Finishing The Meeting

By admin

Anything that has a start naturally will have a finish, but some meetings seem to once again have a kind of inertia and lack the ability to conclude. If the chairperson has an agenda, obviously the conclusion of the last event on the agenda should end the meeting, right? I only wish it were so simple. Some meetings go on despite being past the last topic on the agenda, whereas others are effectively over even when the agenda is not exhausted. Let’s look at these two circumstances and how to deal with them.

When the last item on an agenda has transpired, it’s time to go. If the agenda has reached completion, and the chairperson seems to be in a trance, lacking the motor skills to terminate the meeting, we terminate it. We just gather our materials, stand up, and say something like “Thanks for inviting me to your meeting. I have a lot of new information to take with me and digest,” and head for the door. This will generally precipitate a closure by the chairperson, or at least a motion in that direction. If we want to be polite, we can linger while the chairperson formally concludes the event. But in any case the end is near.

When the meeting has evolved into a kind of sluggish, nondirectional mass, despite being only partially through the agenda, the meeting is effectively over. The problem is that the chairperson will almost invariably try to keep the thing afloat just because there is an agenda to follow. The symptoms of this situation are evident in the behavior of the attendees. Dominators and participators transform into passivists, passivists fall asleep, and there is a general loss of energy and lack of interest in all echelons. Nobody is asking questions, and the chairperson is only hanging on because he or she thinks that it is the honorable thing to do. At this point, we need to take action lest we be consumed by this sluggish mass. We interrupt at the next opportunity by saying something like, “This is a lot of information to digest, and I, for one, need some time to digest it. I need to break away for a while, but I could return later if I am needed.”

This gives the chairperson the escape route he or she needs. The meeting can be adjourned until later, and the chairperson is not at fault; the crowd is simply saturated with all this fascinating information. Usually, the chairperson, having also perceived the demise of the event, will leap upon the opportunity to break away. If not, at least we can escape. If the chairperson is so naive as not to see what is going on, we need to be firm in our insistence to be excused. We will usually draw support from the crowd as well. But if the chairperson and some of the crowd want to continue, so be it. If we have to stay, its creative daydreaming time; we will not be bothered with interactions or questions from the sluggish crowd.