If you think that being forced to attend a bad meeting is the worst thing that can happen in your workday, I’ve got news. No matter how boring, unproductive and just plain stupid a bad meeting can be — and believe me, they can — the pain you will suffer during the meeting is nothing compared to the pain you will feel after the meeting is over.
Your head aches. Your bowels quiver. You feel so awful you want to hurl, assuming you haven’t done so already.
If this sounds like how you feel after drinking your way through the vineyards of France or the peat bogs of Scotland, you’re not wrong. You have a hangover — a meeting hangover. And you’re not going to cure it in the traditional way with a glass of Korean pear juice or a pinch of Phyllanthus amarus extract.
It was an article in the Harvard Business Review that alerted me to this malady. “The Hidden Toll of Meeting Hangovers” was written by Brent N. Reed, Steven G. Rogelberg, Rebecca Hinds and Jon Gray, all researchers at the University of North Carolina.
Based on the quartet’s extensive studies, we now know that “more than a quarter (28 percent) of workplace meetings left employees with lingering negative effects, such as impaired engagement and productivity.” The remaining less than three-quarters did not exit meetings with a feeling of satisfaction for what they had achieved or a sense of enthusiasm for what they could now accomplish. Instead, they left committed to immediately quitting their jobs and restarting their careers as product samplers at Costco. (If you go this route, get assigned to the coconut shrimp. They’re great to snack on during your time on duty and easy to slip in your apron pocket at the end of the day.)
The number of ways a meeting can turn sour is limited only by the number of meetings you are forced to attend. Agendas are ignored. Objectives are unrealistic or absent entirely. Action items are missing in action. Yet you are expected to sit through to the bitter end, participating when you can and trying to be invisible when you can’t.
Especially painful are meetings designed to shift blame from the organizer to the participants. Even worse are regular meetings when the main purpose is to decide when you will meet next to decide when you will next meet.
Unfortunately, the people who have the power to improve or even limit meetings are the least likely to do so. What’s the sense in having the power to call pointless meetings if you never use it? Still, the HBR article does offer advice on how to improve meetings. High on the agenda is “cutting the guest list, ruthlessly.” Leaders are encouraged to differentiate between “must-have participants” and “nice-to-have participants.” A major meltdown on your part over something important, such as the quality of doughnuts served at the meeting, should be sufficient to elevate you to the most coveted category, “never-have-ever participants.”
Managers are also advised to “assign every agenda item an owner.” At Apple, every item is designated to a DRI, or Directly Responsible Individual. You could work hard to achieve this designation, or simply fumble enough projects to become known as a DUI, or Definitely Useless Individual.
The purpose of these improvement strategies is to limit “rumination” or negative thinking. This could definitely be motivating. Negative or not, the last thing your managers want you to do is think.
The article concludes with steps you can take to recover your equipoise when the meeting ends and the hangover begins. “Mindfulness exercises, such as deep breathing” can help you regain focus, the authors claim, though breathing does take a lot of time — time I feel is better spent feeling sorry for yourself. Personally, I recommend mindlessness exercises such as holding your breath until you turn red.
The best hangover recovery results occurred “when respondents put physical distance between themselves and a bad meeting.” The authors suggest a stroll to the nearest Starbucks, but if you want a 10 percent guaranteed cure for your meeting hangover, consider a trip to a somewhat more distant Starbucks, such as the outpost on the shores of the Arabian Sea in Alibaug, Maharashtra, India.
It may take a while to reach this charming Starbucks and just as long to get back, and you could miss a significant number of meetings, but it will be worth it.
I hear they make a killer Caramel Snickerdoodle Macchiato.
Bob Goldman was an advertising executive at a Fortune 500 company. He offers a virtual shoulder to cry on at bob@bgplanning.com.
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