Why Some Managers Talk Endlessly

The basis for the above title is on observations I have made where the Line managers have had marathon meetings with their team talking about targets, focus etc etc for hours together. This got me thinking as to the effectiveness of such an exercise and the possible reasons in the mind of the Manager. These meetings are normally characterized by one speaker (the manager) and several listeners (the team) where the same points are spoken in several ways. The listener’s involvement is in normally replying to questions posed by the speaker. The listeners have confided to me about the sheer waste of time and their frustrations with this GYAAN. The manager normally talks on responsibilities of the team, their failings, their commitments on targets (in large part forced commitment) , their improvements, suggestions etc where the frustrations of the manager are voiced out but rarely of the team. There is an implicit pressure for the team to conform to set standards of performance and behaviour

As the title suggest, I am going to attempt in offering a couple of hypothesis by delving into the mind of these managers and also state why these exercises are normally counterproductive to the team. The need to speak endlessly would vary from manager to manager and the hypothesis would cover these broad aspects.


Hypothesis 1 – This Line manager is riddled with anxieties as to how or from where the targets are going to be met. Also there is an implicit pressure on him that the team should be under his control. His anxieties on targets and his fear of loosing control ignite him into action. Since what productive action is not clear to him, the action he normally chooses is in the form of speech where by talking and pressurizing his team, he is in some way able to mitigate his anxieties. The task orientation of the meeting is replaced by mitigation of Managers anxieties.

Hypothesis 2- This line manager is narcissist and enjoys the power that comes along with the authority. Every time he speaks to his team, he gets a high experiencing the power of control as well as the ability to moderate other voices. His endless gyan is got nothing to do with the team but everything to do with himself.

For the moment I can think of these two hypotheses to explain my title based on my observations. Hopefully in future I might be able to unearth more the reasons if they exist.

For the second part as I stated earlier, In most cases during such meetings, the team normally shuts off mentally. The reason being that in all non-participative listening unless the listener is really interested in the topic at hand, he would not be able to concentrate on the talk. Lack of participation is also indicative of lack of concrete agreements, hence all talk is empty. Also if the tone is of admonition, the defenses of an individual rise leading to hardly any scope for change et al.

To end this blog, I would just like to state crudely what Humberto maturana (an expert on cognition) stated - You can only make people see your point of view by emotionally seducing them with you argument and not by appealing to objective rationality.