🧭 Meetings have two core functions: making decisions and generating ideas. Everything else can probably be done asynchronously.
Early in a working relationship, meetings also help people stay aligned and build trust. That's important. But as you get comfortable with your team, you should find that alignment happens naturally through your async tools (Asana, Google Docs). If your meetings still feel like "update sessions" after the first few months, something has gone wrong.
This guide covers the two types of meetings worth protecting your time for, plus the planning meetings that keep your project on track.
These are for choosing between options when the stakes are high enough that async back-and-forth would be slow or risky.
Before the meeting, the person requesting the decision prepares:
Share this in writing before the meeting so people can think about it. A few sentences per section is fine. You can put this in the meeting agenda, an Asana task, or a short doc.
During the meeting, the group's job is to stress-test the recommendation. The goal is constructive disagreement: finding problems the proposer missed, not just nodding along. If everyone agrees immediately, either the decision didn't need a meeting or people aren't pushing hard enough.
After the meeting, document the decision and rationale somewhere findable (throw Zoom’s meeting notes into the relevant Google Doc). Future-you will thank present-you.
💡 Tip for meetings with your supervisory panel: Your external supervisors are will give you better feedback if you come with a recommendation rather than an open question. "Should I do thematic analysis or IPA?" is harder to respond to than "I recommend thematic analysis because [reasons], though IPA would be better if [conditions]."
These are for generating options, exploring ideas, or working through complex problems where you don't yet know the shape of the answer.
The rules are the opposite of decision meetings: