How to Run Effective Meetings That Save Time and Boost Clarity (Meeting Productivity Tips for Leaders) | EP 19

Imagine logging into a Zoom call, coffee in hand, with great hope... only to sit through 45 minutes of aimless chatter about last week’s “updates,” wondering why you’re even there. That’s the experience discussed: the silent time-sucker we all dread, pointless meetings. With humor, frustration, and real-world examples, we narrate those meetings where nothing gets resolved, energy drains, and you’d rather be knocking out tasks on your to-do list.

In today’s conversation, we walk through what makes meetings feel like a waste and how to turn them into purposeful, clarity-driven, productive ones. From identifying when a meeting isn’t even necessary to crafting clear agendas, engaging participants with intentional conversation, and ending with actionable next steps, we offer practical guidance that transforms meetings from chaotic to clarity. 

This episode isn’t about productivity hacks, it's about mastering the soft skills of communication, structure, and respect for people’s time, so your meetings actually matter.

What to listen for in this episode

Why most meetings feel pointless: We describe the common experience of meetings without agendas, direction, or outcomes and how that leaves participants mentally checked out.

The soft skill of clarity: Learn why clarity in purpose, communication, and outcomes isn’t optional. It's essential to meeting effectiveness and team alignment.

5-step structure for better meetings: A practical walkthrough of how to decide if a meeting is needed, define its purpose, set the agenda, lead collaborative conversations, and conclude with clear next steps.

What if the meetings you cancel tomorrow are the same ones stealing your team’s creativity today?

Episode mentioned: From Meeting Overload to Meaningful Time: Soft Skills for Smarter Collaboration | EP 12

https://www.buzzsprout.com/2277708/episodes/18107906-from-meeting-overload-to-meaningful-time-soft-skills-for-smarter-collaboration-ep-12

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szUQJuw3kFs 

Transcript

You're listening to Entrepreneur Encounter, the podcast where soft skills meet real talk for creative business owners who are building with purpose. I'm Dana, a Pinterest marketing strategist and agency owner helping wedding pros and creative entrepreneurs get seen without burning out. And I'm Sarah, a business and team strategist who helps small teams and podcasters communicate clearly, lead with empathy and grow sustainably. Together, we're unpacking the messy, side of entrepreneurship.

from boundaries to burnout, leadership to listening, so you can build a business that actually fits your life.


Have you ever joined a meeting and thought, why am I here? Yes, I've thought that too. I've been in so many meetings and I wonder why. Why is this even a meeting? There's no agenda, no direction. Somebody's leaving the meeting, but it feels like no one's going anywhere. In a Zoom call, in person, people are just talking.

but not getting to the bottom of it. Even as a business owner, right, you can be on a meeting with a client, you can be on a meeting with a team member, a vendor, whomever, you're probably just sitting there like watching the clock. What is the point of this meeting? You mentally are calculating the things that you can do instead. It feels draining, it's repetitive, and it's so pointless to have meetings that have no value where everybody's just sitting there.

to link their thumbs wondering why they should even be there. And either you want to walk out or click that little X button to get out of the Zoom meeting. It's like if you go and watch a movie and it is not great, but you just like, I want to get to the end because I'm already here. I'm committed to this hour and I need to see if there's something that I might miss. And then you get to the end and you missed nothing. So

Now you just wasted a whole hour that you're not going to get back. As leaders, we have to do better. I mean, I've been in meetings where I've led and yes, lessons learned that our meeting could be 15 minutes. So everybody's brain works differently and how they consume information. Just like how you're consuming this podcast, you're probably watching it or listening to it. So everybody is consuming.

things differently, you don't want to waste anybody's time. So there's one critical soft skill that you could be missing in your meetings. And this is a pointer that you can give to other people as well and saying, hey, you need clarity in your meetings. Just like how we need clarity in our offers, clarity in our communication. If there's something that you need to say, clarity is what's going to get you through those meetings.


Most business owners were never taught how to run a meeting. We're taught to show up, to talk things through, to circle back. that awesome corporate jargon, circle back, right? Going back to clarity, that clarity is missing. So as a leader, your goal is to have alignment and know that you're going to help make decisions in a meeting.

Running an effective meeting isn't some productivity hack. It's a soft skill rooted in communication, your confidence, boundaries, and intention. And once you understand that, everything is going to shift. Years ago, when I was working with one of my clients, we would just go into a meeting and just talk about the tasks that were at hand, the tasks that needed to be done that week. But

It felt a little all over the place. So finally we decided that we needed clarity in those meetings. What we were going to go over. And once that happened, the meetings were shorter, expectations were met, things got done in a way that aligned with the goals of the tasks, the goals of the meeting. I have seen different business owners from different industries have way too many meetings on their calendar. They had team meetings.

They had check-ins, they had planning calls. Nothing felt finished. People left confused. Tasks were unclear. The same conversations kept coming up every week. And again, going back to clarity, you need to set these expectations from the start. So going back to that person where feeling like people were feeling confused and everything felt unclear, it was the structure of

the meeting. There was no purpose. There was no defined outcome. There was no ownership at the end. So once she changed how those meetings ran, her calendar opened up. Her team became more confident and decisions actually stuck. So now before I go into a meeting, let's say I have a meeting on a Tuesday with a client and we have to go over what's going on with the team, what's going on.


on with the tasks, the operations, clients, whatever is going on in that business in that week. Monday, I would go in and look at everything, the tasks that were delegated, who has what, what was due that week, maybe any bottlenecks that were coming up, like why is this not getting done? Why was this late last week? So kind of going back to the end of last week into the new week.

And I wrote it down because we, you know, the structure. So part A of the meeting was just to check in real quick with each other and then go into client work. And then at the end saying, okay, this is what needs to be done this week. And the amount of weight that lifted off of our shoulders and the team shoulders, it was amazing because now we have that clarity and that structure to make sure that we're not going in blind and not just talking about whatever.

but actually the structure and making sure that we are both on the same page. So let's talk about a transformation, right? On why you need clarity in your meetings. Decide if the meeting is even necessary. Not everything that needs a meeting. If you can ask a quick question in Slack, an email, a loom video, project management tool, however you communicate, do it that way. Meetings are

for decisions, alignment and collaboration. So yes, you can still use your project management tool, emails, all the ways that you communicate as a way to get things across, to delegate things out. And yes, you're still making like a little decision, but when it comes to a bigger decision that affects everybody as a whole, that affects the vision, affects, that's when you want to have a meeting. When it comes to professional

development, that's a meeting, big decisions, alignment and collaboration. That's it. Number two, you want to set a clear purpose. So every meeting should answer one question. Why are we here? Why are we here today? If you cannot explain that in one sentence, the meeting is not ready. And don't be the one that says meeting in 10 minutes. You can't do that. Even if you work in office, it doesn't matter if you have contractors, it doesn't matter if you have


employees, whomever it works with you. You can't just say, we have the meeting in 10 minutes. You need to schedule it. You need to have a purpose. You need to make sure there is a structure, unless it's an emergency, a dire emergency. Again, nothing is emergency. It's not. Everybody is working on what they're working on and disrupting that can have negative impact on the workflow that's happening during the day.

Number three, you want to create a simple agenda. It doesn't have to be fancy. You want to share it ahead of time. So a while back, Dana and I had had an episode on our L10 meeting, which I will link down in the show notes that can help you as well to help you create the agenda. So again, to have the purpose and the expectations of what that meeting is going to be about clarity.

Clarity, say it with me, clarity because we need that. Just like when you are, let's say, building a shelf. Sometimes we need those instructions. We need to be able to read clearly on how to build the shelf because if not, then things are gonna be backwards, are you gonna hurt yourself, whatever the case may be. Or if you're learning how to cook, reading from that cookbook, whoever's writing that.

needs to have clarity in the instructions so that your cookies can come out the way they're supposed to and not mush. Number four, you want to lead with conversation. This is really important because the people that you have in your space, your clients, your vendors, your team, your partners, whomever, they're people. You want to converse with them.

This is important. You want to be a collaborative leader. You want to be there. You want to have conversations. Get the feedback. And if you see that your team is wandering off into the distance, redirect, refocus, and ask questions. You want their input. You want people to have their inputs because if you're the only one talking and nobody gets to chime in, you're not collaborating.


Put a spot in your meeting for that. And number five, end with clear next steps. So when you talk about what's going on for the week, who's doing what by when and who is delegating that out. So if you tell me that during a podcast production, this episode is going live on Friday, we need X, Y, and Z done by Thursday, something done by Wednesday. Like I'm going to take note of that and then I'm going to go into the project management tool.

where everything lives, where all the projects, all the tasks live and put those due dates there. That's an example. But if there's a task that is mentioned in the meeting, your business operations manager, virtual assistant, whoever does that needs to take note of that and put it somewhere. If you don't use a project management tool, use a Google Doc spreadsheet. Wherever everything lives, you want to make sure that

Everything that was talked about is somewhere so that people have access to it. Running a good weaving is not about control. It's about respect. Respect for time, respect for energy, respect for people's capacity. So this is the soft skill that's going to tie into clarity. So you have clarity and respecting people's time, respecting people's energy, respecting people's capacity. Because when I mentioned

Don't say we have a meeting in 10 minutes when there was no meeting on the calendar. No, we're not doing that. Get rid of that. Stop doing that. If you want a meeting, schedule it out. Respect time, respect energy, respect people's capacity. This is going to strengthen the communication. It's going to build trust. It's going to create accountability and it's going to stop micromanaging. When you run your meetings well,

Everybody that's involved is going to feel better. They're going to feel clearer. They're going to feel more confident. And so that you can stop caring everything alone. Yes, you create. Yes, you have a vision. Yes, you have a business. You're the owner. You lead. You do all these amazing things. But do know that everybody that's in your space, the people that you choose to be in your space, you chose them for a reason. So you need to make sure that
they feel comfortable, they feel confident. And during those meetings, you can gather feedback. And if your team does not feel comfortable to do it in front of everybody else, then say, hey, if you want to have a one-off meeting with me, let's schedule something. And then again, have a structure for that type of meeting as well. Any type of meeting that you're having, you need to have a structure, need clarity.

That is your homework. want you to look at everything that you do in your business. And if you don't have a team, what type of meetings are you having? Are you having meetings with your clients? Are you having meetings with potential partners? Whomever you are having a meeting with, I want you to double check your structure. Everything has room for improvement. Now, if you don't have a structure and you just go in blind, whatever, just having a chit chat.

Let's step back and look at what's in front of you and see what you can change. Because again, clarity and respecting people's time and energy and their capacity. We want to make sure that there's that structure. And then the day before your meeting, look at everything as a whole, make notes, and then come with the intention to talk about that in your meeting. If your meetings have been

draining your energy, this is your permission to change them now. There are a lot of people out there, a of business owners, a lot of people in the workplace that are just over having a meeting that has nothing to do with anything. You don't have to keep having more meetings, you just need better ones. Whether you're growing your visibility through Pinterest marketing or streamlining your podcast operations and team management, we help you build systems that work for you.

not against you. And all of our information is going to be in the show notes. Until next time.