Finally! The Truth About Why We Hate Meetings [Infographic]

In a perfect world, every meeting would be short and to the point, start and end on time and something meaningful would get accomplished.

But in the real world:

• Many are too long
• start late
• end later, and
• nothing really gets done.

And that’s frustrating for a lot of managers who think they have much better things to do.

So, why do we hate meetings?

A ResourcefulManager survey of 948 upper-level executives, directors, middle managers and frontline supervisors says nothing gets accomplished in 44.8% of the meetings executives and managers attend.

Plus, check out all of our great infographics.

Of the last 10 they attended:

• 51% say nothing was accomplished in 5 or more meetings they attended. And more than 53% of that group said nothing was accomplished in 7 or more.
• Only 8.9% say something was accomplished in all 10.

Of course, those same managers think they do a great job when they are running the meetings.

• 90.4% say the ones they are in charge of are efficiently run.
• BUT, only 65.2% of the ones they attend that are run by others are efficiently run.

What are the biggest issues that keep meetings from being effective? They said:

• 44.7% People protecting their turf
• 38.3% One or two people dominate the discussion
• 34.6% Defensiveness
• 31.7% Internal politics
• 30.9% People not prepared

They Don’t Start Or End On Time

While the majority of meetings start and end on time, respondents say of the last 10:

• 38.7% didn’t start on time.
• 40.5% didn’t end on time.

What was the average number of people attending a meeting?

• 7 people was the average number in attendance.

How long is the typical meeting that executives and managers attend?

• 61.1% of all meetings last at least an hour or longer.

Now, Here’s The Good News . . .

One piece of good news: Most executives and managers think the number of meetings they attend is just about right:

• 61.6% attend the right number.
• 22.4% attend too many (however, 32.3% of upper-level executives say they attend too many meetings).
• 16.0% say they don’t attend enough of them.

Source: ResourcefulManager survey of 948 upper-level executives (20.7%), directors (31.5%), middle managers (35.4%) and frontline supervisors (12.4%)