Happier At Work: Leadership, Culture, Performance
May 25, 2026 · 10 min · 9 segments
In this week’s bonus episode, Aoife O’Brien reflects on her conversation with Mamie Kanfer Stewart all about meetings: Why so many of them fail, what that says about our leadership and culture, and…
If I think back to early in my career, meetings was, like, a symbol of the importance.
Like, the more meetings you're in, the more important you're perceived to be, and that thought was challenged a couple years ago on an episode that I recorded with Lisa Bodell, where she said we kind of go through these phases when your early career, you think meetings are amazing and you want to be invited to the meetings, and then you are invited to the meetings, and then e- eventually you get to a stage where you're like, "Why am I in so many meetings? And I will do anything to get out of these meetings." I wanted to share about poor meetings and how it's not just an issue of time.
It can be a symbol of unclear leadership, weak decision-making, poor communication habits, or low trust within the team as well.
What happens in meetings, whether they are team meetings, whether they are one-to-one meetings, whether they're larger departmental meetings or town halls, they teach people about what it's really like to work here, how decisions are made, whether their voice even matters, can they actually speak up and share what's going on for them, whether prep is required to go into the meeting or whether people are prepared or whether the prep kind of more happens on the fly in the meeting itself, whether it's safe to challenge how we are doing things, whether that's the meetings themselves or whether that is the work, the workflow, or how the work a- actually gets done.
So when things are clear, they feel a lot clearer for people, whereas if they're vague, they're left wondering who owns what, who's supposed to do that, why are we doing this? A question you may have for yourself or maybe for your team, like, do you feel that you must attend every meeting that you're invited to, and do people on your team feel like they should attend every meeting as well? Like, to me, this is a symbol of low trust within the team.
It's, a- again, going back to all of these, um, the bad habits that I talked about earlier, the poor communication, the weak decision-making.
Meetings really should be designed around decisions, ownership, and next steps, and if those things are not happening, then it's a sign of a poorly designed meeting.
If I think back to early in my career, meetings was, like, a symbol of the importance.
Like, the more meetings you're in, the more important you're perceived to be, and that thought was challenged a couple years ago on an episode that I recorded with Lisa Bodell, where she said we kind of go through these phases when your early career, you think meetings are amazing and you want to be invited to the meetings, and then you are invited to the meetings, and then e- eventually you get to a stage where you're like, "Why am I in so many meetings? And I will do anything to get out of these meetings." I wanted to share about poor meetings and how it's not just an issue of time.
It can be a symbol of unclear leadership, weak decision-making, poor communication habits, or low trust within the team as well.
What happens in meetings, whether they are team meetings, whether they are one-to-one meetings, whether they're larger departmental meetings or town halls, they teach people about what it's really like to work here, how decisions are made, whether their voice even matters, can they actually speak up and share what's going on for them, whether prep is required to go into the meeting or whether people are prepared or whether the prep kind of more happens on the fly in the meeting itself, whether it's safe to challenge how we are doing things, whether that's the meetings themselves or whether that is the work, the workflow, or how the work a- actually gets done.
So when things are clear, they feel a lot clearer for people, whereas if they're vague, they're left wondering who owns what, who's supposed to do that, why are we doing this? A question you may have for yourself or maybe for your team, like, do you feel that you must attend every meeting that you're invited to, and do people on your team feel like they should attend every meeting as well? Like, to me, this is a symbol of low trust within the team.
It's, a- again, going back to all of these, um, the bad habits that I talked about earlier, the poor communication, the weak decision-making.
Meetings really should be designed around decisions, ownership, and next steps, and if those things are not happening, then it's a sign of a poorly designed meeting.
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