---
title: How we meet as leaders
slug: how-we-meet-as-leaders
description: "Why leadership meetings exist, and how to use the time well."
humans: ["jonni-lundy"]
updated_at: "2026-09-21"
created_at: "2026-09-21"
---

If you are a leader, it means you're very busy. You are probably feeling the weight of a giant backlog, trying to squeeze in as much IC work as possible, and balancing the many nuanced needs of your team.

This can cause us to put our heads down and see leadership meetings as a waste of time. After all, not all the topics pertain to your area, so why should you care?

Let me share why we meet and how we can make it impactful.

## Why we meet

There are many reasons for us to meet, but here are a few:

### Alignment

First of all, we meet to sharpen our alignment. A great leader with a great team can be ineffective if they are rowing in their own direction in the organization. Making sure we are pointed in the same direction, focused on the same mission, and helping each other where we're struggling is essential for leaders.

In fact, you are a leader not only because you can lead your team, but also because you are someone who is tasked with thinking beyond the daily work of your team. How can you do that well without alignment with the rest of the company?

### Empathy

Also, we meet to increase our empathy for each other. It's a tale as old as time: companies grow, teams stop talking to each other, and eventually start to blame each other for all the problems. We need to hear how each other are doing to understand the humanity behind our struggles. Empathy leads to understanding, and understanding leads to trust, and trust leads to collaboration.

### Safe place

As a leader, you may have thoughts or feelings that you don't feel you can share with your team. This can wear you down to not have a place to share concerns, doubts, or questions.

Leadership meetings are a place to share those inner thoughts with a room full of folks also trying to lead their areas. Most problems we face as leaders are isolated to a single area so the discussion often introduces helpful awareness to the rest of the group.

## How we meet

With a gathering of busy leaders, we need to maximize the time. Here are some guidelines to use the time well.

### Be ready

Prepare your own thoughts before the meeting and share in the agenda document. Pre-read the agenda and other leaders' updates before joining.

If you are bringing a topic for discussion, consider any and all ways you can prepare the group for it before joining. Write out context in Slack or in the agenda document. Clearly articulate the prompt you're wanting the team to respond to.

### Be brief

We should all sharpen our ability to distill ideas down to their core. This is good for leadership contexts like this but also for your team. Finish your update in 2-3 minutes. If you need to go longer on a specific topic, be more brief on other topics.

Also, be conscious of how deep you go into your domain. It's immensely helpful for the greater group to understand your context, but we all have technical areas that are not pertinent to the whole group. Share the pain, briefly share the context, and opt for async for deeper context sharing.

### Be clear

Ask yourself "What about my problem does the team need to know to take action?" For some topics, you may find that the group needing to take action is not this broader leadership group but instead a sub group like a squad or department. In that case, be extremely brief about the issue but lead with the greater context for that audience. Just remember, the way you share your thoughts could dictate if that problem gets solved at Resend or not.

Like any good essay or codebase, what we remove is just as important as what we add. Be careful not to fall into the trap of "adding to look busy". The amount shared in leadership meetings doesn't make you a good or bad leader, the quality and signal density of what you share does.

### Be engaged

It will never get easier to carve out time for a meeting when you have a million things to do. If you feel that the leadership meetings are truly a waste of your time, please ping me. Otherwise, come ready to be fully engaged, asking questions, and sharing thoughtful updates.

One person disengaged can drag the whole group down. It's better to not join if you truly cannot take the time, than to be yawning, spinning up agents, or scrolling on X while we meet.

### Be honest

Resend is proudly a low-ego team. We don't follow the whims of a single personality or flash extravagant titles or assume we have to have the right answer. That culture lives or dies on the leadership team. The way we treat each other and show up for each other will dictate how our teams feel and interact with each other.

Don't sugarcoat the problems you see or are responsible for. We all make mistakes and if you don't, you are lying to yourself and not growing. With gentleness and generosity, raise your hands when we fall into group think, lack of action, or settling for the status quo.