Meeting Types and When to Meet

Not All Meetings Are Created Equal

Before improving how you run meetings, you need to know which meetings should exist at all. The 82% of employees who say meetings could have been emails aren’t wrong — many meetings genuinely shouldn’t happen.

But some meetings are irreplaceable. The art is knowing the difference.

The Meeting Purpose Framework

Every meeting falls into one of five categories, each with a different “should this be a meeting?” answer:

The pattern: information transfer (status, FYI) should be async. Interaction-dependent work (decisions, brainstorming, relationships) should be synchronous.

✅ Quick Check: What’s the key difference between meetings that should be synchronous and meetings that should be async? Synchronous meetings are necessary when the value comes from real-time interaction — building on each other’s ideas, debating options, reading body language, or building trust. Async communication works when the value is in the information itself — status updates, announcements, and reports don’t require everyone to be present simultaneously.

Running Your Meeting Audit

Use this prompt to audit every recurring meeting on your calendar:

Help me audit my recurring meetings to decide which
to keep, convert to async, or eliminate.

My meetings:
[List each recurring meeting with:
- Name and frequency (weekly, biweekly, monthly)
- Duration
- Number of attendees
- Primary purpose (status update, planning, review, etc.)
- Does it regularly produce decisions or action items?]

For each meeting, categorize as:

KEEP (genuinely needs real-time):
- Produces decisions that require debate
- Involves brainstorming or creative problem-solving
- Builds relationships or resolves conflicts
- How to make it shorter/better?

CONVERT TO ASYNC:
- Primarily shares information or status
- Could work as a written update with occasional sync
- What's the async replacement?
- How to maintain accountability without the meeting?

ELIMINATE:
- No clear purpose or regular outcome
- Duplicates another meeting's function
- Hasn't been evaluated for relevance in 3+ months
- What (if anything) replaces it?

Calculate: total hours recovered per week.

Deciding When to Meet

When someone says “let’s schedule a meeting,” ask these three questions before accepting:

1. What’s the specific outcome?

Every meeting should have a clear, specific outcome — not a topic. “Discuss the marketing plan” is a topic. “Decide which two campaigns to fund in Q2” is an outcome. If you can’t name the outcome, you probably don’t need a meeting.

2. Can this outcome be achieved asynchronously?

If the outcome is a decision, ask: do we need to debate this in real time, or can people review options and vote asynchronously? If people need to share information, can they do it in writing?

3. Who actually needs to be there?

Most meetings include 2-3 people who don’t need to be there. The test: if this person missed the meeting, would anything change? If not, send them the summary instead.

✅ Quick Check: What’s the difference between a meeting topic and a meeting outcome? A topic is what you’ll talk about (“discuss the project timeline”). An outcome is what you’ll achieve (“decide whether to extend the deadline by one week or reduce scope by 20%”). Meetings with topics wander. Meetings with outcomes finish early.

Async Alternatives for Common Meetings

Key Takeaways

• Five meeting types exist: status, information sharing, decision making, brainstorming, and relationship building — the first two should almost always be async
• The deciding factor: if value comes from real-time interaction (debate, building on ideas, reading the room), meet synchronously; if value is in the information itself, go async
• Every meeting should have a specific outcome, not just a topic — “decide which campaigns to fund” drives focus; “discuss marketing” creates wandering
• Audit every recurring meeting by asking: does this produce decisions requiring debate? If not, it’s a candidate for async conversion or elimination
• Reducing meeting attendees to only essential participants often matters more than reducing meeting count — fewer people means faster decisions

Up Next: You’ll learn to build meeting agendas that keep discussions focused, time-boxed, and consistently produce the outcomes you defined — turning good meeting intentions into reliable meeting results.