This is another installment in my ongoing series of “Two and a Half Cheers” posts, in which I discuss something that I feel deserves more general respect in our profession – even while recognizing and acknowledging that people may have good reasons for denigrating it.

Today’s topic is meetings.

I’ve come to believe that one of the many ways people in the library profession can be sorted into two broad categories is on the dimension of affection for meetings. To put it more reductively, I think there are two kinds of librarians: those who love meetings, and those who hate them.

Personally, I really used to hate them. I generally felt like meetings were a distraction from my real work, and kind of resented being required to sit through what were often repetitive and circular discussions of issues that didn’t even have much to do with me.

The way I feel about meetings gradually changed as I rose through the organizational ranks and became a manager, then an administrator, and then a dean or director. The greater my scope of stewardship in the library, the more I found that meetings were becoming an essential tool for doing my work rather than a distraction from my work. And when you think about it, that makes sense: if you manage five people in a department, then getting some or all of those people together to address issues is going to be very helpful to you in getting stuff done; if you oversee three departments, you won’t be able to do it effectively without calling regular meetings of representatives from those departments; etc.

Meetings are often essential, but library leaders need to remember that meetings come at a different cost for different people.

As a library director, I find that there are certain meetings I actually really look forward to every week or month – because I know that those meetings will be productive (for me) and interesting (for me). Of course, others who have to attend them may feel differently, because those meetings may not solve problems for them in the same way they do for me. In fact, the very things that make those meetings problem-solvers for me might make them problem-causers for the people I work with.

This is something library leaders need to keep in mind: meetings come at a different cost for different people in your organization. Some leaders just like to call meetings because they like them – they enjoy being with other people, and they work best when they’re in a group, conversing and discussing. But for many people (and especially for many people who have chosen to work in libraries), this is decidedly not the ideal way to work; they function better by themselves, thinking quietly. And it’s not just a matter of personality differences and preferences; if your primary job (and what you get evaluated on) is cataloging a certain number of books each week or taking care of patrons who come to your service desk, then being in an hour-long meeting about the library’s code of conduct or serving on the search committee for a new subject librarian really does take you away from your primary duties in a way that isn’t the case for the library administrator who called the meeting.

So even when the meeting is necessary, it’s important to bear in mind that it affects the individuals who attend in different ways.

This raises an important question: as a library leader, what can you do to help ensure that the meetings you do call are as effective, efficient, and (to the degree possible) enjoyable as they can be for those who attend? In my next post I’ll offer a few ideas in answer to that.

Takeaways and Action Items

• Meetings are often essential. However, they’re not always essential.
• Every person in a meeting is paying a different price for being there.
• How do you think about meetings in your organization? Are there any that exist just because they’ve always existed? Are there times when you call a meeting just because you’d rather not have to write a long email?