In every office, there are types of people that make the meetings miserable. This week I combined the 3 most frequent types of personalities that ruin meetings, enjoy!
- Multi-Tasker: The multi-taskers bring their laptops and cell phones to the meeting and constantly keep working on their laptops and check their phones all the time. They are physically present during the meetings but not mentally there. Therefore, they don’t listen to the meeting and they never talk unless someone calls out their names and ask them for their opinions. In order to prevent their names being called, they try not to make any eye contact with other people in the room. If their laptops run out of battery, then, they switch to their phones and keep writing emails or check their social media. It is best to talk with these types of people after the meeting and ask whether they have too much work on their shoulders. Maybe, it would be better for them to skip some meetings and only attend the crucial ones.
- The “But…” guy: These types of personalities try to kill all of the ideas without presenting any alternatives. Since they are negative and pessimistic all the time, they drain other people’s energy too and make them passive. The rest of the people in the meeting stop talking and presenting other ideas in the fear of looking stupid in front of everybody because the “But” guy will again find something to destroy their ideas. In order to prevent “But” guys during meetings, ask everyone in the meeting to come prepared with ideas or repel this person by saying “Thank you for your point but let’s try to focus on solutions and follow the agenda we have.”
- The Latecomer: These types of people are always fashionably late to the meetings and usually make the excuse of the previous meeting running longer than expected. These people usually have time-management problems and therefore, it is best to send them a different meeting invite than others. If the meeting is going to start at 2pm, then send them the invite as 1:45pm so they can prepare accordingly. Also, the meeting gets worse when the latecomer wants a summary of the discussion so far because this is a waste of other people’s time in the meeting and prevent everyone to move on with the agenda. In order to avoid this, tell the latecomer that s/he can catch up on the conversation after the meeting ends via the meeting minutes so that others don’t get disrupted.
