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Email ThisA new study performed by Steven Rogelberg, a professor in industrial organizational psychology (can you get more specialized than that?), from the University of UNC-Charlotte revealed that people either enjoy or don’t mind going to meetings more often than they don’t like going to them.
The article goes on to describe why people might actually like attending business meetings. Some reasons may be that people usually say they don’t like meetings, because they don’t want to sound like a “suck up”, but when in reality they actually do like attending them. Others prefer communicating with colleagues and collaborating with others to solve a problem or get on the same page for a project. The article suggests throughout that the social aspect of meetings in appealing to many who work by themselves throughout the day on a given task.
Okay, do you want to know the real reason why people like going to meetings? BECAUSE IT’S A REASON TO GET AWAY FROM THEIR WORK! The only thing this study proves is how much people dislike the work they are doing. You know when you’ve got that 3pm meeting, the whole time you’re hoping that it lasts until 5pm, so you can just go straight home instead of going back to your desk. In fact, I’ve been in meetings before where no one wanted to go back to their desk, so we contemplated prolonging the meeting. Then, our conscience set in, and we adjourned the meeting. I just laughed when I read this article, because I know this professor means well and is trying to scientifically figure out the psyche of American co-workers, but they are being way too optimistic about this. People hear meeting, and they think to themselves, “wow, what a good excuse for why I won’t finish my work today or even this week”.
You might think that I’m taking an extreme point of view, but I am just expressing what many of us won’t admit. Think back at a time where you were really engaged in a business meeting, especially one involving a power point presentation or one person dominating the conversation. The problem with corporate America is that they never try anything different. What about going outside and having a picnic while you meet to discuss ideas? What about giving everyone a topic to discuss for the meeting, rather than one person talking over and over about the same thing? If you really want people to enjoy meetings, do something fresh and different. Because from my experience, meetings are just a great excuse for why you’re not at your desk right now.
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Haha, great find! I agree, that is a bit of a ridiculous study. If someone takes a survey of a company and finds their employee’s like meetings, that company ought to work on their employee engagement.
I would also venture to say that any worthwhile /company/ hates meetings and tries to have them as infrequently as possible. Reason being most companies don’t do meetings right, so they take away from people doing actual work (or building relationships with co-workers).
Again, good, humorous find!
I agree too my friend. Even the most useless Staff Meetings are a good reason to sit there and just kind of listen.
Then talk about how nothing happened for 15 more minutes.
The other thing is that employees might be “listened to” only if they call a meeting, or attend a meeting that the manager called. But that is just another sign of corporate disfunction–only listening in traditional ways.
When I first starting read this, I thought, “Oh, you’re not going to agree with these Babyboomers are you?” But you are so right. Meetings are the biggest time suckers around. People who telecommute don’t have unnecessary meetings, just because they are a waste of time. And that time comes out your personal time rather than time you are stuck at the office.
Meetings are the result of offices being set up on an industrial model - even though they are not usually factories.
I’m glad that you all agree with me on this one. I wasn’t sure what the response would be.
Traditional meetings are completely out-dated. There are companies out there that will STILL spending thousands of dollars to fly in co-workers from other branches to have a two hour meeting.
Hello, have you ever heard of a teleconference? Again, most meetings are still held in stuffy, dark conference rooms. Big business needs to wake up and inject something fresh into meetings if they truly want people to enjoy them and get something out of them.
I’m not sure which is worse. The more traditional meetings or the ‘meetings’ that are called to have decision by committee (blah).