HACKER Q&A
📣 toomuchsalt

How to have productive meetings with talkative co-workers?


A few of my co-workers elaborate on every point during meetings. Weekly status meetings drag on and people stop listening. How could I deal with it constructively?


  👤 david927 Accepted Answer ✓
I've faced that: Hour-long morning standups that went from pairs of people to other pairs of people to talk about things they should have spoken about earlier.

So I just called it out before the meeting started, saying exactly that: updates should be quick, long discussions are welcome but do them afterwards. Every time people started going too deep (if it didn't seem critical), I would ask if they could off-line it.

Just keep on top of it for a while and the culture will eventually change.

NB: Never call out individuals or humiliate people. Make it always about the process. Same with coming late to meetings, just start after a minute and remind the entire team to be on time without picking on anyone. (Unless you have a repeat offender, and than do that in private.)


👤 scombridae
Accept two facts. One, everyone assumes you know and care about what they're talking about. Two, nothing that you or they do on a weekly timescale matters in the slightest to the bottom line.