• Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

People Equation

Leadership Development and Career Success Tips

  • About
  • Services
    • Life Story Coaching
    • Business Writing
  • Portfolio
  • Blog
  • Contact

Don’t Kill Productive Meetings by Dragging Them Out

by Jennifer V. Miller

My friend Sally works for a company that holds monthly small-group “open forum” type meetings for cross-sections of various company departments. The purpose of these meetings is to promote cross-departmental communication.  Each month, leaders from different functions in the company moderate the discussion. In general, Sally enjoys the meetings, except for one aspect: they are too long. They often go on for what seems like days three hours.  

She says that if she could give the meeting leaders one piece of advice to improve the process it would be this:

“After the conversation hogs have all repeated themselves three times and even the meekest member of the group has spoken up, it’s time to WRAP. IT. UP.”

Good advice for any meeting, I’d say.

I give the leadership at Sally’s company credit. Their intent to improve communication across functions is laudable. Unfortunately, they’ve ascribed to the thinking that if one hour of cross-functional conversation is good, then surely two hours must be better and hey, three hours is best of all.

This is definitely a case where “more” does not equal “better”. When people begin to repeat themselves, it’s a sure sign that a meeting has run its course.

If you’re in charge of leading meetings, you’d do well to use Sally’s rule of thumb. Don’t wait for the fat lady to sing; listen carefully and close it down long before then.

Jan 20 2012 · Categorized: Leadership, Personal Effectiveness · Tagged: Communication, Management, Time Management

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Primary Sidebar

Explore the people equation.
Sum up what matters.

Reflections on leadership, legacy and life storytelling.

Topics

  • Bad Boss Diaries
  • Book Review
  • Business Management
  • Communication
  • Food for Thought Friday
  • Guest Blogger
  • Human Resources
  • Leadership
  • Learning
  • Life Story Work
  • Office Politics
  • Personal Effectiveness
  • Social Media
  • Team Effectiveness
  • Training Delivery
  • Weekend Reflections
  • Workplace Issues
  • Zen of Jen

The People Equation blog by Jennifer V. Miller is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United States License.

Footer

Follow the People Equation

  • LinkedIn
  • Contact
  • Privacy Policy
  • Disclosure Statement
  • What’s with the llamas?

Subscribe to Our Newsletter

Sign Up

Copyright © 2025 · People Equation