Are you one of life’s ‘initiators’…or one of the ‘herd’?

Are you the person that gets all your friends together for dinner? Are you the one that makes work meetings happen? Just one in five people is an ‘initiator’ who takes responsibility for organising the majority of their personal and business meetings, according to new research by online scheduling tool, Doodle.

A further one in five people – ‘disorganisers’ with an aversion to being- admit to never organising work meetings or social get togethers, whilst 55 per cent of respondents organise some meetings but are generally happy to herded by others.

The more senior the person, the more likely they are to be an initiator. These people tend to be busier than others, have more appointments per week and more contacts to manage. They also are more likely to use tools to help get meetings scheduled more efficiently.

Both initiators and other respondents are most annoyed by unresponsive people when they are trying to organise a group meeting – people that don’t respond was found to be more annoying than the difficulty of finding a suitable time or even no-shows and last minute cancellations.

“Scheduling meetings can be a real source of stress, so don’t let one person always take the strain,” said Tilman Eberle, Doodle. “Don’t be afraid to get help either - the portion of initiators amongst Doodle users is almost twice that as amongst general internet users.”

‘Initiators’ attend more group events:
• 50% have 3 or more group events per week (compared to 25% of non-initiators)
• Less than 10% of initiators have fewer than one meeting per week

Members of the ‘herd’:
• Formed a majority of the sample, with 55%
• Almost the half of the herd has 1 or 2 group events per week and only 17% less than one event

‘Disorgansiers’ don’t organise any events by themselves:
• They make up 23% of Internet users and just 3% of Doodle users
• 73% of them have less than one group event per week
• Many of them “don’t like to organize” (72%) and “don’t know a lot of people” (61%)

For more of the findings visit the Doodle blog.