A Ten-Step Process for Team Leaders to Reduce Meeting Overload and Take Back Their Time

A few months ago, I started a new job as the leader of a busy team of consultants. Within days of starting, I found myself inundated with meetings, and the expectation seemed to be that I represent our team at board meetings, client meetings, external engagements, you name it. Being eager to please my new boss, it’s a role I’ve happily played, with little thought to the consequences. But increasingly I’ve found myself frustrated, compensating for my busy diary by doing all high value work between 06:00 am and 09:00 am, then staying late to mop up the emails I’ve missed during the day — because I’ve been in back-to-back meetings. While it increasingly appears to be the norm that <a href="https://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/you-re-right-you-are-working-longer-and-attending-more-meetings" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">people work longer hours</a> to keep up, it’s hard to add any real value or critical thought when I spend my days surfing from meeting to meeting. And interestingly, my team has begun to mention that they would like me to provide more guidance on their work, which obviously I can’t do if I’m always in meetings. It’s been tempting to shrug my shoulders and think “hey, this is just the meeting culture of the organization”. But I’ve realized that this is a lazy response and poor leadership. Plus, I didn’t take on a new job, just to sit in meetings all day every day — I took the role to learn, grow, and add value through the work I produce. <a href="https://medium.com/career-of-you/a-ten-step-process-for-team-leaders-to-reduce-meeting-overload-and-take-back-their-time-407cf1f8f09b">Learn More</a>