When I ask leaders for their biggest meeting pain point, the one I hear most frequently is, "meetings that should have been an email!"

We've all been in those meetings and I have vented this line myself many times.

But do you think your boss was thinking, "today I'll waste everyone's time?"

I don't.

And my hunch is that you, dear reader, have led at least one of these should-have-been-an-email meetings yourself.

So what's actually going on?

In my experience, most times when we feel like a meeting could have been an email, one (or a combo) of these three things are to blame:

Root Cause #1: Calendar autopilot. Often a meeting that could have been an email is the symptom of an overloaded leader operating on autopilot:

"We've always done the staff meeting this way."

"I don't have time to write it up so I'm just going to tell the team when we're together."

"The lowest lift next step here is sending a calendar invitation to the people involved, naming it the topic at hand, and we'll figure out next steps when we get there."

If you're the meeting leader, here's what I've seen work to fix: name the reason for the meeting, then pressure-test whether it needs to be synchronous:

• What kind of conversation is this: sharing info, gathering input, making a decision, something else?
• Do you need multiple perspectives or contributions?
• Does this truly need to happen live, or would an async update work?

If you can't answer those questions, that's your signal to pause before defaulting to the calendar invite.

What to ask as an attendee:

• Could you share a bit more about what you hope to achieve in this meeting, so I can prepare?
• Is there anything specific I can do to prepare for our time together in advance?

Root Cause #2: No room for meeting attendees to engage