Advice on dealing with a manager who wants too many meetings

wally1990

Hi all, just looking for some advice

I’m am a manager in a financial role overseeing 8 people.

I report to a general manager who oversees my department and about 3 others.

I get on with this manager but my biggest gripe is he always wants too many meetings

For example

I work 9 to 5:30 with 1 hour lunch from 1 to 2

I could be in meetings from 10 to 1 on a Monday /3 hours

Tuesday 10-11 and 2-3 so 2 hours

Wednesday 1 hour or 1.5

Thursday 2 hours

Friday none

The above is a rough guideline but my annoyance is these meetings feel pointless 80 percent of the time .

My manager just waffles on and isn’t the type of person to be direct with answers and goes around in circles . his Communications skills are weak.

Also, a lot of his meetings can be resolved by a simple email

The meetings are for just chatting about current work ongoing or how we should proceed on projects going forward but I always come out of them feeling like I wasted an hour or 2 and learnt nothing from this meeting

With respect to myself, I’ve tried combatting this by improving my communication with him (more updates on projects outside of meetings via email and quick brief chat in passing )

I’ve tried declining meetings at short notice (same date notice is quite common) but I’m generally only given 24h notice on a work week but I’m still trying to push back

In meetings. Ive tried to get direct answers only ,
He said X
I’ll say so just to confirm exactly we are doing just Y

And then he will waffle on around the answer and it’s like I can’t get commitment on the spot (if that makes sense) and then by the end of an hour he is happy

At this stage , I’m beginning to fear meetings because I just feel they are a waste of time which isn’t fair because I understand some level of meetings are necessary in work but work needs to be done too

when I say this to him he just agrees but he doesn’t seem to understand the time things take to do

He micro manages too and expects things to be done in a short time span

Also, this person spends most of his day in meetings with other departments too

He rarely does operational work so he has the time but I don’t unfortunately

Whilst I have a team and department to oversee, I also have operational work to do (not just management ) so I’m under time pressure

Any advice is welcome ..
Maybe you’ve experienced something similar in the past

I’m in the private sector for a Medium size business (>200 employees)

TrixIrl

An initiative was introduced in my last workplace of "standing" meetings only...where people literally stood for the duration. Cut down on an awful lot of waffle.

Suggest a weekly HOD meeting where the GM can meet the 4 dept heads together. Defer any requests for daily meetings to the HOD meeting where possible to "pool input" or some such nonsense.

With regard the lack of clarity/final decision, I always found a wee dose of constructive passive aggression a good way to go- after every meeting, no matter how insignificant- email the GM to say as per the meeting you are going ahead with X, or cancelling y or whatever it might be. This is particularly effective where no real outcome has been decided as you can just put down the decision that suits you best and it's up to him to put it in writing otherwise. Either way you have a decision.

whampiri

Draw up an agenda. Then let your manager know that you only have an hour to get through the agenda because of work pressures and deadlines.

Diceicle

I found this article has some useful phrases for getting out of time wasting talking shops.
https://www.quickbase.com/blog/attending-too-many-meetings-at-work-heres-the-cure

km991148

Try and speak to hr/it dept- get the default meeting length in outlook down to 30 mins. A lot if meetings are one hour because of that.

Decline every meeting without an agenda. Make sure you set this example with your team (or set agendas)

Try and start an office wide or company wide initiative to improve meeting etiquette. Don't focus on one person's bad practices, but make it look like you are doing this for the company- improving efficiency etc..

Victor

Who does the general manager report to? Is there someone that can lay down the line that he is being disruptive and it needs to stop?

Does he need to be given a 'pet project' to keep him busy, so that everyone else can get work done?

PCX

You could start bringing coffee into the meetings in a mug like this



Maybe he'll get the message

skallywag

I think a key issue here is the wishywashy waffling and general lack of commitment, which by the way I can certainly relate to.

I have seen managers act in exactly the same way, which I primarily put down to them wanting to have an out in the case that what they were suggesting eventually goes tits up, so that they can then distance themselves from any resulting fiasco. This is typically when one starts hearing phrases such as 'That is not exactly what I said', 'Everyone needs to take ownership and responsibility' etc. On a second level I also firmly believe that some of these guys simply like the sound of their own voice, and are in a happy place when they have a room full of people listening to them droning on.

In my current team we also struggle with the volume of meetings, and there are unfortunately quite a lot of times where we simply need to have everyone in the room in order to make progress and take decisions. We try to keep it as pragmatic as possible, and if, say, the software lead on the project, does not have so much to contribute, then we are completely fine for him to tap away on his laptop and just grab his attention when we need his buy in on a decision, etc.
This style would not have worked at all in my last company though, and anyone working on a laptop during a meeting would have been hung, drawn and quartered for a perceived lack of respect.

We do go out of our way though to prevent wishywashyness, and we will quickly shoot down any chat which starts to go out of focus. Everything is also clearly documented afterwards so that the decisions are always clear to everyone.

wally1990

wally1990 wrote: »

He rarely does operational work so he has the time but I don’t unfortunately

Whilst I have a team and department to oversee, I also have operational work to do (not just management ) so I’m under time pressure

Here's your problem. The best advice I was ever given was to "manage your manager as well as your team".

Is there a report you can provide him with on a weekly basis that would address the kind of stuff he has meetings on?

While that looks like it would add work for you, it would be under your control and would ONLY be offered in the context of a conversation that goes something like:

"We seem to be spending an awful lot of time in meetings lately. I'm sure you have better things to do with your time so I've put together this sample report that will cut out a lot of the meetings. What do you think?"

Strumms

^^^ yes, managing your manager is sound advice.

Ask that meeting become scheduled..ie.Every Friday, limited time 90 mins or whatever, suggestions for agenda needs to be emailed by 1pm the previous day, agenda formalized and communicated to all by email by 2.30 on Thursday.

RangeR

Strumms wrote: »

^^^ yes, managing your manager is sound advice.

Ask that meeting become scheduled..ie.Every Friday, limited time 90 mins or whatever, suggestions for agenda needs to be emailed by 1pm the previous day, agenda formalized and communicated to all by email by 2.30 on Thursday.

But it sounds to me that this manager is using these meetings as an excuse to not do their job. Maybe they don't have many skills. From the OP, it appears that the manager takes up all their time in meeting with various departments.

Maybe, just maybe, we have a manager here that just doesn't know how to do anything else to keep themselves worthy of a job.

beauf

TrixIrl wrote: »

An initiative was introduced in my last workplace of "standing" meetings only...where people literally stood for the duration. Cut down on an awful lot of waffle. ....

This is a great idea.

skallywag

beauf wrote: »

This is a great idea.

Stand-Ups are pretty common, particularly for daily shop floor / agile daily meetings which should run no longer than 10-15 mins.

I have also seen situations when the these have ended up lasting an hour or more though and the chairs quickly came back!

We try to keep our stand-ups to 15 mins max, with each person talking no more than 2 minutes, though it can be a challenge preventing some people going to the whiteboard and beginning a deep dive ....

ongarboy

An Agile style meeting conducted via stand up requires full commitment from all stakeholders and takes discipline not to veer off topic which is why a good scrum master is needed to chair such stand ups. If it's a project team that is using Agile methodology then it's easier to apply Agile principles...not so much if you're dealing with an old school manager who is unable to understand how effective meetings should operate.

OP - suggest that all operational meetings going forward have an agenda (ensuring all stakeholders/attendees are invited to submit agenda items well in advance to be added to the circulated agenda in advance - this will avoid surprise or participants being caught off guard however there should be a facility for Any Other Business (AOB) at the end for such ad hoc or unplanned Q&As etc). Minutes and action/take away items should be documented with clearly listed take away owner (owner agreed as and when the topic is being discussed at the meeting). Minutes to be shared no later than end of the day the meeting took place.

Suggest that the minute taker/chairperson is shared on a rolling basis across all the participants so one stake holder (ie you) is not lumbered with it. It will prevent others from being passive participants too.

Each minutes mail post meeting should have a footnote accompanying it asking all stakeholders to review and revert if they have any questions, require clarification and request for correction if something was misrepresented in the minutes/action items.

Save down in a central folder for easy retrieval if there is any dispute in the future over who said what and when.

Let the start of each subsequent meeting that relates to that particular process/task/issue/project be a review of the action items of the last held meeting for that forum to make sure each item is being progressed and if not, why not with reasons for delay/lack of progress. Incompetent managers shortcomings will easily be highlighted where such meetings are managed this way.

It may involve a bit more admin and effort to push for at the start but the long term benefits should outweigh the short term effort to implement this.

You may also find your manager suddenly less eager to have such frequent meetings in the future now that his waffle and possible ineffectiveness will be exposed and/or subject to such a fine tooth comb

might be coming from way left field here

have you tried saying to your manager that ye are having too many meetings and you'd work better if it was cut down