Depending on where you work, a meeting invitation is either an opportunity or a small theft. The difference is not the subject matter; it is whether the organization has any discipline about how meetings are run. Meetings are the most expensive recurring activity in most workplaces — eight people for an hour is a full working day — and almost nobody accounts for them that way.
First, Decide Whether to Have One
A meeting is the right tool when you need discussion, a decision that requires several people, or a conversation that would go badly in writing. It is the wrong tool for broadcasting information, for status updates that could be a shared document, and for a decision one person is going to make anyway.
Recurring meetings deserve particular scrutiny, because they outlive their reason. A standing weekly meeting that nobody can remember the purpose of is a common and completely avoidable expense.
Before
- Write the purpose in one sentence, as an outcome: “decide the launch date,” not “discuss the launch.”
- Send an agenda in advance with time against each item. Without one, the first ten minutes are spent working out why everyone is there.
- Invite only the people who are needed. Everyone else can have the notes. Inviting people out of politeness is how meetings grow until they cannot function.
- Send the reading beforehand and expect it to be read. Presenting material people could have read is the most common way an hour disappears.
- Book the time you need, not the default hour. Many decisions take 20 minutes.
- Sort out the room or the link, and the equipment, ahead of time.
During
- Start on time. Waiting for latecomers trains everyone to arrive late and penalizes the people who did not.
- State the purpose and the finish time in the first minute.
- Someone chairs. Not necessarily the most senior person — and it works better when it is not, because the senior person can then participate.
- Keep to the agenda and park tangents visibly rather than either following them or dismissing them.
- Draw out the quiet people by name. The best information in the room is frequently held by whoever is not competing to speak.
- Separate discussion from decision and say explicitly when you are moving between them.
- Name the decision out loud when it is made, so nobody leaves with a different version of it.
- Finish early when the work is done. Filling the booked hour is not thoroughness.
After
Send a short note the same day: the decisions, the actions with an owner and a date against each, and anything explicitly deferred. Not a transcript — a list.
This is the step most often skipped and the one that determines whether the meeting mattered. Actions without a named owner do not happen, and “the team will look into it” is an action with no owner. Then check the actions at the next meeting, or the list becomes decorative.
Remote and Hybrid
- Hybrid meetings default to unfair. People in the room dominate without meaning to. Deliberately go to remote participants first for input.
- Ask direct questions by name — “any thoughts?” produces silence on a call.
- Keep them shorter. Attention on video decays faster.
- Use the chat properly for questions, and have someone watching it.
- Cameras on where practical, while accepting that people occasionally have reasons not to.
If You Are Only Attending
- Read the material beforehand.
- Ask what the meeting needs from you if it is unclear, before it starts rather than during.
- Say the thing. Raising an objection afterward, having stayed quiet, is the least useful available option.
- Decline the ones you do not need to be in, politely and with an offer to read the notes. Most organizers are relieved.
- Do not do other work in the meeting. If it is not worth your attention, it is not worth your hour.
See also workplace communication skills and time management at work.