By Sean Hayes

Most meetings don’t fail in the room. They fail before anyone walks in. Early in my career, I treated preparation as reading the agenda and turning up on time. That isn’t preparation. That’s attendance. In competitive sport, nobody walks onto the pitch without knowing the game plan, their role and what winning looks like. I hold meetings to the same standard. Before every important meeting, I run through five questions. It takes ten minutes. It has saved me hours.

1. What does a good outcome look like?

Not “a productive discussion.” Not “getting aligned.” Those are feelings, not outcomes. I write one sentence that describes what will be different when the meeting ends. A decision made. A budget approved. An owner named. If I can’t write that sentence, the meeting probably shouldn’t happen yet. Clarity starts here. If you don’t know where you’re going, you can’t tell whether you got there.

2. What does the other person need from this?

Every person in that room is carrying their own pressure, priorities and concerns. If I only prepare my side of the conversation, I’m only half prepared. So I ask: what are they worried about? What would make this a win for them? What question are they likely to ask that I’d rather they didn’t? Good leaders don’t just communicate. They anticipate.

3. What’s my one message?

People forget most of what’s said in a meeting. They remember one thing, if you’re lucky. I decide in advance what that one thing should be. Then I make sure everything else I say supports it. If a point doesn’t serve the message, it gets cut. Messaging isn’t about saying more. It’s about making the right thing impossible to miss.

4. What am I assuming that might be wrong?

This is the uncomfortable one. I list the assumptions I’m walking in with. That the numbers are right. That the team is on board. That the decision-maker has read the brief. Then I check the ones that matter most. Most bad meetings I’ve been part of came down to an assumption nobody tested. Five minutes of checking beats an hour of backtracking.

5. What happens next, and who owns it?

A meeting without clear next steps is just a conversation. Before I go in, I already know what follow-up I’ll propose: who does what, by when, and how we’ll know it’s done. If the meeting goes another way, fine. But I’m never leaving the room without owners and deadlines. If you can’t track it, you can’t improve it. That applies to meetings as much as anything else.

Preparation Is a Standard, Not a Mood

None of these questions are complicated. That’s the point. Preparation doesn’t need to be clever. It needs to be consistent. The leaders I respect most don’t rely on charisma or quick thinking to carry them through. They do the work beforehand, every time, so the meeting itself becomes simple. Next time you have something important in the diary, give yourself ten minutes. Ask the five questions. Then walk in knowing exactly what you’re there to do.

If you want to build this kind of discipline across your team, not just your own calendar.