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In our software development team we have a colleague who is both a great engineer with a sense of responsibility and a great person. She is usually very involved in discussions during our meetings, but it is clear that meetings in general, and those with more people specifically, are extremely tiring for her — much more than for the rest of the team. After most meetings, especially those that involve more than 2-3 other people, she is visibly tired and she needs a break to recover. Thankfully, we do have a relax room in our office.

So far we had some rearrangements to have a less noisy environment around her. We also collected several short meetings into a single longer one, so now we usually do our organization/planning as a single block of 2-4 hours each week, as opposed to having three-four shorter meetings on different days. This seems to be better for her, both in terms of productivity (which is also a sentiment shared by the rest of the team, so we'll likely stay with this setup) and in her subjective opinion. At the same the one big meeting is even more taxing on her.

Can we do better? Is there anything we can do to make meetings more bearable, help her recover after them or maybe make further changes to our work environment that could help her?

Responding to comments: We did ask her about this, and the changes I describe are the result of our discussion. She never said anything about any specific medical or psychological conditions or sensitivities, and I fear asking explicitly might be not proper as her colleague.

In our software development team we have a colleague who is both a great engineer with a sense of responsibility and a great person. She is usually very involved in discussions during our meetings, but it is clear that meetings in general, and those with more people specifically, are extremely tiring for her — much more than for the rest of the team. After most meetings, especially those that involve more than 2-3 other people, she is visibly tired and she needs a break to recover. Thankfully, we do have a relax room in our office.

So far we had some rearrangements to have a less noisy environment around her. We also collected several short meetings into a single longer one, so now we usually do our organization/planning as a single block of 2-4 hours each week, as opposed to having three-four shorter meetings on different days. This seems to be better for her, both in terms of productivity (which is also a sentiment shared by the rest of the team, so we'll likely stay with this setup) and in her subjective opinion. At the same the one big meeting is even more taxing on her.

Can we do better? Is there anything we can do to make meetings more bearable, help her recover after them or maybe make further changes to our work environment that could help her?

In our software development team we have a colleague who is both a great engineer with a sense of responsibility and a great person. She is usually very involved in discussions during our meetings, but it is clear that meetings in general, and those with more people specifically, are extremely tiring for her — much more than for the rest of the team. After most meetings, especially those that involve more than 2-3 other people, she is visibly tired and she needs a break to recover. Thankfully, we do have a relax room in our office.

So far we had some rearrangements to have a less noisy environment around her. We also collected several short meetings into a single longer one, so now we usually do our organization/planning as a single block of 2-4 hours each week, as opposed to having three-four shorter meetings on different days. This seems to be better for her, both in terms of productivity (which is also a sentiment shared by the rest of the team, so we'll likely stay with this setup) and in her subjective opinion. At the same the one big meeting is even more taxing on her.

Can we do better? Is there anything we can do to make meetings more bearable, help her recover after them or maybe make further changes to our work environment that could help her?

Responding to comments: We did ask her about this, and the changes I describe are the result of our discussion. She never said anything about any specific medical or psychological conditions or sensitivities, and I fear asking explicitly might be not proper as her colleague.

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How to support a colleague who finds meetings extremely tiring?

In our software development team we have a colleague who is both a great engineer with a sense of responsibility and a great person. She is usually very involved in discussions during our meetings, but it is clear that meetings in general, and those with more people specifically, are extremely tiring for her — much more than for the rest of the team. After most meetings, especially those that involve more than 2-3 other people, she is visibly tired and she needs a break to recover. Thankfully, we do have a relax room in our office.

So far we had some rearrangements to have a less noisy environment around her. We also collected several short meetings into a single longer one, so now we usually do our organization/planning as a single block of 2-4 hours each week, as opposed to having three-four shorter meetings on different days. This seems to be better for her, both in terms of productivity (which is also a sentiment shared by the rest of the team, so we'll likely stay with this setup) and in her subjective opinion. At the same the one big meeting is even more taxing on her.

Can we do better? Is there anything we can do to make meetings more bearable, help her recover after them or maybe make further changes to our work environment that could help her?