Social Loafing and the “CYA” Tax: How to Reclaim Your Team’s Momentum
Why the real work is building a culture that doesn’t need the meeting
Most conversations about meetings focus on time management.
How many meetings are too many?
Which invites should you decline?
How do you protect your calendar?
Those are reasonable questions—but they miss the point.
The real issue isn’t meetings. It’s the culture that creates them.
Meetings as a cultural signal
In many organizations, meetings have quietly become a substitute for collaboration.
Research published in MIT Sloan Management Review shows that senior managers now spend nearly 23 hours a week in meetings, up from less than 10 hours in the 1960s. That increase didn’t happen because work got better—it happened because work got safer inside a room.
When ownership is unclear…
When people aren’t sure what they’re allowed to decide…
When trust feels thin… They meet.
Meetings feel responsible. They feel inclusive. They feel safe. But often, they’re just rituals, habits that slow momentum while giving the appearance of progress.
Every meeting a leader attends teaches the organization what matters. Every meeting a leader doesn’t question reinforces the idea that gathering is the works.
The uncomfortable truth: the CYA tax
A heavy meeting culture is often born from CYA (Cover Your Assets) culture.
In psychology, this shows up as diffusion of responsibility—when many people share a decision, no one truly owns the outcome. When ten people are in the room, failure becomes collective and accountability becomes blurry.
When people don’t feel safe making decisions, work turns defensive:
- Meetings become documentation
- Invites become insurance
- Attendance becomes proof
Not because people want to waste time—but because being seen feels safer than being decisive. In these environments, meetings aren’t about collaboration. They’re about spreading risk thin enough that no one carries it alone.
That’s the CYA tax—and it compounds daily.
The physics of the crowd
In psychology, this is called social loafing—the tendency for individuals to exert less effort when they are part of a group than when they work alone.
When you invite ten people to “align,” you aren’t gaining ten times the brainpower. You are often giving nine people permission to hide behind the tenth. The meeting becomes a sanctuary for the unaccountable.
What looks like inclusion is often dilution.
What feels like collaboration quietly erodes ownership.
What I learned early as a manager
When I was a young manager, I didn’t run many formal meetings. Instead, I spent time sitting on the floor of my team members’ offices—leaning against the doorway, actively listening and speaking only when warranted.
No agenda.
No slides.
No hierarchy.
I’d ask one simple question:
“What’s your biggest stuck?”
And then I stayed as long as it took to work through it. That posture mattered. By sitting on the floor, I reduced authority without giving it up. Sitting in the doorway signaled openness—anyone could see, hear, or join. Knowledge wasn’t siloed; it was shared in real time.
Those conversations did more to move work forward than a dozen hour-long calendar blocks ever could.
Floor time became solutions time
Those moments weren’t about taking ownership away. They were about momentum. I knew my team well enough to know who had the right knowledge at the right moment. Sometimes that meant pulling someone in briefly—not to form a committee, but to unlock a decision.
Not a shift of ownership. A tool.
It taught the team three things quickly and clearly:
- You’re trusted to own your work
- You’re allowed to ask for help
- Collaboration accelerates—it doesn’t dilute accountability
When leaders make it safe to be stuck—and normal to solve things quickly and informally—the need for performative meetings disappears.
Work together, not meet together
Healthy cultures don’t require constant coordination.
They create clarity around:
- Who owns what (real accountability)
- What the business objective actually is
- When collaboration adds value—and when it doesn’t
In those cultures, people don’t ask, “Who should we invite?” They ask, “Who can help us move this forward?”
Meetings stop being wide-ranging and knee-deep in department names. They become focused, purposeful—or unnecessary.
The leader’s real job
Leaders don’t just manage calendars. They design environments.
They set the tone for:
- How safe it is to think out loud
- How decisions get made
- Whether presence or judgment gets rewarded
When leaders default to meetings, teams learn to wait. When leaders model curiosity, clarity, and intentional engagement, teams learn to act.
The most productive leadership moments often don’t show up on a calendar at all.
A quiet challenge
Before accepting the next meeting—or sending one—pause and ask:
- Is this solving a real problem or soothing uncertainty?
- Does my presence add value, or am I reinforcing a habit?
- Would a five-minute doorway conversation move this faster than a thirty-minute invite?
Culture is built in small, visible choices.
Where you sit. How you listen. When you show up, and when you don’t.
And sometimes, the most powerful leadership move you can make is to sit on the floor, lean into the doorway, and let real work happen.
About the Author
Andrew Bloo is a leadership strategist, writer, and the creator of the HITSLeadership™ framework. With decades of experience leading teams across industries, Andrew focuses on helping leaders reduce organizational friction, replace performative habits with clarity, and build cultures where people can think, decide, and move work forward with confidence. His work centers on practical, human-centered leadership that values presence, trust, and intentional action over noise and ceremony.