I have spent much of my career helping teams build trust and work together effectively. Along the way, I have learned an important lesson: productive collaboration starts long before the work itself. It starts with how we meet.
That realization was reinforced recently while supporting a large cross-site project that brought together teams from different locations and working styles. As we prepared for the initiative, it became clear that success would depend on more than technical execution. We needed a shared understanding of how we would communicate and work together.
That conversation led us to establish a set of meeting guidelines designed to create clarity, accountability, and respect for everyone’s time.
Why Meeting Habits Matter
Most professionals spend a significant portion of their workweek in meetings. Yet many leave those meetings without clear action items or next steps.
In my view, meetings should increase productivity, not consume it.
When employees walk out of a meeting wondering what they accomplished, organizations lose more than time. They lose momentum and focus.
Good meeting habits help prevent that. They create clear expectations and improve preparation, ensuring participants understand why they are there and what success looks like.
Building Trust Before Results
One of the most important outcomes of effective meetings is not efficiency. It is trust.
When teams are newly formed, employees are still learning how to work together. They are navigating different expectations and perspectives.
Clear meeting practices help eliminate uncertainty. When agendas are defined and responsibilities are clear, employees can focus less on interpreting expectations and more on solving problems together.
I have found that trust develops faster when teams have a shared framework for collaboration.
Respecting Time Across a Global Organization
Working across multiple locations also reinforced the importance of being intentional about scheduling.
What might be a convenient meeting time for one employee may be the beginning or end of the workday for someone else. The teams I worked with demonstrated remarkable consideration for one another by actively discussing how meeting schedules would affect colleagues in different regions.
That level of thoughtfulness matters.
Respecting someone’s time is one of the simplest ways to demonstrate respect for the person.
The Leadership Responsibility
Leaders play a crucial role in shaping meeting culture.
Employees notice whether leaders arrive prepared, stay on agenda, end on time, and define clear outcomes. They also notice when those practices are absent.
Meeting habits are often reflections of leadership habits.
Leaders who model effective behaviors help create teams that communicate more clearly and work together more effectively.
Where to Start
You do not need to transform every meeting overnight.
Start with one improvement:
- Add an agenda.
- Define desired outcomes.
- Assign action items.
- End on time.
- Share notes afterward.
Small shifts compound over time.
The most successful teams I have worked with are not necessarily the teams that meet more often. They are the teams that make every meeting count.
When we treat time as the valuable resource it is, we create space for better collaboration and stronger relationships, leading to better business outcomes.
By Sylvia Jarest, Sr. Director, Human Resources