Musings on Chit-chatting in Meetings

The siren call of efficiency and productivity.

Mar 13, 2025

Full colour photo of about 10 goats staring into the camera.

Don’t waste my time or yours.

Please don’t reach out just to catch-up, I don’t have the time.

Our time together needs to be productive.

Meeting cancelled. You now have the gift of time to catch up on your work.

If there are no agenda items, then there’s no meeting.

Pretty standard statements right? We’ve all used them or appreciated someone for using them, or wished that we or someone had used them.

This makes sense as many, perhaps even all of us, have been in too many meetings where we:

spin our wheels
share information that could have been sent in an email
create a false sense of importance or urgency to prove that we belong at the table
make more work for ourselves and others that will then be discussed at another meeting, most often as a not-so-happy item, as it turns out that we didn’t have the time, people, or resources to get it all done. (this is soooo Dilbert)

A Story and a Question

A few years ago I was facilitating a week-end retreat for a board and leadership team.

We were gathering to work on their vision, values, and strategy for moving forward with a capital funding project. Everything was in place from the comfortable meeting room overlooking the lake to an evening pizza making party.

As the good folks entered the room I was welcoming them, getting to know their names, and chit-chatting about weather, dogs, coffee, kids, golf, hiking, knitting, books, food, and a host of other things that at first blush appeared to be neither important nor transformational to the moment. As I was doing this, I noticed that they were not casually talking amongst themselves.

By the end of the weekend they had done brilliant work on their vision, values, and strategy and with that were able to, in very short time, secure federal funding for the second phase of their building project.

But their biggest takeaway, that they still talk about, was how important it was to get to know each other beyond their roles in the organization and how this has strengthened their work as they grow, take on risk, and restructure their leadership and management teams.

After that retreat, I began asking, “why do we leave familiarity and friendliness for retreats, instead of imbedding it in our regular meetings?”.

The Siren Call of Less Meetings and More Productivity

Meetings have most likely generated criticism and push-back since the first meeting (“Adam, we really need to talk about that apple tree”), and many of us will be familiar with the current popular business media messages that we don’t do meetings well, that we should have less of them, and that those we do need to have, we should do faster. There’s not a whole lot of advocating for “wasting time” with chit-chat. Here is a sampling for your enjoyment:

Stop the Meeting Madness, HBR, 2017
Dear Boss, You're Holding Too Many Meetings — Here's Why the Best Teams Have Fewer Meetings, Entrepreneur, 2024
Excessive Meetings Are A Drain On Your Company: Here’s How To Fix It, Forbes, 2024
A Massive New Study of 450,000 Workers Says This Is What Happens When You Have Too Many Meetings, Inc., 2024
Meeting Fatigue: How Too Many Meetings Have Employees Feeling Enraged Instead of Engaged, American Society of Employers, 2024

All of the above are compelling.

They are a siren call for the busy leader and manager.

A siren call where we become so besotted with efficiency and productivity in our time together that we are lured to our doom (or at least a crisis) with teams and organizations that are inflexible, wary and at times down-right fearful, soulless, and incapable of navigating uncertainty.

Chit-chatting

I love a good chit-chat. It opens my heart to those around me and expands my understanding of the world. It nourishes my thinking, imagination, creativity, and courage.

Chit-chatting is where those things that make us the fabulous humans that we are, such as caring for our elders, being delighted with and worried for our young ones, feeling sad for the loss of a pet, trying out a new hobby or restaurant or gym, sharing a box of cookies, falling in love, falling out of love, moving home, going on holiday, going to the dentist, and more are shared.

When we share our everyday lives at work, familiarity and friendliness take root and grow the resiliency, the creativity, the ability to take smart risks, and the path back from mistakes that we need to successfully navigate possibilities, setbacks, and uncertainty.

And I promise, done wisely, chit-chatting won’t get in the way of healthy efficiency and productivity.

Muse Along with Me

How might an unwise over-emphasis on efficiency and productivity be harming the resiliency and creativity of your organization?
How might building familiarity and friendliness benefit your organization?
How might chit-chatting strengthen or benefit your leadership work?
How might chit-chatting bring a bit of ease and joy into your day?
How much time can we responsibly spend chit-chatting in a meeting?
Is there time for chit-chatting in your meetings? Why or why not?
What difference might chit-chatting make to work silos, assumptions (e.g. generational), or misunderstandings?
Does the very word “chit-chatting”, which I have only used 14 times in this post, make you uncomfortable? Why might that be?

I’m here for the chit-chatting (that’s 15 now),

Babs

PS:

You can find out more about me and my coaching and leadership development practice at courageousleaders.ca.

People are asking what I’m up to, so here it is: