How To Help Your Team Have Better Meetings – 3 Simple Tips

---

This was the most provocative question in the 2025 Wichita Industrial Trade Show Leadership Pulse Survey:

If you could fix one problem with your team dynamics, what would it be?

And in the past two emails, we’ve covered the top two problems leaders like you wished they could make disappear:

Communication and Team and Relationship Dynamics.

If you’re like me and so many other business leaders I work with, you hear constant complaining about the next topic too, Inefficient Meetings and Processes.

If you could fix one problem with your team dynamics, what would it be?

Do any of these problems that were submitted in 2025 WITS Leadership Pulse Survey sound familiar?

• “Too many meetings. Not enough action”
• “Redundant paperwork”
• “Time management”
• “Cleaner meetings”

Those are just some of the challenges other businesses like yours are facing. And I’m sure you’re fighting these battles too.

So what can you and your team do to make things better?

A good starting place is a necessary part of business that nearly every leader sees as an area for improvement: meetings!

3 Tips to Help You and Your Team Have Better Meetings

I’m going to share 3 tips that will save you minutes (maybe even hours!) in wasted meeting time.

They’re simple and you can start using them immediately.

• Tip 1: Apply the 3 Ps for Productive, Effective Meetings
• Tip 2: Know Your Meeting Altitude
• Tip 3: Give Your Team a Break

The first tip is very simple (and highly effective), but like so many fundamentals of a good business, it’s often missed by many business leaders.

I call it the 3Ps for productive, effective meetings.

Tip 1 – The 3Ps for Productive, Effective Meetings

Regardless of the type of business you lead, you probably schedule a lot of meetings. And that’s good news because that means you can significantly impact how your meetings go.

You can be the reason your meeting is productive and effective and not a waste of time.

Unfortunately, most leaders don’t put in enough effort. They only send a room location or a link to connect to the meeting remotely and nothing else.

But you can be a better leader by using these 3 simple steps when scheduling your next meeting.

They’re simple. And, they work.

1. Clarify the Purpose

Ask yourself why you’re scheduling a meeting and what you need to accomplish. Use verbs to capture the actions you will take. These actions are your agenda items. Bonus Tip: Check if you can accomplish the Purpose with an email instead of a meeting.

2. Identify the People

Once you know the Purpose of your meeting, list who needs to attend to accomplish the work. Invite them and no one else to the meeting. Too many people make for a bad meeting.

3. Prepare!

Put in the work in advance to optimize your meeting time. Create a detailed agenda. Then send it to the participants along with any material they need to accomplish the Purpose. Let them know what they will accomplish and give them the opportunity to prepare and contribute.

Follow the 3Ps and schedule your next meeting the right way: Purpose, People, Preparation!

Try this simple worksheet when you schedule your next meeting

Use the printable 3Ps worksheet to make your next meeting productive and effective. (click here to download it for free).

Purpose – Why is this meeting being held?

People – Who needs to be in this meeting to accomplish the Purpose?

Preparation – What work needs to be done prior to the meeting to enable the People to accomplish the Purpose?

If you do nothing else to improve your meetings this week, use the 3Ps. And if you want your team to get an even greater benefit, try Tip 2.

Tip 2 – Know Your Meeting Altitude

We can think about the kind of work needed in each type of meeting as an elevation or “altitude”.

Any type of work goes through 3 phases from start to finish.

You begin with Ideation, move through Activation of a team, and finish with Implementation.

We’ve built on this aspect of the Six Types of Working Genius framework in previous emails so it should be somewhat familiar to you.

The start of an initiative is “up in the clouds” and you finish at ground level by “landing the plane.”

There are four types of meetings I recommend for business leaders who want a steady rhythm to help their business run smoothly. And these meeting types align with the three stages of work and the corresponding altitudes.

These four specific meeting types I recommend are based on Patrick Lencioni’s model he outlines in his books Death by Meeting and The Advantage.

• Brainstorm (Quarterly Offsite Review)
• Solutions Oriented (Adhoc Strategic)
• Rally and Tactical Meeting (Weekly Staff)
• Task Oriented (Daily Standup)

Other helpful small business frameworks include a similar type of structure for meetings.

So how can you and your colleagues be most successful in each type of meeting in your business?

The first step is knowing the meeting type and the elevation of the work to be done in the meeting.

The graphic above helps with that.

I’ve found an important second step is knowing the Working Geniuses of each person in the meeting. And having a custom Working Genius team map built by me for your team is a big help too.

Working Geniuses for the 4 types of meetings your business needs

This image brings it all together.

So, as you and your teams come together and do work, think about the type of meeting you’re having and how to make it the most productive it can be.

And consider the makeup of your team based on the 6 Types of Working Genius framework to help you and your leaders make your meetings more productive and effective.

The final tip to help your team have better meetings is the simplest one of the three and it will make a big difference with just a simple change.

Tip 3 – Give Your Team a Break

With back-to-back-to-back meetings so common in most work environments, you and your teams need a break. Even if it’s just to go to the bathroom!

To make all your meetings (and your teammates) more productive and effective do one or both of these 2 things:

• Schedule your meetings to start at 5 minutes past the hour (or half hour).
•  End them 5 or 10 minutes before the typical time.

Having time for a bio-break is important, but it’s not the only benefit you and your teams will get from these short pauses between meetings.

You’ll also be able to think about what you covered in one meeting before you go to your next one.

A longer break would be better, but even having just a few minutes to reflect and process will make your day seem less chaotic.

You can start the transition from constant firefighting to a calmer, smoother rhythm of work with this one small change to how you schedule your meetings.

If you use Microsoft Outlook, it’s super easy to set your defaults so you don’t have to think about it every time you schedule a meeting.

Here’s how to do it.

Go to: File > Options > Calendar > Calendars Options

Make Your Meetings Better by Starting with These 3 Tips

Applying these 3 tips won’t solve all your problems with Inefficient Meetings and Processes, but they’ll go a long way toward redeeming some of your team’s precious lost time.

And even the small improvements in efficiency will give your team members a big morale boost.

Bad meetings suck the life right out of a business. But productive, effective meetings are a rare breath of fresh air that gives your entire team increased energy and motivation.

What’s Your Experience Been with Meetings?

I’m curious to learn about the meetings in your business.

Are they productive and effective or are they mainly time wasters?

What have you done to make the meetings in your business better for you and your teams?

If you’re willing to share your meeting experiences and your tips with me, I’d appreciate the opportunity to learn from you. Just reply and shoot me a quick note. I read every email myself!

Helping you lead with clarity and confidence,

Greg

---

A quick note about affiliates

Some of the pages on my website contain affiliate links to products, apps, and services. If you click through and purchase, I may receive a commission on the sale and you pay no more. My policy is to only affiliate with products and services that I believe will provide value to you.