Top meeting frustration? Keep motormouths idle (print subscription required). Boston Business Journal reports Opinion Research USA’s findings about what makes meetings suck:

1. disorganized, rambling meetings
2. interruptions
3. cell phones
   

BBJ readers express peeves from motormouths to disorganized meeting leaders, all amounting to “wasted time”.

Every word you speak in a meeting is a presentation. The art is to filter well. The long list called “what you know” must become the concise and effective short list called “what they need to know.” Be confident and organized.

Of course the meeting’s leader is most on the spot. As leader, get sharp about your objectives and your audience. Prepare thoroughly and steer the meeting according to well-defined objectives. I don’t mean be a control freak. Even a wide-open brainstorming session has objectives. If a meeting must occur, it has at least one objective to be satisfied. Get to it and move on. A BBJ reader points out:

“If the meeting was important enough for a bosses(sic) to schedule, then it should be important enough for them to take the time to be prepared.”

Meetings are truly little clusters of presentations. The most presentations you will ever make are most likely the ones you make in everyday meetings. Organize your thoughts before you speak, and listen carefully. Like most presentations, the part most often missed is the “return path” of listening well. Use your next meeting to practice better listening, and as you do, think about how to apply better listening to better presenting in many realms.