Your meeting problem is a leadership problem
- Renate Matroos
- Aug 20
- 6 min read
Most people blame meetings for being bad, but if your meetings feel unproductive and like a waste of time, it’s often a sign of something deeper. Meetings are a mirror of how your team collaborates, decides, and prioritizes.
I guide over 10 hours of leadership meetings per month, and I’ve been wondering what makes for an excellent meeting for leaders.
Great meetings don’t drain people; they’re a chance to create many great opportunities that are often missed, and yes, they can be fun, but they’re rare to come across.
We’ve all heard it all too many times, or worse, experienced it: this meeting should have been a Slack message (not even an email)!
The meetings I strive to facilitate are ones that become part of the leadership and business development growth process. Most leaders join my meetings feeling stuck or overwhelmed, waiting for that one call that will bring bad news, running low on energy, maybe a 30 to 60 out of 100 on a good day. They always walk out feeling lighter, grounded, back in the driver’s seat, and with a sharper sense of direction. I want meetings to feel like a reset, like a great opportunity, a moment where things fall into place, priorities get realigned, and progress begins. This should be a continuous process that further develops leaders and businesses. Meetings, peer-to-peer conversations, and unconventional leadership development programs make that possible.
These are the moments leaders start looking forward to every month. Yes, I’ve seen it, experienced it, and as a matter of fact, I’ve facilitated these, and this is how you can accomplish this too!
Meetings show how your organization makes decisions
I’ve attended meetings where the conversation circles, people nod politely, and an hour later, no one knows what just happened, let alone what’s next. I’ve also been in meetings where decisions are made quickly, with one person talking while others listen, and everyone leaves with more questions than answers. In both cases, it’s rarely the calendar invite’s fault. This shared time mirrors the team's culture: how decisions are made, who’s the most powerful or influential in the room, and how comfortable people are in challenging ideas or taking responsibility for what happens next.
Every meeting is a mini case study of how your organization operates. And if meetings reflect how your organization works, they can also become prototypes. A space to test new behaviors, reset group norms, and redefine how your team collaborates. You don’t need to change everything; just a simple shift can lead to big outcomes.
Try this:
Before each meeting, pick one person who will keep track of any decisions made during the conversation: the decision tracker. Their job is to catch real-time decisions, even the subtle ones or vague agreements, and simply write them down. At the end, this person will share what has been decided on, what’s still unclear, and get participants to confirm to the actions they’re taking. This breaks the habit of attendees being passive listeners and ending meetings with vague takeaways. It helps the team to be sharper and more intentional.
No extra slides, preparation, or tools are needed. Just rotate the role for every meeting, and give everyone the opportunity to build the skill of active listening, note-taking, and summarizing what matters.
Power dynamics: If the most influential voices are doing most of the talking, your meeting is already off track.
The most senior or influential people in a group set the tone. Even in rooms full of smart and capable leaders, there will always be one or two voices that do most of the talking. Sometimes intentionally, sometimes by default.
When the same voices dominate the conversation, you don’t get better ideas or faster decisions; you just get the loudest ones.
If there is no real structure, meetings become missed opportunities to hear new perspectives, test ideas or challenge assumptions.
Great meetings are intentionally designed to make space for everyone’s input, not just the loudest one. You might not be able to change the people in a room, but you can change how people show up by designing a space that encourages it.
I’ve reflected with leaders about their roles and influence during meetings, and many soon realized how they can impact any conversation. Always sharing first or quickly offering solutions can unintentionally shut things down. You might feel like you’re helping, but in reality, it will crush your employees and discourage others from speaking up. They will tend to do the bare minimum and stop proposing ideas.
Try this:
Build in moments where everyone speaks, especially at the start. Introduce sharing rounds, ask each person to think about the topic for a minute, jot down ideas, personal experiences, or insights, and share their take on the subject before the open discussion begins.
Try this:
Another way to make sure there is a balanced conversation is by letting the most senior person speak last. This prevents them from setting the tone and anchoring the conversation. If a leader speaks first, has a strong opinion or visibly reacts to ideas, others tend to hold back. As a result, you will hear fewer bold ideas and no disagreements.
Try this:
Use timed shares. If one person consistently takes up half the conversation to share about their own update, leaving little to no room for others’ input, it will shape the group's behavior. People stop preparing in advance, stop engaging during the meeting and meetings become broadcasts instead of a valuable conversation. Timed shares ensure the space for different voices, keep a healthy pace, and help everyone practice being clear and concise (a skill that pays off far beyond the boardroom).
Put all the above to use in your next meeting by using the topic “meeting culture” as a meeting opener.
You don’t need another meeting, just a clearer purpose
When progress slows and decisions are left hanging, the go-to response is to schedule another meeting. It’s a reactive behavior. When you meet with a clear purpose, an intentionally designed meeting, and a handpicked group of people, you will end up needing fewer meetings and not more.
Start with this:
Why are we meeting in the first place? Is it to share updates? Are we joining forces to solve a challenge together? Are we pitching something and hoping for feedback, support, or a decision?
Clarity leads to better preparation and sharper conversations. People show up ready, they know what to contribute and the conversation stays focused, allowing you to move forward quickly.
Try this:
Before you schedule your next meeting, write down the purpose in one clear sentence: what do you need from this group and why now? Use that same sentence to shape the invite, design your agenda and decide who needs to be in the room.
If you're coming together to brainstorm, design the meeting so there's space to think out loud, explore, disagree and build on each other's ideas. If you're meeting to make a decision, make sure that you've outlined the options beforehand (whether that's different strategies, directions, or solutions) so the group has something concrete to respond to.
State the purpose out loud at the start of the meeting and take two minutes at the end to check if the meeting purpose was met, and what needs to happen next.
When you do this consistently, meetings become sharper and far more effective.
Meetings are never just a meeting. It’s where your company culture shows up: live and unfiltered. They reveal how decisions are made, who feels heard, and whether your team is aligned or simply going through the motions. Every meeting is a reflection of your leadership.
When meetings are designed with intention, they stop being energy drains and turn into something completely different: a place where leadership isn’t just discussed, but actively practiced. You don’t need to reinvent every meeting, just start with one small shift. It can be a clearer purpose, one shared responsibility, or a way for quieter voices to be heard.
When done right, they’re one of the most underused tools for real business growth. These moments shouldn’t feel like interruptions from work, they are the work. And you get to decide what that looks and feels like.
If you’re struggling to lead complex conversations and want to get more out of your meetings, let’s talk!
Feel free to send me an email at renate@twenty6consultancy.com or drop me a line on LinkedIn if you have any questions!
