Ending a meeting late is an act of psychological torture
Translated from the French original.
Just yesterday I was sitting in a meeting with fifteen people in a room and others joining remotely.
At 4.29pm, a first person stood up, without a word.
From 4.32pm, I watched two others close their laptops and angle their bodies towards the exit.
At 4.35pm, four people got up and left the room.
The discussion carried on.
I took a step back and put myself in the shoes of those who had left, and of those who had stayed.
I realised they were all living through an exercise in psychological torture, each of them weighing up in their head the consequences of the option they were choosing:
If I leave
– I miss the end of the discussion,
– I take a risk with my boss,
– I come across as a stickler,
– I show disrespect to my colleague presenting the topic they prepared,
– …
If I stay
– I arrive late to my next meeting and disrespect the people waiting for me,
– I take a risk, given that an even bigger boss is in the meeting I’m due to join,
– I miss the discussion to come, which will no doubt be the most interesting part,
– …
I then found myself imagining how these repeated acts of torture might affect participants’ state of psychological exhaustion by the end of the day.
And you?
What do you do to stop your meetings from ending late?
