99U: I urge you: stop. Pay attention. Sit up straight and engage. Wallow in the pointlessness. Chew on this. Because you are watching the very worst version of yourself, and it’s something you need to see. Working with people can be frustrating—no “7 Tips to More Productive Meetings” article is going to make it simple. You can read 1,359 blog posts that tell you to “listen” or “empathize,” but the route to finding peace in collaborative communication is so much harder, because it’s about personal subjugation.
4 comments:
In general, meetings are something that I am constantly have a love hate relationship with. On one hand, I just do not want to go to meetings. They take up a ton of time in my day and I always end up having to constantly remind myself that I do not have free time then because I have to be in a meeting. However, on the other hand, I love going to meetings because I am able to get caught up on the ins and outs of the project at hand that I am working on. This brings up the question, “Why do we need so much motivation to attend meetings?” The conclusion that I have drawn is that when I have something to contribute to the meeting I do not need any motivation, but when all I am doing is listening they do getting really boring. We have to find that balance.
Meetings can often be very boring and difficult to get through. There are always people that you do not get along with that well. Learning to get along with people and tolerating them is a very important skill. It is very bad to look disinterested in a meeting and that you only care about what you have to say. People are less likely to listen to what you have to say if you do not listen to them. Respect goes both ways in a working situation. If you are listening to someone else’s idea that you may not agree with, you can figure out a different way to do it or a counter idea. Collaboration is only possible if everyone listens to each other and contributes their ideas to improve others. The most creative ideas are a combination of many other ideas that have been changed and fleshed out to make the best possible outcome.
Group work has always represented a type of challenge for me. In high school, I was even more of a perfectionist than I am now. Meeting with my partners always represented a struggle: they consisted mostly of me monopolizing the time dictating my ideas for the project and finding flaws in others’ whenever they found an opportunity to speak. Since I’ve been in college, I’ve definitely made progress in this area. I’ve always viewed theater, in contrast to academic work, as a largely collaborative art form, one involving a lot of communication between exercise partners, scene partners etc. Last semester we spent a whole week on the topic of “talking and listening”: what you put out is just as important as letting what others give land on you. Acting, in itself, is a game of teamwork. I feel I have certainly implemented a few of the tips the article outlines, like not complaining about the unproductivity of meetings after they happen. My skills in not “zoning out” when someone else speaks have improved; I am self-reflective almost 90% of the time I’m quiet. However, I still think this area warrants some progress, as I will sometimes catch myself thinking about my own problems when others in the group are contributing.
54101A, Andrew Smith Acting I, Kate Rosenberg
Everyone is aware that meetings can be difficult> I have been in some painful production meetings and I am sure every other person who is going to comment on this article can say the same. Meetings tend to be bad more than they are good but even though this is true they are necessary. There is always something that needs to be taught or discussed and information that needs disseminating, so rather than complaining and allowing your hate for the process to be another drag on getting things done, be open to the process. Allow for meeting to accomplish what they are there for as opposed to becoming the problem. Thinking back on all of the painful meetings, I’ve been in, most were only so bad be because people had already decide that they were going to be that way. If you want to have a productive meeting, you have to actively be apart of the solution to the problem.
Post a Comment