# The Real Reason Your Meetings Are Terrible **Related Reading:** [Further insights](https://ethiofarmers.com/blog) | [More perspectives](https://trainingforce.bigcartel.com/blog) | [Additional resources](https://www.alkhazana.net/blog) Three months ago, I walked into what was supposedly a "quick alignment session" at 2 PM on a Friday. Two and a half hours later, I emerged looking like I'd been through a corporate blender, and the only thing we'd aligned was our collective confusion about what we were actually meant to be doing. Sound familiar? Here's the thing that nobody wants to admit: your meetings aren't terrible because of too many attendees, unclear agendas, or people checking their phones. Those are symptoms. The real problem is that most of us have completely forgotten that meetings are fundamentally a form of [human performance](https://sewazoom.com/what-to-anticipate-from-a-communication-skills-training-course/) – and like any performance, they require actual skill to execute well. ## The Performance Nobody Trains For I've been facilitating workshops and training sessions across Melbourne, Sydney, and Brisbane for over 15 years now. And here's what blows my mind: companies will spend thousands on presentation skills training, public speaking courses, even body language workshops. But when was the last time anyone taught you how to actually run a meeting? It's like expecting someone to conduct an orchestra without ever learning how to read music. The average Australian office worker spends 23% of their week in meetings. That's roughly one day out of every five. Yet we treat meeting facilitation like it's some mysterious art that people should just naturally understand. [More information here](https://diekfzgutachterwestfalen.de/why-professional-development-courses-are-essential-for-career-growth/) about professional development priorities. ## The Energy Management Crisis Most meeting organisers focus on time management when they should be focusing on energy management. Time is finite, but energy is renewable – if you know how to work with it. I learned this the hard way during a project kickoff meeting in 2019. Ninety minutes of PowerPoint slides about methodology frameworks. By slide 47, I could literally see people's souls leaving their bodies. The irony? We were launching a project about improving employee engagement. The best meeting facilitators understand that human attention operates in natural cycles. Roughly 20-minute bursts of focus, followed by a need for mental reset. But most meetings are structured like academic lectures: one person talking, everyone else pretending to listen, for however long it takes to get through the content. Here's what actually works: [strategic communication approaches](https://minecraft-builder.com/the-role-of-professional-development-courses-in-a-changing-job-market/) that acknowledge how people actually process information. ## The Hidden Hierarchy Problem There's an elephant in every meeting room that nobody talks about: psychological hierarchy. Not the org chart hierarchy – that's obvious. I'm talking about the invisible pecking order that determines who speaks, who listens, and who gets ignored. In any group of six or more people, there's always one person who becomes the unofficial moderator (usually not the person who called the meeting), one person who becomes the timekeeper, one who becomes the devil's advocate, and one who just... disappears. These roles get assigned subconsciously within the first five minutes, and once they're set, they're nearly impossible to change. The really frustrating part? The person who disappears often has the best ideas. Smart facilitators learn to disrupt these patterns early. Change the seating arrangement. Start with an unexpected question. Get people moving. Make the loud people write instead of speak, and the quiet people present to smaller groups. ## The Australian Context Nobody Mentions Working in Australia adds another layer of complexity that international meeting methodology completely misses. We've got this cultural thing where being too enthusiastic or directive gets you labelled as "up yourself." But being too casual means nothing gets decided. I've watched brilliant ideas die in Australian meeting rooms because nobody wanted to be seen as pushing too hard. We'll spend 40 minutes dancing around a decision that could be made in five minutes, all because everyone's trying to maintain that careful balance between contributing and not seeming pushy. Meanwhile, our American colleagues will video-call in and make three decisions before we've finished our small talk about the weather. The solution isn't to become more American. It's to understand that good facilitation creates permission for directness. [Here's more detail](https://last2u.com/why-professional-development-courses-are-essential-for-career-growth/) on adapting leadership styles to local contexts. ## The Technology Trap Everyone thinks technology will save their meetings. Wrong. I've seen teams spend more time figuring out how to share screens than actually sharing ideas. The number of meetings I've attended where the first 15 minutes were devoted to "Can everyone see my screen?" is genuinely depressing. Technology should make meetings better, not more complicated. But we keep adding tools without subtracting complexity. Virtual whiteboards, breakout rooms, polling features, collaborative documents. Each tool requires cognitive overhead. Each platform has a learning curve. The best virtual meetings I've experienced used exactly two tools: video conferencing and shared documents. That's it. ## The Preparation Paradox Here's something that'll ruffle some feathers: over-preparation kills meetings just as effectively as under-preparation. I used to be the queen of detailed agendas. Colour-coded schedules, pre-reading materials, clearly defined objectives. My meetings ran like clockwork. They were also about as inspiring as watching paint dry. The problem with over-preparation is that it eliminates spontaneity. And spontaneity is where the magic happens. Some of the best business decisions I've witnessed came from unexpected tangents, random connections, or someone asking a question that wasn't on the agenda. Don't get me wrong – you need structure. But you also need space for emergence. [Personal recommendations here](https://angevinepromotions.com/why-professional-development-courses-are-essential-for-career-growth/) for finding that balance. The sweet spot is being prepared enough to guide the conversation, but flexible enough to follow it where it wants to go. ## What Actually Works After facilitating hundreds of meetings, here's what consistently creates engagement: Start with check-ins. Not "How's everyone doing?" but specific questions: "What's one thing you're excited about this week?" or "What's been taking up mental space for you lately?" Two minutes per person, maximum. It sounds touchy-feely, but it works because it gets people present and speaking early. Use the 40-40-20 rule. Forty percent discussion, forty percent decision-making, twenty percent planning next steps. Most meetings are 80% discussion, 15% planning, and 5% actual decisions. Then everyone wonders why nothing happens. End with commitments, not action items. "Sarah will update the brief by Wednesday" is clearer than "Update brief - Sarah - end of week." Specificity eliminates wiggle room. ## The Cultural Shift Nobody's Talking About Here's my controversial opinion: the future belongs to teams that can have efficient meetings, not teams that can eliminate meetings altogether. The "meetings are evil" movement is missing something crucial. Humans are social creatures. We solve problems better together than apart. We build trust through shared experience. We generate creative solutions through collective intelligence. The problem isn't meetings. The problem is bad meetings. ## Moving Forward The companies winning in today's market aren't the ones with the best technology or the smartest individuals. They're the ones with the best collective intelligence. And collective intelligence gets built in well-facilitated meetings. This isn't about perfection. It's about intention. Instead of defaulting to the same meeting patterns you've always used, try designing each meeting like you're creating an experience. Because that's exactly what you're doing. Most people leave meetings feeling like their time was wasted. Imagine if they left feeling energised, aligned, and clear about what happens next. That's not impossible. It just requires treating meeting facilitation like the professional skill it actually is. The next time you're about to send a meeting invite, pause. Ask yourself: "What experience am I designing here?" Then design accordingly. Your team's collective sanity depends on it. --- *The author is a workplace communication specialist who has facilitated over 2,000 training sessions across Australia and New Zealand. When not improving meeting culture, she can be found complaining about inefficient coffee queues and defending the Oxford comma.*