Imagine that you open a meeting by saying, “We need to talk about the budget.”
And someone says, “I named my dog Budget because he’s too big.”
After the laughter subsides, you wonder why anyone would make such a silly remark in your meeting.
And this leads to a larger question: Why would anyone misbehave in a meeting?
Everyone knows that misbehavior can ruin a meeting. It wastes everyone’s time and squanders the opportunity to produce useful results.
Here are some possibilities.
1) They’re uninformed
Many people do not know how to plan, conduct, or participate in a meeting. They think that gathering people in a conference room represents holding a meeting. They believe that planning is unnecessary because they expect everyone to arrive with a common agenda. They think that hosting a discussion actually leads to useful results. These well-meaning attempts at holding a meeting are so counterproductive that they can appear to be misbehavior. In addition, a bad meeting irritates others, causing them to retaliate with misbehavior.
Better: Show people how to plan and conduct meetings....