bring up at least 2-3 things that will be/need to be acted upon or looked into by someone (even if I'm that person) based on what gets discussed.
If you aren't providing value or the meeting is not providing value to you then you shouldn't be there. Perhaps the meeting shouldn't even exist? If this could have been a slack message or email or perhaps part of another existing meeting then you also shouldn't be there.