CEOs spend 75% of workdays in meetings. Science says talk less

CEOs spend nearly three-quarters of their workdays in meetings - roughly 75% of every working hour - and the planet hosts close to 1 billion meetings a day. Yet for decades, no one really knew whether all that gathering actually accomplished anything. A fast-growing field called 'meeting science' is now answering that question, and its early verdict is uncomfortable for anyone who runs the room: the boss should talk less.

That conclusion comes from a sweeping review of over three decades of meeting science, coauthored by organizational psychologist Liana Kreamer of the Florida Institute of Technology and published in the 2026 Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior. The core finding: effective leaders listen more than they speak. Talking less in meetings, the research suggests, leads to better decisions and stronger teams - and the same body of work points to an even faster win: kill aimless meetings altogether.

For most of modern business history, meetings were not a particularly accessible subject of study. They happened behind closed doors, unrecorded and unexamined. That has changed. Once a tiny niche area, meeting science is now a growing specialization among organizational and social psychologists, and the field is accelerating as archived virtual meetings provide vast swaths of data on how people actually behave when they gather. The data is offering a fascinating window into human behavior - and into the specific habits that sink or save a meeting.

The human impulse to gather is ancient. People have long come together - in caves, fields, market squares, and town halls - to get something done, share ideas, get on the same page, or just to remark on the weather. Meeting to talk helps fulfill basic human needs to connect, communicate, and cooperate. But meeting scientists define their subject more narrowly: gatherings of people 'with some goal or structure to the event,' as Kreamer and her colleagues note. That distinction matters, because it separates a productive meeting from a mere gathering.

The practical implications for executives are direct. If the person with the most authority also does the most talking, the meeting quickly becomes a broadcast rather than a conversation. Junior team members may withhold critical information, and decisions get made on the loudest voice rather than the best analysis. The research suggests that leaders who consciously dial back their speaking time create space for others to contribute, which tends to improve the quality of ideas and the buy-in from the people who have to execute them.

The second lever is even simpler: stop holding meetings that don't need to happen. Aimless meetings eat up the lion's share of managers' time and add little to the bottom line. The review's synthesis of decades of studies indicates that the mere act of cutting unnecessary gatherings can free up hours per week for deep work, and that the meetings that remain benefit from clearer agendas and tighter timeboxes. In an era when every minute of executive attention is under pressure, removing meetings is one of the cheapest productivity interventions available.

The strategic stakes go beyond time saved. Meeting culture is a direct signal of how an organization treats its people. A leader who talks less signals that every voice matters, which boosts psychological safety and retention. A leader who cancels aimless meetings signals that focus and output are valued over performative busyness. For peers in similar roles, the message from the science is unambiguous: the next time you walk into a room, try talking less - and before you schedule the next gathering, ask whether it deserves to exist at all.