Stop Giving People 'Their Time Back'

I asked folks on LinkedIn how they felt about the meeting closer “I’ll give you your time back.” Many agreed it was stilted, as if we somehow owned their time. Others took it a different direction, questioning whether meeting time is worth defending at all: just end it already.

I get it. 15 years in government were full of time in pointless, meandering meetings that I’m not getting back.

But I worry about the impact of the time-back language. In my new piece in Psychology Today, I explore how this phrase, and it’s cousin “I’ll let you go,” obscure the power of our time together, and diminish the agency of those who show up for us.

The article builds on my earlier, controversially titled “There Are No Bad Meetings” where I argued that meetings are the scapegoats for larger cultural issues.

Take a deep breath: I’m not actually saying we need more meetings, but I want us to be more aware of the power of our time together, especially those closing minutes, before we reflexively “give it back.”

»Read it here!«

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