I don’t want to say I’m afraid of meetings, but I do worry about them a lot more than I feel other people do. I tend to be hyperprepared, arriving with hours of research and a stack of printouts. This is usually because I have no idea what’s going to happen and I want to cover as many bases as possible.
Sometimes this means that I end up leading the meeting!
Today I had a meeting that I had zero time to prepare for…and it actually went okay. We were talking about stuff involving my department, things I’d already done a lot of thinking about, but I hadn’t had time to go through my notes and collect my thoughts beforehand.
Fortunately, it was an exploratory and informational meeting and I didn’t have to “present” anything. I was asked a few questions and I was able to respond. So it went well.
But I sure was stressed about it beforehand!