I’ve sat through a lot of bad meetings. Most of them were bad for the same handful of reasons, and most of those reasons were the meeting owner’s fault. If you put a meeting on someone’s calendar, you’ve taken something from them. The least you owe them is a meeting worth showing up to.

What follows is how I run meetings, and what I expect from anyone running one I attend. This is aimed at team meetings of three or more people. 1:1s are a different animal.

Before the meeting

Invite fewer people. Look at your invite list and ask, for each person, what they specifically add or take away. If you don’t have an answer, mark them optional. In Google Calendar you expand a group invite and toggle individual attendees to optional. Do that.

Write an agenda. If there are more than two of you, the invite needs a written agenda at least a day in advance. Put rough time allocations next to each item. Reserve the last five minutes for wrap up. If someone asks for an agenda and you don’t have one, they have my blessing to decline.

Send pre-reads in advance. Meetings are for discussion and decisions. They are not for me to read your slides to you. If the material can be read silently, send it ahead and protect the live time for the parts that need everyone in the room.

Add the video link before anyone asks. Even if the meeting started as in-person, add Google Meet (or whatever you use). Plans change, people travel, and someone is going to need to dial in from a car. I use the Google Meet Chrome plugin so the link gets attached automatically.

During the meeting

Show up early. A few minutes before the start, test screen sharing, check that your mic works, and confirm the dial-in is live. If your previous meeting is making you late to this one, leave the previous meeting early. Owning the meeting comes with that obligation.

Start at the start time. Waiting on stragglers punishes the people who showed up. Start. The latecomers can catch up without interrupting.

Get notes in writing. Either take them yourself or hand the task to someone before the meeting starts. A shared Google Doc is fine. A wiki page is fine. What’s not fine is “I’ll remember the action items,” because you won’t.

Keep time. If a topic blows past its slot, stop it. Park it for later, schedule a follow-up, or pull time from a less important agenda item. Don’t pretend you have more time than you do.

Stick to the agenda, but flex when it matters. If something genuinely more important comes up, name it out loud and trade it for something else on the list. The agenda is a tool, not a contract.

Ask for feedback at the end. I like a quick plus/minus/delta. What worked, what didn’t, what to change next time. Two minutes. It compounds over the year.

End on time. Stop a few minutes before the bottom of the hour so people can grab water and get to whatever’s next without being late themselves.

After the meeting

Send out the notes and action items the same day. Each action item needs an owner, a clear next step, and a deadline. “We should think about X” is not an action item. “Sarah to draft the migration plan by Friday” is.

If you do those things consistently, your meetings stop being the thing people complain about and start being the thing people use to get unstuck.