Never have I ever heard someone say meetings are the favorite part of their job. But what if they did? Some meetings do kinda suck. But that doesn’t have to be the case for your company. Here are five simple shifts in the approach and structure of these gatherings that make all the difference.
According to Gallup, global employee engagement has dropped to 20%. Workers are dealing with stress at and outside of work. They’re facing everything from heavy workloads and overloaded schedules to pressure to upskill and worries about economic uncertainty. Adding another unproductive meeting just adds to burnout.
However, meetings serve several important purposes: making decisions, solving problems, creating team alignment, and building trust. You can’t effectively accomplish all that in an email.
Since we can’t get rid of meetings altogether, business leaders and managers can make five adjustments to improve decision-making, culture, and everyone’s sanity.
1—Have a Clear Purpose for the Meeting
We’ve all gotten calendar invites titled “quick sync” or “weekly touch base” with zero context. That’s a great way to create stress and waste time. If you don’t have a clear purpose, why are you having the meeting?
If you’re going to take up someone’s time, make sure you create value for them. Set a clear goal for the meeting, then adequately prepare for the discussion. The meeting should be objective-focused, not agenda-led. Agendas are important, but they are a means to solving the problem, not the reason for the meeting.
When you provide this clarity in advance, your employees will know why they are there and what they will get out of it. They come mentally prepared, rather than full of dread and uncertainty. You’re respecting their time and solving problems.
Check-ins are a good example of sessions that can quickly devolve into productivity theater. They look and feel like work, but they don’t actually accomplish anything. You don’t need a face-to-face to list your priorities or get on the same page.
Leaders often establish a standing meeting with a good purpose, such as onboarding a new employee, but the syncs continue long after they’re necessary.
Take a look at your calendar. If you can’t articulate the specific problem a meeting is supposed to solve, cancel it. Maybe there are some you can convert to asyncs or shorten. This audit will give you and your team more time to work on the business.
2—Assign Roles
Every meeting requiring follow-through needs three distinct roles to ensure accountability and prevent chaos: the Owner, the Facilitator, and the Note Taker. Assigning all responsibilities to one person can compromise the discussion’s effectiveness.
The Owner defines the meeting’s objective by answering the fundamental questions: “Why are we here?” and “What needs to happen?” They invite all the relevant stakeholders.
The Facilitator owns the agenda, leads the meeting, and keeps everyone on track. Their job is to manage the time, pull quiet voices into the conversation, call out patterns, and redirect the group when the discussion wanders off-topic. In most cases, the highest-ranking person should not fill this role. Titles create an invisible hierarchy, often leading employees to self-edit. A facilitator balances this dynamic.
The Note Taker captures decisions, action items, and task ownership. Everyone knows the takeaways and the next steps. Having a separate person do this ensures no balls get dropped.
3—Ease Into the Discussion
Once everyone’s in the room, you don’t need to dive right into business. Most people come to meetings with their brains on full alert, preparing for feedback or discussions that could be uncomfortable.
Start the meeting with a segue or a check-in to slow things down. Start with a joke, or have people share a personal or professional win. This lowers the psychological stress in the room. Everyone remembers that their coworkers are human, not intimidating authority figures, and they are in a better headspace for a productive meeting.
4—Listen More Than You Talk
During a meeting, a leader’s role is to listen. Ask questions. And let the team work on the issue. Rather than posting the question and immediately jumping in with an answer, stop talking. Silence is uncomfortable, but it promotes discussion. The quiet creates an opening for team members to speak up.
As a leader, you have great ideas, but your team is closer to the problem than you are. When you give them space, they can find solutions, perhaps some you never even considered.
Before speaking, WAIT. That’s a clever acronym for Why Am I Talking? Consider what you plan to say. Is it new information or a question to move the conversation forward? Or is it because you’re uncomfortable with silence or wanting to appear engaged? An intentional pause allows you to check your motivation.
This is also where a facilitator is helpful. They can cut you off when you talk too much or go down a rabbit hole. They ensure the team is getting the opportunity to contribute. Because they oversee the discussion, you can focus on listening.
5—Rate Every Meeting
Gathering feedback after every meeting helps you improve future sessions.
Have participants rate the experience on a scale of 1-10, with 10 being a productive meeting. If someone rates it low, don’t take it personally. Rather, dig into their answer. Deducted points result from issues like having no agenda or running over. Lower ratings could also come from not feeling heard or confusion about who owns the decision.
The numbers aren’t a grade, but rather a conversation starter. This insight shows you what to do better next time, such as preparing more thoroughly, keeping the discussion on task, and giving more space for team members to speak up.
As you continue this rating practice, the numbers become more honest, and the meetings improve. Maybe some calendar invites even get canceled altogether because you’ve now realized it’s productivity theater.
Doing the Work To Improve Meetings
It takes work to improve your company meetings. Some of it, like talking less, requires self-reflection and discipline. Other elements can be supported with technology.
AI notetakers eliminate the need for human writing. These tools create a single, unbiased source of truth. Maybe your human notetaker’s mind wandered for a few minutes, or they accidentally assigned an action item to the wrong person. Or perhaps two people took different notes. AI solves these discrepancies and allows everyone to participate fully in discussions. Bonus: Leaders can also review their performance in the recordings, evaluating factors such as phone usage, body language, and time spent talking. Watching yourself can be quite surprising and enlightening.
AI can also assist in calendar audits. These tools give you a brutal, data-driven breakdown of how much time you are actually spending in meetings versus deep work, and immediately flag recurring invites that lack a clear objective.
Business Operating Systems (BOS) provide structured agenda frameworks, manage meeting ratings, and track performance measurables and task progress. You can even create an archive to help identify repeat issues.
As a leader, you can protect your employees’ limited time and energy. It doesn’t take a major organizational overhaul to improve your meeting culture. Implementing these five changes will make a noticeable difference in engagement, productivity, and business momentum.
Read about more ways to improve meetings in the book Meetings Shouldn’t Suck.
Kris Snyder is a seasoned entrepreneur, Professional EOS Implementer®, and growth strategist who serves as the Chief Advocate at Ninety.io, where he leads revenue growth, partner development, and customer success initiatives for one of the fastest-growing SaaS companies. With over 25 years of executive experience, Kris has built, led, scaled, and sold multiple companies—and now helps others do the same with clarity, discipline, and heart.
Photo courtesy Curated Lifestyle for Unsplash+