Bait-and-Switch Meetings

This is the second 'Bait-and-switch'-meeting I've gone to, and I don't appreciate it. If, at the beginning of the meeting, you say: "Oh, and besides X, I also want to talk about you, and your Y," then you've just committed a bait-and-switch. The meeting's agenda is the meeting's agenda, and if you have different things you want to talk about, you set up a different meeting. 

Now, you may say: "Well, I didn't tell you, because I wanted your honest opinion." Three things here: 

1. You're saying I'm dishonest otherwise? 
2. You came prepared, but you're not giving me the courtesy of coming prepared? 
3. and who has the power in this conversation. Are you caught off guard? 

Let me ask you: if your management team called you in for a meeting to talk about administrative stuff, and then they turned it around and asked: "I hear your team is having personality issues, why are you screwing up?" How would you feel? Imposed upon. Look at it as feedback. If you're given feedback, unprepared, and it's hard-hitting, you're reeling from the blow, and don't have the frame of mind to absorb that feedback, much less respond to it with a level head. 

Bait-and-switch meetings are bad, and they come from cowardice. What they do is this: they destroy trust. I now no longer trust going into a meeting that the published agenda is not the actual one, and now I don't want to say anything anymore. You may 'win' your bait-and-switch, by throwing the recipient off-guard and asserting your position of authority, but you lose, big-time: you have now lost the participation of me, up-to-now, a contributing member of the team.

Keep up the good work.