A Meeting Without A Result Isn’t A Meeting. It’s An Interruption With A Calendar Invite.

By Debbie Lawrence

Read Time: 8 minutes

I was in my late twenties when I became president of the Canada Day Committee for the city of St. John’s in Newfoundland and Labrador.

I had never sat on this committee before. I knew nothing about how it operated, what the rhythm was, or what the group had built together over the years. At least ninety percent of the people around that table had been doing this year after year. They had a cadence. A culture. A way of moving through things.

I just didn’t know that yet.

So I did what seemed obvious. I prepared an agenda. I showed up to chair the first meeting. I focused on why we were there. We moved through the items, one by one, and when we had covered everything that needed covering, I looked up, thanked everyone, said we were done and that I was happy to linger and chat but not to feel obliged to stay behind.

Forty minutes. The meeting had been scheduled for an hour. Maybe more.

Nobody moved.

I looked around the table. Is something wrong? Did I miss something?

“Is everything okay?” I asked.

“That’s it?” someone said.

“That’s it,” I said. “We’ve covered the entire agenda. You’re all really busy people. We’re all here as volunteers and I have so much respect for your time that we don’t need to fill the hour. Let’s just get back to our lives.”

They left. I packed up my notes and didn’t think much more about it.

But as Canada Day approached and the logistics got more complex and the stakes got higher and we met more frequently, several committee members told me that in all their years of volunteering, they had never had an experience like this one. That they had never felt their time and energy so deeply recognized and respected.

I was in my late twenties. I had no idea I’d done anything unusual.

That’s the part that never left me.

I didn’t know what the committee had always done. Nobody had briefed me on how previous presidents ran things, or what the group expected a meeting to look like. I walked in without any of that and did what made sense.

We were there to plan Canada Day for a city. That was the job. The meeting was a tool to do the job. When the tool had done its work, there was no reason to keep holding it.

The thing I didn’t realize until much later is that what I did in that room in St. John’s had a name.

I wasn’t being efficient. I wasn’t being a minimalist. I was being a leader who knew what she was there to accomplish. And the moment we accomplished it, we brought the meeting to a close.

That’s it. That’s the whole thing.

Why the hour fills itself

Many leaders never do this. It’s not because they don’t care about people’s time, but because they’ve never actually separated the meeting from the result. The meeting becomes the thing. It fills the slot on the calendar. It starts when it starts and it ends when the hour runs out, regardless of whether anything got done.

Some of that is social conditioning. There’s an unspoken assumption that a meeting ending early means something went wrong. That if you called for an hour and only needed forty minutes, you either didn’t plan well or didn’t give people enough to contribute. Ending early can feel like a failure even when it serves as proof the work got done.

Some of it is discomfort with the quiet. When the agenda is finished and people are still sitting there, someone feels compelled to fill the space. To ask one more question. To open one more topic. They’re compelled to do this, not because the topic needs opening, but because the silence feels abrupt and the leader hasn’t given anyone permission to leave.

And some of it is about the decision itself. There are leaders who call a meeting not because the decision genuinely requires the group, but because they don’t want to own it alone. If everyone was in the room, if everyone had a say, then no single person carries the outcome. Consensus becomes a shield. The meeting becomes a place to distribute accountability so thinly that it belongs to nobody.

Sometimes it’s simpler than that. The decision is uncomfortable or the timing feels uncertain. And another meeting, a follow-up, a check-in, a session to prepare for the next session, is a very organized way of not having to make the call yet.

I want to be careful here, because not every decision is yours alone to make. Genuine collaboration exists. Some decisions need the group. But the question worth asking honestly, before you send that calendar invite for a meeting, is this:

Do I need these people in the room because the work requires it, or because I’m not ready to decide?

Before you call a meeting, you need to know what result you’re after. Specifically. Not “an update” or “alignment” or “a chance to connect.” What decision will be made? What will be assigned and to whom? What question will be answered? When you can name the result that precisely, two things happen. The meeting gets shorter. And the people in it leave feeling like their time meant something.

Build the structure to reach that result. And the moment you get there, stop. Not when the hour runs out. Not when everyone has had a turn to speak. When the work is done, the meeting is done.

I learned that lesson in my late twenties and I have never stopped applying it.

The project team that stopped meeting

Most recently, I’ve been co-chairing a project team that’s been in place for several years. What started as the three of us has grown considerably over that time We’d been meeting weekly, an hour each time, and for a long time that made sense. There was a lot to coordinate. There were a lot of moving pieces. There were decisions that genuinely needed the full group.

But about two months ago I noticed we weren’t at that stage anymore. The work had settled into a rhythm that didn’t require us all in a room every week. We were meeting because we’d always met, not because meeting was still serving the work.

So in a recent session, I said it out loud.

“I don’t think we need to be meeting this frequently anymore. When we’ve covered what needs covering today, we’ll close it. If you want to stay on and connect, please do. If you need to get back to your other work, go.”

We finished early. Some people stayed. Some people left. And the ones who left did so without guilt, because I’d made it clear that leaving wasn’t just acceptable. It was the point.

That’s what I want you to notice. Not the logistics but the act of naming it. Most leaders see the pattern and say nothing because ending a meeting early feels like admitting something went wrong.

It doesn’t. It means the work got done. That’s a success, not a failure.

What forty hours taught me

This past winter I received an email from a participant who had just completed one of my leadership programs. It was a ten-week commitment, one session a week, forty hours in total. She mentioned, almost as a footnote, that this was the third or fourth program she had done with me.

What she said next stopped me.

She said she was always struck by how class ended at 12:30. Every session. Exactly when I’d said it would. She went on to say she had assumed when she committed to the first program with me that we would run over time because that was her lived experience. Any training she had done in the past seemed to run over the scheduled time so she reflected that in her calendar by blocking out her availability until 1:00 pm on those Tuesdays. After the first couple of weeks in my program she realized she didn’t need to protect that extra half hour. Her email to me offered her gratitude for how I demonstrated that I respected her time and, subsequently, respected her.

It’s something I say at the start of every program. “We’ve made a commitment to one another. We’re here from this time to this time, and I will hold that line.” And I mean it. If a question comes in at 12:28 that’s going to take longer than two minutes, I’ll pause and say to the group: “If anyone needs to go, we are done for today. Have a great week.” Then I answer the question for whoever wants to stay.

After forty hours together, that’s what she remembered. Not just what we covered but how I treated their time.

I’m sharing this not to hold myself up, but because the pattern keeps repeating. Canada Day volunteers in St. John’s. A project team that’s been together for years. Participants in a leadership program who came back three and four times. Different contexts, different decades, the same response.

People notice when their time is treated as something valuable. And they remember it far longer than you’d expect.

I don’t just profess this. I practice it. And that distinction matters, because your team is watching for exactly that gap.

A word about team building

I want to say something about the phrase “team building” before I close, because I think it’s worth pushing on.

Connection matters. Belonging matters. A team that genuinely trusts each other does better work, and I’m not dismissing that for a moment.

But a meeting is not the right tool for building that. Not when people have deliverables waiting. Not when the agenda has already been covered and what’s left is small talk that could happen in a hallway. Not when the hour is being used to hold people together because someone in a leadership position is uncomfortable letting them go earlier than planned.

When the agenda gets abandoned and the conversation rabbit trails thirty minutes past the point of usefulness, that’s not warmth. That’s a leadership gap. Someone in that room has the authority to redirect and isn’t using it.

And when your team walks out of a meeting knowing they’re behind on the work they were actually hired to do, something quieter happens. They don’t always name it but they notice. Their confidence in you shifts, just slightly. And over time, slightly becomes significantly.

The meeting that runs past its usefulness isn’t a relationship investment. It’s a withdrawal from the emotional bank account that’s the central instrument used to build trust.

Before your next meeting

Before you call your next meeting, ask yourself one honest question: what result do I need, and is a meeting the right way to get it?

If the answer is yes, prepare the agenda, structure the time, and close it the moment you arrive at the result. If the answer is no, send the email. Make the decision. Do the work.

Your team will notice. They may not say it right away but when they do, it’ll sound a lot like what those volunteers in St. John’s told me all those years ago.

That their time mattered. That they were there for a reason. That someone respected what it cost them to show up.

That’s what result-focused leadership feels like from the inside.

Comment below and tell me: what meeting are you currently holding that doesn’t need to happen?

I read and reply to every one. And I love to hear from you.

You can also listen to this issue on The Compassionate Leader School podcast episode, which drops the same day on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all major platforms. Click here to explore all the episodes.