16. What to do when you’re bored in a meeting?
Translated from the French original.
Photo by RODNAE Productions from Pexels
No doubt it happens to you: sitting in a meeting, bored, wondering whether you might not have better things to do elsewhere?
Several options are open to you.
Let me walk you through a few of them, depending on your degree of freedom, starting with the most limited.
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Stay silent. And keep your mind busy by mentally answering, for every contribution, the following question: “What leads them to say that?”
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Catch up on your emails, as discreetly as possible.
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Browse the Black Friday bargains.
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Send out signals to express your impatience.
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Discreetly let the facilitator know that you need to leave the meeting, and do so. In a remote meeting, if the “chat” allows it, post a message live.
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Leave, applying the so-called law of two feet that applies at conferences. “If I am neither contributing nor learning, I may leave the conference.”
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Step in with tact and subtlety: “Who can enlighten me as to where we are in this discussion?”, or “Who can remind me what you are expecting from us?”.
In any case, bring some awareness to what is happening to you and take action. That is why I recommend you go for the last tactic suggested above and step in with tact and subtlety…
Bearing in mind, however, that the best tactic of all is to pluck up your courage before the meeting, if you anticipate you might be bored there, and simply ask the person inviting you the magic question:
What do you expect from me?
It is a good way to move from the role of victim to that of actor, and to dare to make things move. And above all, never to be bored in a meeting again.
Ecole Internationale de Réuniologie
#reuniologie #meeting #louisvareille #ecoleinternationaledereuniologie #reunionite #reuniologue #reunion
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