What are meetings really for?

You know the feeling before the meeting starts.

The slight dread. The sense that something is going to happen in that room that nobody is going to name. Your team is tired. Not tired in a way that a good weekend fixes. Tired in a way that has been building for months. And now you are walking into a meeting that everyone in it would rather not be in.

What do you do with that?

The idea that meetings should earn their place

There's a philosophy that's taken hold in many organisations. You have probably heard it, or said it, or even acted on it.

If the meeting isn't adding value, cancel it. If you're not contributing, and it doesn't seem like a good use of your time, leave. This could've been an email. Protect people's time. Be ruthless about what actually needs a room.

It sounds like respect. It sounds like good leadership.

And there is something true in it. Not every meeting needs to exist. Not every recurring slot should take place just because it's in the calendar.

But when trust is already thin and your team is running on empty, that's when logic breaks down. Because it assumes that the only reason to be in a room together is to produce something. A decision. An action. An output.

What it misses is everything else that happens in a room. The things that don't necessarily appear on the agenda and don't end up in the minutes. Whether people feel seen. Whether someone named the thing that everyone was thinking. Whether the leader showed up as a human being or a chair.

When trust is low, that is the actual work.

What is really happening in that room

Before the meeting starts, some people have already had the meeting in their heads.

"Nothing is going to change." "I will leave with more work than I came in with." "We will talk around the real issue and not touch it." "I will feel worse leaving than I did going in."

These aren't just complaints. They'redata. They tell you what your team has learned, from experience, about what happens when you all get together. They have filed it away. They are carrying it in with them before you've even opened your mouth.

A leader who doesn't acknowledge that doesn't make it any less true. They just confirm that the room is not a place where honest things get said.

The question behind the instinct to reduce meetings

When a leader decides to cut meetings, it is worth asking: what is actually driving that?

Sometimes it is genuine. People are overstretched. The calendar is crowded with things that stopped being useful months ago. Clearing the diary is a real act of care.

But sometimes the instinct to reduce is something else. A way of avoiding a space that feels too hard to hold. A way of not having to stand in front of a tired, sceptical team and not know what to say.

And sometimes that is what it is. Not a strategy. Just not wanting to be in a room that feels too hard to hold.

And then there is a third version. The leader who keeps the meetings but does not really think about why. Who shows up and hopes for the best. Who has the recurring slot in the calendar but has not asked themselves what they actually want from it, or what they want people to walk away feeling.

Your team can usually feel the difference between a leader who has thought about how to use that hour and one who has not. Even if they could not put it into words.

What intentional leadership looks like here

You don't need a script.

Two questions worth sitting with before you walk in:

How do I want people to feel by the end of this? And how do I want to show up myself?

Not what do I want to cover. Not what decisions need to be made. How do I want people to feel. That question changes how you open the meeting. It changes what you name and what you let sit in silence. It changes whether you start with the agenda or with the room.

Because sometimes the most important thing you can do as a leader is walk in and acknowledge what is already there. The tiredness. The uncertainty. The thing nobody has said out loud yet.

I don't think that is softness. I think it is where trust starts to become possible again.

Being in that room with your team, honestly, when it is hard to be there, is not a small thing. It is where the relationship either holds or it does not.

You do not need every moment planned. But you need to have asked yourself those questions before you walk through the door.

Leadership Reflection Journal

1. When you sense that a meeting is going to be heavy before it has started, what is your instinct? Do you try to lighten it, push through it, or name it?

2. What do you think your team has filed away about how you show up in meetings? Not what you say, but how present you actually are.

3. Is there something your team is carrying that hasn't been named in any meeting yet? What has stopped you from naming it?

4. When you have reduced or cancelled meetings in the past, what was actually driving that decision?

5. What would it look like to enter your next team meeting clear about how you want people to feel by the end of it? What would you do differently?

I don't think you can fix a team's trust by protecting them from more meetings. The room is where it has to happen. Honestly, over time. That is not a comfortable place to stand. But it is the right one.

If this landed somewhere for you, I would genuinely like to hear what came up.

With you,
Linda

Founder of Touching Distance