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

My blueprint (which you should steal) for freeing your time

Jack Turner, MBA
Career of you
Published in
9 min readNov 7, 2022

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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 people work longer hours 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.

So, after recognizing that this is a personal problem — i.e. I’m not managing my time well, and that I need to take ownership of it, I’ve implemented a series of steps that have started to significantly reduce the time I spend in meetings. While I can’t promise they will work for everyone, if you’re reading this, it’s my hope that they will be of some benefit to you too.

Step 1: Tell people you’re trying something new on a trial basis and invite them to participate

When I initially began stepping back from meetings, I realized that my lack of attendance was being negatively commented on, and on some occasions being…

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Jack Turner, MBA
Career of you

Career writer; helping knowledge workers build skills, pay bills, and prepare for the future of work. Inquiries: jackjosephjohnsonturner@gmail.com