I was reminded today of former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright’s policy of never leaving a meeting for fear that in today’s world decisions can be made without you, abruptly. The policy — allegedly forced on all of Secretary Albright’s reports — is known as bladder diplomacy, which has many adherents, of which the most famous perhaps was the late Syrian President Hafez al-Assad. Assad’s innovation was to use the bladder as a weapon. He was known to give lengthy lectures on the Middle East while beverages were being served, essentially daring his guests to leave … it was his way to test the endurance of his adversaries.”

Perhaps you’ve been there yourself … inflicting the pain or enduring the pain. But if your place of work is a corporate office, and not the Oval Office, chances are that you are enduring another kind of pain. Like the pain of not wanting to be present at a meeting. With modern consumer tech, it’s too easy to check out. You can take the meeting from another location. You can check out by connecting to a device — computer or phone — to read email, tweet, play games. Or you can do the really dangerous thing of checking out altogether — walking out of the room. Secretary Albright may have learned at some point in her career that you simply need to be present or risk losing power (or at least miss out on the opportunity of taking credit for the great decision made at that meeting). And at a time when meetings are becoming increasingly tough venues for collaboration, it pays to become a student in the art of being there.

For starters, check out Paul Graham’s recent post about the meeting styles of managers (who generally prefer shorter meetings) versus “makers” (who need long stretches to develop and execute on creative ideas). This is just one of several things that make meetings tough. I’ll keep looking for illustrations.