Are Your Meetings for You or for Them?
“To meet” is such an ordinary phrase. It carries the weight of human history. To meet: to come together, to connect, to discover what happens in the space between us. It implies reciprocity, exchange, even surprise.
But most organizational meetings today betray that intent. Instead of meeting, we gather. Instead of conversation, we sit through download. Instead of exchange, we endure updates. Meetings too often feel like they belong to one person—the leader who called them, the supervisor who controls the agenda, the speaker who dominates the time. If that is the case, then they aren’t meetings at all. They’re performances of authority masquerading as collaboration.
This is the paradox: the very word “meeting” suggests mutuality, but our practices tilt toward control.
Meetings as Ownership Tests
Here’s the question leaders rarely ask: are your meetings for you, or are they for them?
If they’re for you, then meetings are vehicles to broadcast your agenda, check boxes, confirm control. If they’re for them, then meetings become stages for your team to surface results, interrogate systems, and request the support needed for their next steps.
The difference is subtle but seismic. In a “for you” meeting, energy drains because people are reduced to recipients. In a “for them” meeting, energy grows because people arrive with ownership—they bring their work, their data, their questions, their needs. And the leader’s role shifts from broadcaster to facilitator, from manager to amplifier.
