Meetings should have as few people as possible, but all the right people.

~Charles W. Scharf

You’re wondering who should be in each meeting, are you?

Tough question! Again, the answer to this question is circumstantial. But here’s the thing - big meetings make people sad. In one study at Microsoft, they found that what distinguished teams with lower satisfaction scores from the rest were that their meetings tended to include a lot of people.

Most of us know how frustrating it is to sit through a meeting where you belong about as much as a vegan belongs in Texas. Having people in a meeting that don’t need to be there is distracting, wastes time, dilutes each person’s potential contribution, and makes the real work of meetings (like decision-making) more difficult. Invite the essential people. You can even give an optional invite to those folks who don’t need to be there but who might be helpful. (In fact, you should send an invite to everyone who needs to be there as well as those that have the option and request that they respond to the invite.)

All that said, there should probably be a regular meeting that involves the entire workgroup. And the reality is that some teams are super large, and there may be nothing that can immediately be done about that. If this is the case for you, it’s important to ensure that the content of those meetings is as relevant for the entire group as possible. If this proves to be difficult, consider having less frequent all-team meetings and instead see if you can form sub-teams around similar work that can meet more regularly.

It’s important for senior leaders to understand that the clarity you create at the top helps the leaders of individual teams better manage their meetings (and just manage people in general), making it less likely that you need to hold frequent all-department or all-company meetings. Clarity cascades down and allows subgroups to function more autonomously.

For more on this, check out our video on developing great listening skills.