# The Real Reason Your Meetings Are Terrible (And It's Not What Your Consultant Told You) **Other Blogs of Interest:** [Read more here](https://skillcoaching.bigcartel.com/blog) | [Further reading](https://www.alkhazana.net/2025/07/16/why-firms-ought-to-invest-in-professional-development-courses-for-employees/) | [More insight](http://akumulatorite.org/why-companies-ought-to-invest-in-professional-development-courses-for-employees/) Walked into another "quick 15-minute standup" last week that stretched to an hour and twenty-three minutes. Twenty-three bloody minutes of watching grown adults argue about whether we should use blue or navy blue for the quarterly report cover. While someone's laptop died. Twice. Here's what nobody wants to admit: your meetings aren't terrible because you don't have enough structure, fancy software, or those expensive Herman Miller chairs that make everyone look like they're piloting spacecraft. They're terrible because you've forgotten meetings are supposed to be conversations between humans, not performance art for middle management. ## The Theatre of Modern Meeting Culture I've been running workshops on communication skills for seventeen years across Melbourne, Sydney, and Brisbane, and I've seen this evolution firsthand. Somewhere between 2015 and now, Australian businesses collectively decided that every interaction needed to be "optimised" and "leveraged" and measured with metrics that would make a statistician weep. The real kicker? [Most organisations](https://ethiofarmers.com/what-to-anticipate-from-a-communication-skills-training-course/) spend more time preparing for meetings than actually solving problems in them. I once watched a team spend forty-five minutes creating an agenda for a thirty-minute meeting. The irony was completely lost on them. ## What Actually Kills Meeting Productivity Forget the consultants telling you it's about "clear objectives" and "defined outcomes." That's like saying bad restaurants fail because they don't have enough salt shakers. The real problems? **Everyone's performing instead of participating.** Sarah from Finance isn't sharing her actual concerns about the budget shortfall – she's crafting responses that make her sound strategic and forward-thinking. Meanwhile, Dave from IT is mentally composing his next PowerPoint slide instead of listening to what Sarah actually needs. **We've confused talking with communicating.** There's a difference between filling airtime and actually exchanging information. I see this constantly in my [training sessions](https://sewazoom.com/what-to-anticipate-from-a-communication-skills-training-course/) – people mistake volume of words for value of contribution. **The meeting before the meeting syndrome.** You know this one. Half the attendees have already decided everything in the corridor beforehand, and the official meeting is just elaborate theatre. Waste of everyone's time and creates that lovely feeling of exclusion for anyone not in the inner circle. ## The Psychology Nobody Talks About Here's where it gets interesting. Most meeting problems aren't logistical – they're psychological. People show up defensive because they've been ambushed in previous meetings. They bring laptops as security blankets, not productivity tools. They speak in corporate buzzwords because they're terrified of sounding unprofessional. The result? Rooms full of intelligent adults who can't have a straightforward conversation about straightforward problems. I learned this the hard way during a particularly disastrous client workshop in 2019. Spent three hours trying to facilitate a "strategic alignment session" that went nowhere because everyone was so busy proving their competence, nobody admitted they were confused about the actual strategy. [More details at this website](https://diekfzgutachterwestfalen.de/why-professional-development-courses-are-essential-for-career-growth/). ## The Australian Factor We've got a unique challenge here in Australia. Our cultural tendency toward informal communication actually works against us in formal meeting structures. We're comfortable having robust conversations over coffee or after work drinks, but put us in a boardroom with an agenda and suddenly everyone's channeling their inner corporate robot. It's like watching people who normally speak perfectly good Australian English suddenly adopt American business speak. "Let's circle back on that deliverable and ensure we're actioning the right value propositions going forward." Mate, just say "let's talk about it later and figure out what actually works." ## What Actually Works (According to Someone Who's Seen It) The best meetings I've observed – and I'm talking about the ones where people actually leave energised instead of checking their phones – have three things in common: **Someone genuinely cares about the outcome.** Not just the person running the meeting, but at least half the attendees have skin in the game. They're not there because it was in their calendar; they're there because they need something to happen. **The conversation has room to breathe.** Paradoxically, the most productive meetings often go slightly off-script. Someone raises an unexpected point, and instead of shutting it down with "let's park that for later," the group explores it. [Further information here](https://mauiwear.com/why-professional-development-courses-are-essential-for-career-growth/) shows how this flexibility actually improves decision-making. **People disagree openly and professionally.** The worst meetings are the ones where everyone nods along and then complains in the lift afterwards. Healthy conflict during the meeting prevents toxic gossip after it. ## The Technology Trap Don't get me started on meeting technology. Half the organisations I work with have spent thousands on video conferencing systems that nobody knows how to use properly, collaborative software that creates more confusion than clarity, and digital whiteboards that make everyone feel like they're trying to write with oven mitts. Here's a radical thought: maybe the problem isn't that you need better technology. Maybe the problem is that you're trying to solve human communication problems with technical solutions. I watched a team in Perth spend fifteen minutes trying to figure out how to share their screen, then another ten minutes explaining what everyone could already see on the shared screen. By the time they got to the actual discussion, half the energy in the room had evaporated. ## The Meeting Paradox The organisations that have the best meetings are often the ones that have the fewest meetings. They've figured out that most communication doesn't require assembling eight people in a room for an hour. Email for information sharing. Quick phone calls for simple decisions. Face-to-face meetings only for complex problems that actually require group thinking. Revolutionary concept, I know. ## Why This Matters More Than You Think Poor meeting culture isn't just annoying – it's expensive. Beyond the obvious cost of having twelve people sitting around doing nothing productive, it erodes trust, stifles innovation, and trains your best people to keep their mouths shut. I've seen talented employees become meeting zombies within six months of joining organisations with toxic meeting cultures. They stop contributing ideas because they've learned that meetings aren't actually about solving problems; they're about covering bases and managing up. [Personal recommendations](https://last2u.com/why-professional-development-courses-are-essential-for-career-growth/) from other consultants suggest this is becoming a retention issue, particularly with younger employees who have less tolerance for bureaucratic time-wasting. ## The Simple Fix Nobody Wants to Hear Most meeting problems could be solved by asking one question before sending that calendar invite: "What decision needs to be made, and who actually needs to make it?" If you can't answer that clearly, you don't need a meeting. You need to think more carefully about what you're trying to accomplish. If you can answer it, invite only the people who need to be part of the decision, tell them exactly what decision they're there to make, and give them the authority to actually make it. Everything else is just expensive procrastination with better coffee. ## Where We Go From Here The good news is that fixing meeting culture doesn't require a complete organisational overhaul or expensive consulting programs. It requires admitting that most of our meeting habits developed by accident rather than design, and having the courage to try something different. Start small. Pick one recurring meeting that everyone privately admits is useless, and either kill it entirely or completely redesign it. See what happens. [Here is the source](https://www.floreriaparis.cl/why-professional-development-courses-are-essential-for-career-growth/) for more evidence on how small changes can create significant cultural shifts. The worst that can happen is you get an hour of your life back every week. The best that can happen is you remember what it feels like to leave a meeting feeling like something actually got accomplished. Your move.