“I’ll Never Get That Time Back”: Avoiding Aimless Meetings
By Mitchell Schuckman, PCC | Founder, The Schuckman Group
I sit in a lot of meetings. Client meetings. Leadership meetings. Team meetings. Planning meetings. Some in person, many virtual. And within the first five minutes, I usually know how it’s going to go.
The good ones feel prepared and thoughtful. The bad ones feel thrown together and disorganized. Too many people. Too much information to cover. No clear sense of why everyone is there. The clock starts running and somehow nothing is really accomplished, except a vague agreement to “circle back.”
Most meetings fail because no one has taken real ownership of the experience. Here are a few things I keep noticing.
Most Meetings Are Lost Before They Start
The biggest difference between great meetings and time-wasters occurs before anyone joins the call. For a meeting to be great, someone has thought carefully about why this meeting needs to happen, what must be different by the end, and who actually needs to be in the room.
Bad meetings often happen because “it’s our standing meeting” or because it felt easier to invite everyone than to make tough choices. Good meetings exist because there is something specific that needs clarity, alignment, a decision, or to share information that truly cannot be handled another way.
When that thinking is missing, no agenda can save you. You can feel it immediately. Cameras stay off. People multitask. Someone asks five minutes in, “Can you remind us what we’re trying to do today?” The meeting becomes a space for talking without purpose.
An Agenda Without Purpose Is Just a List
I am a believer in agendas, but they need to have purpose. The best agendas are not long, detailed scripts. They are simple markers that say, “This is where we’re going.”
What matters more than the agenda itself is the judgment behind it.
Every topic in a meeting competes for time, energy, and attention. Someone has to decide what deserves space and what does not. When that leadership is missing, meetings drift. Interesting side conversations take over. Rabbit holes open. Time disappears, often right when a real decision needs to be made.
Flexibility matters, but it should be intentional. The leaders who flex well are clear about the objective and confident enough to guide the room. Losing control and calling it flexibility is something else entirely.
Giving People a Voice Still Requires Leadership
One of the most common ways meetings get derailed is through good intentions. Leaders want people to feel heard, so they open the floor and let it run.
There is a difference between inviting perspectives and surrendering the room.
Great meetings make space for voices while still honoring the purpose of the discussion. That means listening, acknowledging, and sometimes parking ideas for another time. It means naming when something is interesting but not relevant right now, instead of letting it quietly hijack the agenda.
When leaders avoid doing this, the loudest voices dominate. Quieter contributors stop speaking up. Over time, people disengage because they have learned the meeting will not be well-managed.
The Ending Is What People Remember
What stood out most as we presented The Whole Leader Program was the openness of the participants.
The leaders who seemed most energized were the ones willing to widen their perspective. They understood that wisdom does not arrive automatically. It grows when attention and curiosity stay active.
Mid-career is not the end of learning. It is often the moment when learning becomes more subtle, more human, and more impactful. The real risk isn’t getting older. It is becoming static.
Leaders who continue to learn in small, intentional ways tend to stay grounded. They build stronger relationships. They navigate pressure with more steadiness. They make better decisions for themselves, their clients, and their organizations.
Staying open, staying curious, and continuing to learn, even in small ways, is how leaders avoid the quiet danger of believing they already know enough.
The Real Leadership Test
Here’s the takeaway I keep coming back to: running a good meeting is a primary act of leadership.
It says, “I respect your time.” It says, “This matters.” It says, “We are here to move something forward, not just to talk.”
You do not need to fix every meeting on your calendar. When a leader shows up having thought about purpose, participation, and how the meeting will end, people feel it immediately.
That is how momentum is built. One well-run meeting at a time.