
Ask HN: Advice for avoiding being a bad participant in meetings - gary__
What negative patterns do you come across in meetings that lead to non productive outcomes and what advice would you give those participants responsible?<p>What mistakes did you make yourself in meetings that you have corrected as you progressed in your career?
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p0d
My experience of meetings and their players.

The Sheriff; my way or the highway.

The Bluffer; Yip, that’s been done.

The Hard Worker; Always segways to their latest piece of work.

The Brain; Says little, has manufactured outcome of meeting before the meeting
started.

The Joker; Makes everyone laugh, is heard the least.

I’m personally trying to be a little bit less the joker and the hard worker.

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dvtrn
The Toll Collector; powerful, knows where things are, knows who to ping or
where to look, but never offers help voluntarily--only offers it, barter style
--for taking something off of their plate.

Also goes by "Brent"

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dvtrn
Planning meetings because $thing has to be discussed, but failing to organize
the meeting, set an agenda or scheduling meetings without any planned outcomes
and takeaways.

The latter half of this isn't always possible, but lately in my career I've
made it a point to never call a meeting that doesn't bring up at least 2-3
things that will be/need to be acted upon or looked into by someone (even if
I'm that person) based on what gets discussed.

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epkatz
I try and ask myself these questions every time I attend a meeting: \- Why am
I here? \- How could I avoid being here next time?

If you aren't providing value or the meeting is not providing value to you
then you shouldn't be there. Perhaps the meeting shouldn't even exist? If this
could have been a slack message or email or perhaps part of another existing
meeting then you also shouldn't be there.

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gary__
Not so much being a bad participant, but something I've found are developers
who propose a solution to a problem outside of a meeting, but when it's then
thrown out to the group for suggestions they remain quiet. Hard to know what
advice to give for building confidence.

