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The Real Reason Your Meetings Are Terrible (And It's Not What You Think)

Three weeks ago, I sat through a two-hour "strategy alignment session" that could have been solved with a five-minute phone call.

Sound familiar? Of course it does. Because somewhere along the way, Australian workplaces decided that the solution to poor communication was more communication. More meetings. Longer meetings. Meetings about meetings.

After 18 years of running training workshops across Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane, I've witnessed enough corporate meeting disasters to write a PhD thesis on organisational dysfunction. But here's what nobody wants to admit: your meetings aren't terrible because people don't know how to run them.

They're terrible because you're solving the wrong problem entirely.

The Great Meeting Mythology

Let me guess - your company has invested in meeting facilitation training, right? Bought fancy whiteboards, implemented standing meetings, maybe even tried that walking meeting trend from Silicon Valley. You've got meeting protocols, agenda templates, and probably someone whose job title includes "collaboration enablement."

Yet somehow, your team still leaves the boardroom looking like they've just survived a particularly brutal root canal.

Here's why: You're treating meetings like a communication problem when they're actually a trust problem.

Think about the last truly productive meeting you attended. I'll bet it wasn't because someone followed the textbook meeting structure. It was because everyone in that room trusted each other enough to speak honestly, disagree constructively, and make decisions without covering their backsides.

Trust. Not better PowerPoints or stricter time management.

The Sydney Example

Last month, I worked with a tech startup in Surry Hills - let's call them InnovateCorp. They were burning through three hours of team meetings every single day. Every. Single. Day.

The CEO was convinced they needed better meeting software. Maybe Slack integration. Definitely a meeting room booking system.

Wrong diagnosis entirely.

After sitting in on their weekly all-hands, the real issue became crystal clear. Nobody trusted anyone else to make decisions without them being present. The marketing manager didn't trust the sales team to represent the product accurately. The developers didn't trust management to understand technical constraints. Hell, the office manager didn't trust people to order the right coffee pods.

So everyone insisted on being included in every decision. Which meant every decision required a meeting. Which meant nothing actually got decided.

The Trust Deficit Crisis

Australian workplaces are experiencing a trust recession, and we're all pretending it's a scheduling problem.

Consider this: when was the last time someone in your organisation said "I trust Sarah to handle this - we don't need to meet about it"?

Never? Thought so.

We've created cultures where being excluded from a meeting feels like career suicide. Where not having your input formally recorded feels risky. Where trusting a colleague to make a decision without your oversight seems professionally negligent.

The result? Meeting bloat on an industrial scale.

The Real Meeting Killers

Based on my observations across hundreds of Australian companies, here are the actual reasons your meetings are soul-crushing disasters:

Decision Paralysis Masquerading as Collaboration Everyone needs to weigh in on everything because nobody trusts anyone else's judgement. What should be a quick "Let's try Option B" becomes a 90-minute exploration of every possible scenario and risk mitigation strategy.

Performance Theatre Half your attendees are there to be seen, not to contribute. They'll ask elaborate questions they already know the answers to, just to demonstrate engagement. It's workplace theatre, and everyone's overacting.

Information Hoarding People attend meetings to collect information they might need later, not because they need to be part of the decision. Knowledge is power, right? So everyone wants to be informed about everything, just in case.

Conflict Avoidance Rather than having difficult conversations between the relevant parties, we schedule inclusive meetings where important issues get diplomatically skirted around. The real discussion happens in the corridor afterwards.

CYA Documentation "We discussed this in the meeting" has become corporate insurance. Attending meetings provides protective evidence that you were consulted, informed, and included in the process.

None of these problems get solved by better meeting management training. They get solved by building organisational trust.

What Actually Works (From the Trenches)

Here's what I've seen transform meeting culture in Australian companies:

Explicit Decision Rights Stop pretending everything is collaborative. Clearly define who makes which decisions, and trust them to make those decisions. Revolutionary concept, I know.

Some decisions need input. Some need approval. Some need communication after the fact. Most need none of the above.

Default to No Meetings Make scheduling a meeting require justification. What decision are we making? Who needs to make it? Why can't this be resolved with a phone call or email thread?

Information Sharing vs Decision Making Separate these completely. Information can be shared asynchronously. Decisions might need real-time discussion, but only with decision-makers and key influencers.

Trust Building Over Process Improvement Invest in building relationships between team members rather than optimising meeting logistics. People who trust each other can make decisions quickly in informal conversations.

The Melbourne Turnaround

Here's a success story that'll give you hope: A professional services firm in Collins Street was spending 35 hours per week in internal meetings across their 12-person team.

Instead of meeting efficiency training, we focused on trust building. Team members shadowed each other's roles for a week. They had honest conversations about their individual decision-making styles. They explicitly agreed on decision boundaries and communication preferences.

Six months later? They'd cut meeting time by 60% while increasing project delivery speed by 40%.

No new software. No meeting protocols. Just humans learning to trust other humans to do their jobs competently.

The Uncomfortable Truth

Most of your meetings exist because your organisation doesn't trust people to do their jobs without oversight.

That's not a meeting problem. That's a management problem.

You can optimise meeting agendas until the cows come home, but if your fundamental assumption is that people can't be trusted to make decisions within their areas of expertise, you'll be stuck in meeting hell forever.

Building Trust at Scale

Start small. Pick one decision category - maybe social media content approval or vendor selection under $5,000 - and give one person complete authority to make those decisions without consultation.

Watch what happens.

Either they'll make terrible decisions (in which case you've identified a skills gap to address), or they'll make perfectly reasonable decisions faster than your committee ever could.

My money's on the latter.

The Bottom Line

Your meetings are terrible because you're using them to solve trust deficits, not communication problems.

Fix the trust. The meetings will fix themselves.

Start by asking: What decisions are we making in meetings that could be made by individuals? What information sharing happens in meetings that could happen asynchronously? What real conversations are we avoiding by hiding behind meeting structures?

Then trust your people to surprise you.

They probably will.

Because here's what 18 years in this industry has taught me: Most people are perfectly capable of making good decisions when they're trusted to do so. The challenge isn't their competence - it's our courage to let them prove it.

Now stop scheduling meetings about how to improve your meetings, and start having conversations about why you don't trust each other to work without them.

Your calendar will thank you.

This article reflects personal observations from working with Australian organisations. Results may vary depending on your industry, team dynamics, and willingness to challenge existing meeting culture.