meeting coping skills

[Zoe Girl]

Apparently my meeting coping skills have been run out to my car afterwards and smoke. That isn't working anymore of course. So now I need new ones, ones for a highly sensitive, kinda empathic, introvert. I try to take lots of notes, even if they do not pertain to the meeting it helps me look engaged. I can no long hold my attention doodling, although if I could bring crochet that would help (not very professional). I follow all the electronics rules which makes me a team player. I used to try and contribute more to discussions but now the meetings are much bigger than they used to be and that does not work.

I am thinking about counting breaths, meditation technique, today. Also having a snack is totally socially acceptable in our meetings, that can be supportive of not walking out ready to cry. It honestly is overload, too many loud voices, tight agendas, reminders about accountability for all the people not getting things done, and just waiting for the random stupid or rude comment from anywhere.

[iris lilies]

Apparently my meeting coping skills have been run out to my car afterwards and smoke. That isn't working anymore of course. So now I need new ones, ones for a highly sensitive, kinda empathic, introvert. I try to take lots of notes, even if they do not pertain to the meeting it helps me look engaged. I can no long hold my attention doodling, although if I could bring crochet that would help (not very professional). I follow all the electronics rules which makes me a team player. I used to try and contribute more to discussions but now the meetings are much bigger than they used to be and that does not work.

I am thinking about counting breaths, meditation technique, today. Also having a snack is totally socially acceptable in our meetings, that can be supportive of not walking out ready to cry. It honestly is overload, too many loud voices, tight agendas, reminders about accountability for all the people not getting things done, and just waiting for the random stupid or rude comment from anywhere.

For two regular meetings we had, I used to volunteer to take notes. That was supposed to keep me focused on the content and for a while, it did. Worked for a couple of years, then the droning voices of Meeting Time became overwhelming. It never helped that I attended a couple of meetings that included discussion of agenda items for another meeting, so by the time we had meeting #3 I had heard most of the content discussed multiple times.Ugh, sleepy time.

And then, my supervisor would never post the minutes of the meeting on our intraweb site, even hough that was the stated purpose of taking them. so what was the point of it? The Minutes Record went nowhere.

[Chicken lady]

Definitely take your snack - blood sugar is very important. Also, think about what kind of snack - soothing and bland, rich and complex with a variety of textures and flavors? Sour, sweet, crunchy, chewy... When you need to shift gears, eat your snack and really focus on every bite.

also, have you ever done walking meitation? Can you park your car far away (ish) to enjoy your new improved breathing and have longer to decompress before you go home?

[Yppej]

Make up a game. For example, one I used to play was under the guise of taking notes, write down the first word you hear from the speaker(s) that starts with an A, then the first one with a B, and see if you can get all through the way through the alphabet.

[Zoe Girl]

Great ideas, I have been the note taker for smaller meetings and that is very helpful. Our department meetings are pretty decent so that was today's meeting so I survived. Plus they had a yogurt bar, yogurt, blueberries or strawberries and some granola options. It is just from a fund that we can donate to so I will put some money in.

I forgot about playing games! I used to make boxes on my paper in school to represent how long was left in the class in 5 minute chunks, I would mark off the boxes. I have timed how long the facilitator talks in training sessions as compared to the participants.

I love walking meditation, I need to push myself to actually get out and do it. But yeah (sarcastic) my assistant just turned in her notice. That is 30 hours a week of work that she does.

The temp head of our department has some open office hours. I set an appointment for tomorrow to talk about some concerns I have. Actually have heard from about a dozen colleagues that our changes in summer camp lesson planning are a problem. It may help me to clear the air on some issues. Part of the meeting issue is the tone towards us, meanwhile will bring my snacks and game ideas.

[rosarugosa]

My problem with meetings is staying awake and alert, and in HR we have endless meetings. We once had a series of meetings about "too many meetings." Really, you just can't even make this stuff up.
Not really a coping technique, but there is a thing called Bullsh*t Bingo that just cracks me up. I guess you can also call it Buzzword Bingo, but hey, I enjoy profanity:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buzzword_bingo

[Zoe Girl]

rosa that is great! You can't make this crap up can you, and it is very real. My department is one step away from that. I ended up drawing little doodles of buzzwords, right now it is 'buckets of work'. At least it is not low hanging fruit! I had such inappropriate images on that one!

Monday night at our meditation group we had 2 new people. One was an old (younger than me!) punk who had friended me on FB awhile ago but never got to a sit. Another was an Indian man who looked pretty normal for us. No obvious piercings, tattoos, ankle monitors. So at the end we are chatting on our way out, the topic that night was anger, and part of chatting I ended up swearing a bit. I explained to him that swearing was fine with us, in fact our nun swears when she teaches with us. He replied "now this is a real sangha" (group of beloved friends).

[bae]

I used to have my groups watch the John Cleese training video "Meetings, Bloody Meetings" every so often. Worked wonders.

https://archive.org/details/meetingsbloodymeetings

On edit: while looking for a pointer to that video, I discovered with delight they've made an updated version:

http://www.media-partners.com/business_meetings/meetings_bloody_meetings_updated_version.htm

[rosarugosa]

This looks like fun, Bae. I love John Cleese. :)
ZG: We are all about leveraging and calibrating these days, and establishing our cadences!

[catherine]

I hate meetings. One of the reasons I quit my corporate job was to escape all that time-wasting stuff, and it's also one of the reasons I never took a job "client-side." My clients spend ALL DAY in meetings. It's ridiculous. It takes forever to book meeting for a few people, and apparently it's impossible for them to find conference rooms to hold meetings in because they're always booked.

So I don't have any suggestions for how to deal with meetings. I love the John Cleese thing! I try to be very "parliamentary" and expedient when I run meetings. I race through agenda items like the building's on fire. When people start blabbing I like to use the cliche, "Let's take that offline" and then I hope they forget about it when we're "offline." They often do, because what's the point of talking to just ONE person about your issue when you can have a cross functional audience? Some people just like having an audience.

I was at a meeting last night and there was THAT person (there's always one) who, when we went around BRIEFLY introducing ourselves we got an entire rundown of her corporate capabilities.

OTOH, as much as I hate meetings, I do think it's important to be somewhat polite and considerate to your colleagues. I'm "old school" and still find it rude for people to be working on their computer or reading their texts at meetings.

[Ultralight]

I often make my grocery list or my after-work to-do list while pretending to take notes in a meeting.

[bae]

At my last company, I removed the chairs from my group's conference rooms, and that improved Meeting Culture immensely.

[herbgeek]

I did the opposite to Bae. I had my meetings in the (software) lab. I brought in a tablecloth that was plastic but looked like a grandma's lace tablecloth. I'd bring a pot of tea for refreshments. Since I had mostly men in my group, they were uncomfortable lingering in this sort of environment, so my meetings were all business and went very quickly. LOL.

[bae]

I had a boss (in engineering) who was used to dealing with our type of more interesting engineers. When she'd start the meeting, she'd dump a small bin of interesting children's toys (puzzles, Hoberman spheres, things to fiddle with) onto the middle of the table.

Most of the engineers would grab a toy sooner or later, fidget with it, and be able to focus/concentrate better on the meeting :-)

It was sort of brilliant.

[Zoe Girl]

Bae, that is totally my work environment in OST programming! We obviously need fidgets, and team builders and ice breakers and games. Since this is what we expect staff to do with kids it is normal to have this in our meetings. We don't hire people who like to sit a lot, I can't sit a lot. When I had a month before school started I barely made it until 3 in the office and then I just had to leave and work at home.

I do more training than meetings, I tend to read the people and adjust. My front line staff need fidget toys and movement. My meetings with colleagues have lots of visuals. Today we talked about a training coming up with some complicated rotations and I put together a chart on the white board, moved things around, encouraged people to come up and add to it. The only long sitting training I do is mindfulness, the guided sitting practice.