You Don’t Need to Be Leadership to Encourage Good Meeting Practices

by Beverly Flaxington, 11/11/26

Beverly FlaxingtonAdvisor Perspectives welcomes guest contributions. The views presented here do not necessarily represent those of Advisor Perspectives.

Beverly Flaxington is a practice management consultant. She answers questions from advisors facing human resource issues. To submit yours, email us here.

Dear Bev,

We are well behind our sales goals for this year. Candidly, I think our goals were outrageous and demanded we reach way higher than was possible. However, our leadership is angry and frustrated about where we are.

Our senior leader is now in “we must meet” mode to review all that is happening and talk about next steps. He’s a big fan of AI, so Claude is basically gathering all of our data and spitting it out to let us know where we are failing. I don’t mind examining what’s working and what’s not, but we’re being pulled into these meetings to review the data.

There is no agenda. The data provided doesn’t necessarily allow us to connect the dots. If we say we have a previous commitment (a prospect or client meeting, for example), there is a list created of who is missing the meetings, as if we don’t take it seriously when we are not there.

I don’t mind attending a meeting that has value. But this seems like a valiant attempt to get us to be responsive to something without actually ensuring it makes sense to begin with.

B.N.

Dear B.N.,

I’ve spent my entire career in sales. You are making me think of a number of sales leaders I have worked with who believed if you talk about it enough — and force people to focus on it — then the sales will come. What’s that movie that offers advice to “build it, and they will come”? I think it worked in the movie, but it doesn’t work in sales.

You don’t say what is the content of these meetings, other than that you are missing agendas. Let me share a few best practices for meeting management and for increasing sales within your team:

Meetings:

  1. Never hold a meeting or agree to attend a meeting without an agenda. You can say, in this case, it is your leaders who are forcing you to show up without providing background about the timing and the content. Let them know it is less productive for everyone when you don’t know what will be covered. You don’t have to be difficult, simply frame it positively. Let them know they’d get a lot more information and reaction from attendees if there was prep in advance about what’s going to be covered and what’s expected of everyone.
  2. Ask for a time check before the meeting starts. It’s perfectly fine to say you have other commitments. While you want to be a good participant, you also need to manage your schedule, so input about timing matters.
  3. Inquire, without being accusatory, about the purpose of the “list.” Will this be used in performance appraisals? Is there a correlation between those who attend and new client opportunities? Is there an objective to calendar meetings differently so more people can attend? Try and approach with curiosity, rather than being confrontational.
  4. If no one else takes notes, offer to do so. Be the one keeping things on track and providing a follow-up. Perhaps if you model good meeting behavior, your leaders will learn too!