Hey, it's Rachel Cook, your modern mentor. I'm the founder of Lead Above Noise, a firm

specializing in helping teams and organizations create employee experiences that keep talent engaged.

One of the biggest drivers of disengagement that I see in organizations, it's that feeling of people

spinning their wheels in the working world. Like when a frustrating

thing happens and you deal with it, but then it happens again and again on repeat. And all you

want to do is break the cycle, but you can't quite see your way out. As the Royal Day like to say,

doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result is the definition of insanity.

So let's break that cycle. Let's talk about some of the most common wheel spinning scenarios

that keep hitting my radar and some steps you can take to crack them open.

The first one is getting left off the invite list for the big meeting. As much as we all complain about too many meetings, and yes, there generally are too many meetings,

the truth is that not all meetings are bad.

Some really important things happen in meetings.

Voices get heard, decisions get made, timelines get set, resources get allocated.

And so while we all want our time to be respected,

we also want a chance to participate in the consequential conversations. And I hear on the regular

from people who feel like they're getting left out of important conversations, which means

they're not influencing an outcome they care about, or getting exposure to senior leaders whose

opinions really matter.

And unfortunately, we have a tendency to assume the worst, that someone is leaving us out on purpose.

If this is the thing you've experienced, let's think about what might be going on there,

and frustrating though it is, rarely is it evil.

Most likely, the meeting organizer isn't aware of the role you're playing on this project, or a senior leader has asked that the list of attendees be kept

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