Rrerku

In our software development team we have a colleague who is both a great engineer with a sense of responsibility and a great person. She is usually very involved in discussions during our meetings, but it is clear that meetings in general, and those with more people specifically, are extremely tiring for her — much more than for the rest of the team. After most meetings, especially those that involve more than 2-3 other people, she is visibly tired and she needs a break to recover. Thankfully, we do have a relax room in our office.

So far we had some rearrangements to have a less noisy environment around her. We also collected several short meetings into a single longer one, so now we usually do our organization/planning as a single block of 2-4 hours each week, as opposed to having three-four shorter meetings on different days. This seems to be better for her, both in terms of productivity (which is also a sentiment shared by the rest of the team, so we'll likely stay with this setup) and in her subjective opinion. At the same the one big meeting is even more taxing on her.

Can we do better? Is there anything we can do to make meetings more bearable, help her recover after them or maybe make further changes to our work environment that could help her?

2-4

A four hour meeting is unacceptable for any human. Forget about her specific use case. In the broadest sense, meetings do not help with productivity and serve more as inhibitors rather than amplifiers.

Some suggestions:

• Keep meetings short.


• Keep them focused


• When a meeting starts, establish an end time and stick to it


• Establish a goal for the meeting (None of this: "Well, let's talk about...")


• Only include the parties that are absolutely needed


• Take breaks during very long meetings. (after 30-45 minutes)


• If you sense things are going in circles, end the meeting. There's no point in burning piles of money for all the people in the room if you're just spinning your wheels.


• Stand up during the meeting, that usually creates a sense of urgency. (not for everyone)

Most of the time with meetings, the general problem is too many people are brought along so keep the number small.

If people have their devices out in a meeting and they're just passively listening, remove them. They clearly don't belong there. Have a "no phone" rule, this might not be feasible, but I promise people will want the meeting to end sooner, rather than later.

Peopleware covers this perfectly: Most meetings are about ceremony, not about work. So start trimming that fat and remove the unnecessary people and items from the meeting.

To OP: I would ask "Does she absolutely need to be present for everything?" Is her expertise needed for every single item? If it's about keeping her in the loop, maybe then just send her the minutes or a memo of an overview of the meeting? Ask that question for every person in the room for every item. I doubt every person is needed for every item and thus, maybe it'll allow you to have smaller standup meetings surrounding particular items of concern rather than have everyone there for a sit down where at any particular point, the information being conveyed is only pertinent to half the people there.

Ask her, not the internet. She'll know what she wants and needs better than we will.

Don't just ask her either. Try and get the whole team to have regular talks together about what's working well for them and what isn't, listen to their suggestions and change things based on them.

As I commented, this extreme tiredness is likely not caused by the meeting or the length of the meeting, but more a result of socializing with a large number of people at one time. In my unprofessional but first-hand experience, your co-worker seems to be suffering from what some call an "introvert hangover". That is, she simply needs a period of time to recharge after interacting with a group of people. I've had very similar experiences where I'll be having a great time at a party and at some point, I'll just crash and need to find a quiet place to recharge.

As far as solving your issue, perhaps a good idea would be to schedule the meeting for a time period directly before a lunch break. This way, your co-worker can leave the premises, have an hour or so to recharge, and rebuild her stamina for the remainder of the day. Even better, schedule the meeting as the last item on the agenda for a given day. That way, she has the opportunity to remain active and engaged all day long and can leave the office afterwards to recover at home.

Another potential solution (assuming she doesn't need to contribute), would be video conferencing or even just recording the meeting for her to view at another time. If she needs to contribute, perhaps something like a Google Doc could be used to keep notes of the meeting and she can contribute as necessary by updating the document.

In other words, the best way to avoid her "hangover" would be to remove her from the bulk of the meeting or schedule it at such a time with a break built-in immediately afterwards.

How about putting her on remote video conferencing when in meeting?

Boredom

The reason why she is bored is likely because she is highly intelligent (high IQ). As such, she needs more cognitive stimuli to prevent boredom. A meeting in which she is trapped for 2-4 hours (or even just 1h) and is unable to do anything against her boredom wears her out (it would be too ineffective, disturbing and/or inappropriate).

The factor of introversion may also play a role in that, that one is covered in other answers though. My assumption is that it merely leads to her being passive and thus further contributing to her boredom.

Solution

Just let her participate when there is a reason for her to be there. And then just for the duration necessary, not for the entire meeting.

I wonder why you guys are torturing each other in the first place with your meetings so much. I bet others are bothered by it as well, it just happens to hit her the hardest. Ask yourselves: Is it really worth it - that often for that long?