Hey, it's Adam Grant, host of the Ted Podcast to Work Life.

This season we worked with our sponsor, UKG, to share amazing stories from their workplace.

Stay tuned for a story about Pat who's brought a fresh approach to HR.

If you had to identify in one word, the reason why the human race has not achieved and

never will achieve, it's full potential.

That word would be meetings.

That's the Pulitzer Prize-winning humorist, Dave Barry.

He knows that meetings are a source of misery for too many people in too many workplaces.

They're unproductive, awkward, exhausting.

So I asked for your meeting horror stories and you did not disappoint.

You ranted about never-ending meetings.

Time really felt like one of those infomercials, like a miracle drug where they just never

really get to the point unless you pay the 9.95 or something.

You complained about pointless meetings.

So my manager at the time decided that she wanted to spend our one hour team meeting going

through each and every single Zoom setting.

The question that all of us had to answer was, what is your favorite pizza topping?

And you lamented leaders who used meetings as their own personal stages.

If we asked the question, he would tell us why he was the wrong question to ask.

It was more or less a two-day monologue and we all walked out of that room like deflated

balloons.

In a recent survey of 31,000 people across 31 countries, more than two-thirds reported

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