Boat-drinks on the Beach:
You are sitting there in the cabana of the beach bar… you look out onto the white sand beach and see all of the shirtless tanned guys and women in their new designer bikinis enjoying the beautiful aquamarine sea.   You lounge back into your comfortable chair and feel the breeze gently blow through your hair.  You slowly sip your coconut rum beverage while your friend Patrick tells you a story.

You are suddenly annoyed. You realize that parrot in the cage above the bar keeps repeating everything you and Patrick are talking about.  They should really do something about that bird…Then it happens… you snap out of your Day-Dream and realize that you are still stuck in your 3:30 Accounting Staff Meeting.  Patrick is talking about the status of the Q2 Marketing Budget Planning.Unfortunately the Parrot is still in the room:  Adam (from the Strategic Planning Team) is repeating everything that Patrick says.You think to yourself:   I don’t know what the Strategic Planning Team does, but Adam seems to attend a lot of meetings where he says a lot, and contributes exactly nothing.

Origin of the Meeting Parrot:
The quote from Saskya Pandita says “Much talking is the cause of danger. Silence is the means of avoiding misfortune. The talkative parrot is shut up in a cage. Other birds, without speech, fly freely about.”

Unfortunately for you, no one has put your Meeting Parrot in a cage yet.   I am not advocating putting your Adam in a literal cage (although your meeting would flow a lot smoother).  We are advocating you learn how to identify a Meeting Parrot, and how to deal with their behavior in a constructive way.

The origin of the Meeting Parrot behavior can be attributed to many things, a few of the potential sources may be:

• Your company has a culture where the Squeaky Wheel Gets the Attention  What can I say…  some people love attention and sometimes they are able to get attention by talking excessively in meetings.
• The meeting parrot was formerly judged based on the amount of airtime they took up.  Maybe their boss told them during a previous performance review that “they need to speak up more“, and they interpreted this as needing to talk more (even if they have nothing original to say).
• The Parrot is scared that people will think their job is useless, so they trying to sound important.  No one wants to feel that their participation in a meeting is useless, so they may try to gain validation by repeating what sounds like good points.

1. Take good notes. Taking good notes makes it easy to call out someone who is repeating what has already been stated.  For example “Adam: per the notes, Jessica already said that and we all agreed on the next steps.  Is what you are saying different than what she already said?”  If you do this a few times, they will get the message that their repeated comments are not valued.
2. Make the meeting parrot take good notes.  When someone takes notes, they are less likely repeat something that they have already written down.  In addition, if they need to validate their usefulness (see the third bullet point from above), taking quality notes is a good way to add value to a meeting.
3. Don’t invite people who are not critical to the success of the meeting.   If the meeting parrot just detracts from your meeting without adding value don’t invite them.  For recommendations on controlling your invitee list re-read this post.

Does he understand how unproductive it is when he calls a meeting for every single thing he is working on?

You contemplate declining the meeting, but you are concerned that an important decision will be made and you will not be kept in the loop (He never sends out meeting notes).

You have a twinge of sickness in the bottom of your stomach as you hit Accept on the meeting invite.

The Prognosis:

If the story above sounds familiar,  you may be dealing with a “Meet-Head“. Meet-Heads come in all sizes, shapes, and forms… so they can sometime be mistaken for important decision makers (Many times, they will even try to masquerade as decision makers).

The following are some tips that can help you spot a Meet-Head:#1 They are never at their desk.   If you actually do catch them at their desk and you have a simple 10 second question for them… they will typically say: “I don’t have time to discuess that right now.  Can you schedule a meeting on my calendar to talk about it?”

#2 Inability to make a decision or get anything done on their own.  They will never make a decision or  take responsibility for something.  They will always call a meeting to get people’s input or to get help doing their work.

#3 Always calls a meeting for any issue.  No matter how small the issue is, they will call a meeting for it.  They feel that everyone must be included in every issue.

#4 Have conference rooms blocked for no reason.  If you have a conference room scheduling app, they will have confernece rooms blocked even without having a meeting planned.  When you ask them about it, the response goes something like this: “Well, we may need to talk about some of the issues that might come up with the project xyz deployment this week, so I blocked off the room just in case.”
Decide to Act:

If you don’t do something about the Meet-Head, you may run the risk of an even more serious problem: Meeting Zombie Culture.  It is true… the Meet-Head can infect others with his infectious behavior.   Next thing you know, everyone in your company is slowly walking from conference room to conference room… moaning about how they can’t get anything done.

What to Do:

Get the facts: 

Metrics – Track the number of meetings that they organize.  If they are calling more than 2-3 meetings a day, they may have a problem.

Understand –  Figure out why are they calling so many meetings.   Do you have a larger issue of people in your company not being accountable… could this be why they are calling meetings?
Feedback:
Give constructive feedback – “Tom, I know everyone on this meeting invite is really busy,  can you cancel this meeting and just have everyone send you status?”

Acceptance or Denial – Figure out if they understand that the number of meetings they call is a problem.  If they don’t understand they have a problem, they will not know that they need to improve.

Support Group – Other people need to understand the problem as well, you can’t take on a Meet-Head alone.  Send an email to the group reminding everyone that unnecessary or ineffective meetings can be costly and slow down everyone’s success.

Improve:

Focus on improving the meetings they organize.  Based on feedback from our users, having more effective meetings will typically reduce the amount of meetings that they need to hold.

Help guide the Meet-Head to make sure that his meetings have:

• Well Planned Agendas
• Meeting Minutes Sent Out Immediately
• Action Items with Clear Next Steps (that don’t include: “Hold another meeting”)

If you can’t help the Meet-Head improve,  you may have an HR problem to deal with (or potentially you should start looking for a new company to work with).   

If you have other suggestions on how to deal with Meet-Heads,  I would love to hear them in the comments below or email me at Brett@LessMeeting.com