It’s 11.52 am and you’re seven minutes away from wrapping up the third meeting of the day. The Zoom screen is full, half the faces are blank squares and the conversation has looped back to the same three talking points. No clear decision, no end in sight and a quick glance at your calendar reveals another meeting at 12 with two more later that afternoon.

For many executives, this is just another day at the office, and it’s become so normal that we’ve stopped questioning it.

A study published in the Harvard Business Review found that 92 percent of employees consider meetings costly and unproductive. Senior managers agree, and yet these same leaders continue to fill their calendars with them.

Long meetings aren’t the actual problem, they are a symptom of deeper issues: a lack of trust, leadership laziness and a culture of entitlement.

In my work with senior leaders across industries, from global manufacturing firms to government departments, I’ve seen this play out time and again. Meetings have become a crutch and a tool for procrastination at an organizational level. When decisions aren’t being made confidently, when leaders are unclear or unwilling to hold people accountable, we extend the conversation, we invite more people, and we drag it out.

It’s rarely intentional, but it reveals a lot.

When meetings replace trust

Often, it’s a trust issue. When leaders don’t trust their people to deliver, they cling to visibility. They hover, attend every meeting, comment on every thread and expect to be involved in every step.

The underlying belief is that things won’t progress without their presence. That lack of trust sends a loud message: “I don’t believe you can do this without me.”

It erodes initiative and stifles confidence. High-performing individuals start checking out, avoiding accountability for outcomes and wait for permission instead.

In the end, trust is replaced with dependency, and no amount of meetings can fix that.

Other times, it’s laziness. Not the kind you notice immediately but the more covert kind that hides behind busyness. Leaders show up to meetings without a clear agenda, hoping, “We’ll just work it out as we go.”

Instead of doing the hard thinking beforehand, clarifying objectives, making tough decisions or writing a crisp pre-read, they outsource the intellectual labor to the group.

This turns what could’ve been a 10-minute email into a 60-minute meander. Worse still, it signals that time is cheap and preparation optional. The best leaders I work with don’t wing it. They respect people’s time by doing their own thinking first and expecting others to do the same.

And then there’s meeting entitlement, a cultural virus that spreads quickly and quietly. Somewhere along the way, being in the room became shorthand for being relevant. People feel slighted when they’re left off an invite and declining a meeting is seen as disengaged or bad optics.

So, calendars become bloated with people who aren’t needed, who don’t contribute, but feel they have a right to be there. This kind of culture feeds on ego and fear: the fear of missing out, being out of the loop or worse, being seen as less important. If your value depends on being in the room, it might be time to redefine what value looks like.

Less meeting, more leadership

High-trust, high-performing teams don’t need long meetings. They make faster decisions, with fewer people, in less time. They come prepared, speak clearly and don’t need to justify their presence. Their leaders trust them to execute, and they’re given the space to do just that.

Short meetings are a byproduct of a strong culture where clarity, trust and accountability are the norm, not the exception.

As a CEO or senior executive, you have to ask: if your meetings are always running long, what aren’t you trusting your team to do? What prep aren’t you willing to do yourself? And what culture are you tolerating by letting it continue?

The best leaders I work with don’t wear meeting marathons as a badge of honor. They don’t confuse time spent with value created. Instead, they model a different standard:

• Think first, meet second.

• Invite who’s essential.

• Decide quickly and move on.

Shortening is about strengthening your leadership, not just saving time.

So before you send that next 60-minute calendar invite, ask yourself: What’s the real purpose? Who actually needs to be there? And what’s stopping this from being a punchy 25-minute decision session?

If you can’t answer those questions, don’t send the invite.

You don’t need a cultural overhaul to fix your meetings. But when you start running meetings with more clarity, purpose and restraint, you’ll be surprised how quickly the culture starts to shift.

Opinions expressed by The CEO Magazine contributors are their own.