monday morning meetings

Penny is a team leader and quite apart from the bitchiness and prejudices that run rife in team environments, just about everyone, including Penny, is in agreement about hating team meetings.

"There are two types of team meetings at my workplace," says Penny. "One is the department team meeting which I run myself and wish I didn't have to, and the other is the management meeting which I hate with every fibre in my body."

"The management team meetings are dreaded enough," says Penny, "but holding them on the first Monday of every month at 8am makes them absolutely miserable."

"Who is at their best on a Monday?" asks Penny. "I am most certainly not - and especially not at 8am. I don't come alive until Wednesdays - and 8pm - and judging by the amount of participation in the monthly Monday management team meetings at my workplace I am not alone in my misery."

"I'm not sure whether the CEO's predilection for early morning Monday meetings is a trait that separates the wheat from the chaff, or the CEO from us."

"One of these days I am going to move a motion at the monthly management meetings to hold them on a Friday afternoon at 4pm when everyone is alive and excitedly looking forward to the weekend," says Penny, "and see what happens."

"Let's face it, even though our minds would be more on the impending weekend frivolities than whatever the CEO has to say, surely he would appreciate a more lively gathering of staff than what he gets on Mondays at 8am?"

"But then, of course," adds Penny, "our CEO is no fool. You see, I've figured out that the object of these monthly 8am Monday management team meetings is for us to be seen and not heard."

"Only one person gets to be heard, and that's the CEO. Choosing Mondays at 8am for the meetings was his way to make sure that nobody has a brighter thought than he does!"

"Our CEO is a Monday person and looking at dead early Monday morning bodies must make him feel superior."

"Okay," concedes Penny, "in the company hierarchy he is superior to us but in real life he's just a bag of skin and bones like everybody else. Actually, he has a lot more skin and bones than everyone else but that's another story!"

"Anyway, what's the point of having management team meetings at a time when very few people feel inclined to put in their two cent's worth? Is it just a head count?"

"At the department team meetings that I run, they are haphazard get togethers of team members and whoever feels like participating or opting out can do so," says Penny. "There is usually a lot of noise and bickering and sometimes agreement is reached on some change that needs to be made but mostly it's not."

"My job as a team leader is to make decisions when agreement cannot be reached," says Penny. "I try to be democratic but when things get out of hand I end the meeting and lay down the law."

"In stark contrast to my department meetings," says Penny, "the tone of the monthly CEO team meetings is stern and foreboding but the outcome is invariably the same. An awful lot of company time is wasted doing absolutely nothing constructive!"

"At these meetings the CEO praises us on targets reached and encourages us to push our teams harder and harder, and generally waxes lyrical about future growth and expansion."

"At the end of the presentation, there is a call for questions and any issues that need to be raised."

"A few brave souls try to make out they understood what the presentation was all about," says Penny, "but they always make fools of themselves by showing they have not."

"Mainly, everybody just sits there like stunned Monday mullets."

"Given half a chance I could probably run the place more efficiently than the CEO," says Penny, "but I wouldn't want the responsibility. I have a life outside of work, being a team leader is stressful enough and, as mentioned before, I am not a Monday person."

"My job as a team leader is stressful because the nature of the work my team does requires a high level of individualism and creativity," says Penny. "My guys are not subservient team players who bow and kowtow to me and I have to deal with a lot of clashing egos.

"Similarly, I'm not a subservient team player either," says Penny," so I hate it when our CEO herds us like sheep into those awful early morning monthly team meetings."

"In this respect, the guys on my team have a far easier existence than I do," sighs Penny. "I may get paid more than they do, but whenever the CEO meetings loom ahead I often ask myself whether it's worth being a team leader to have to put up with what I have to put up with."