7 practical tips to make your meetings more productive

28 de March, 2025

Meetings are part of everyday life for many professionals. These moments are fundamental for streamlining communication within a team, or between teams, for debating ideas and making strategic decisions that impact employees and the business.

But while their importance is undeniable, do all meetings meet these objectives? The truth is that when a meeting isn’t run well, it can easily become unproductive and inefficient: participants become demotivated and uninvolved, and the quality of decisions and results suffers.

If this is a frequent reality for you, discover with us 7 practical tips to make your meetings more productive.

Read also: 10 platforms to increase productivity at work

The importance of promoting more productive meetings

According to the State of Meetings Report 2025, a professional can spend an average of 392 hours a year in meetings, which corresponds to almost 50 working days.

At the same time, organizations devote an average of 15% of their collective time to meetings. However, 67% of these meetings are considered unproductive and 92% of employees admit to multitasking when they are in a meeting.

So, although meetings are fundamental to promoting collaboration, creativity and innovation, this can only truly happen if these moments are well managed and conducted.

1 – Clarify the purpose of the meeting

Before arranging a meeting, be clear on the answer to the question “what is the purpose of this meeting?“. If it’s just to share information or ask for an opinion, can’t you do it another way (e.g. by email or message)? If it’s to make a decision, isn’t it enough to talk to those who have the power to decide?

If it still makes sense to hold the meeting, having a clear objective will help you conduct it more effectively. On the other hand, if that objective is not clear to the participants, the meeting can become frustrating and fruitless.

2 – Set an agenda

Try to detail, in practice, what you want to see discussed or resolved by the end of the meeting. Share these topics with the participants beforehand, so that everyone is prepared and can intervene in a more relevant way.

Based on this agenda, establish the time needed for the meeting.

3 – Convene the right people

The more people who attend a meeting, the more likely it is to become inefficient. Be selective and ensure that you invite only those interested in the topic in question and those with decision-making power. If someone whose presence is paramount cannot attend, then postpone the meeting.

If you have any doubts about the need to convene someone, or if it’s not clear to you who the decision-maker is, find out before you schedule the meeting.

4 – Alert participants to possible delays

Lack of punctuality tends to be socially accepted, and something that people end up overlooking, but it is an aspect that leads to significant losses of time. It therefore results in less efficient and productive meetings.

Try to make participants aware of the importance of adhering to schedules and respecting other people’s time. Chronic delays are often a symptom of a deeper time management problem rooted in the organizational culture itself.

5 – Make sure someone leads the meeting

It is essential that there is a person responsible for running the meeting. This person should try to ensure that all stakeholders are heard, that they do not deviate from the central topic and that the objectives of the meeting are met in the time available.

6 – Draw conclusions and determine next steps

Always bear in mind that a meeting should be geared towards an outcome. As such, it’s important to end with a summary of what was discussed or decided with a view to achieving that goal.

End each meeting with a concrete action plan on the next steps, the responsibilities of each stakeholder and the deadlines to be taken into account.

7 – Share information after the meeting

It is not necessary to draw up an exhaustive report of each meeting, but it is very important to share notes with the main ideas discussed and the actions expected of each participant.

This formalization helps to increase the sense of responsibility of the people involved and can serve as a reminder when a task is missing.

By adopting these good practices, and by doing so in a structural and transversal way within an organization, you will maximize the potential that meetings have as tools for collaboration and innovation.

If you want to boost your productivity and efficiency, it’s essential to move from a paradigm of meetings that are too long and too frequent, with unstructured agendas and too many participants , to a paradigm of short, concise meetings, with the right people and focused on discussing specific topics.