They wish there was more agreement or meeting of minds

Meetings are common sources of misunderstanding. Sometimes they are lists of information being ‘pushed’ at people, who soon glaze over. Sometimes they are hijacked by individuals with an agenda of their own and do not address the issues for which they are convened. Sometimes the group becomes a herd, which can think quite differently from the members by themselves. People do not get an equal share of the attention at meetings – the socially brave individuals who will sit in the middle and speak up can have a dominance out of all proportion to their real ability to contribute to the discussion. Too many meetings are about ‘thrashing out problems’, where people get together under the shadow of a major difficulty. People may then try to compensate for this by getting the group together socially, in a meeting that has no work-related purpose at all and costs precious free time.