Meeting! The very word sends a shiver down my spine. I have a passionate dislike for them but I’m not too sure why. I think it stems back to my schooldays when as a kid I lost count of the times that I heard “I’ve called your parents in for a meeting with the head”, so much so that it has probably left some sort of Meeting phobia imprinted in my brain.
Now umpteen years later not much has changed, I still get that sense of dread whenever a meeting is on the horizon, it doesn’t matter whether I’m fronting the meeting or not, I start to perspire and work myself into such a state that by the time the meeting comes, I’m just ready to explode in a fit of nervous rage, or simply freeze like a rabbit in the headlights! I hark back to a meeting 3 weeks ago in which this pretty much happened.
Where I work we have a really nice room, long sweeping Boardroom table, complete with 6ft Projection screen and Projector, a real “ I want answers, and I want them now” kind of room. Entasked/burdened with a project (that I probably should have put more effort into) I had to finalise details with my teammates. Now, even though i have worked alongside them for the best part of a year, as soon as I entered the room it was game over. Sweat flooded out of my pores, I started to chew like a mad man on my pencil , and I went from being a logical, well spoken young man to a sweaty, stuttering incomprehensible fool in a matter of seconds!
But it did get me thinking: If it happens to me then it must happen to other people! I would love to hear other peoples “Horror meeting/presentation” stories, so drop us a blog post. You may not have found it funny at the time, but once you have written it down you won’t be able to stop laughing!
