Deciding who should attend a meeting should be as simple as determining who needs to participate or be informed and who doesn't. This decision is based on job tasks and responsibilities. Often, however, other factors come into play. Call it politics, call it personalities, call it whatever you like — but all managers sometimes feel compelled to include employees who really don't need to be there.

Sometimes this is a worthwhile means of preserving the peace and encouraging a sense of teamwork. If all of a department's employees routinely attend meetings with the same one or two employees excepted, there are bound to be hurt feelings. Those employees will feel left out not only of meetings but also of the team and its work. Depending on the personalities involved, you can talk with those people to explain the reasons and get a sense of how they feel about it. Or you might just decide to include them so they don't feel left out. Sometimes arbitrary factors determine who attends a meeting and who doesn't. These factors might include the meeting's location or time, the size of the meeting room, and other logistical issues.

If so many meetings are unnecessary, why even have them? If two or more people need to know the same information, it makes sense to get them together so you need to present the information just once. If people need to know different pieces of information about the same topic, it might make sense to bring them together — or it might be more effective to speak to each one separately. And if two or more people need to know different information about different topics, it's seldom efficient or effective to bring them together. They'll certainly tune out on topics that don't pertain to them, diminishing the likelihood that they'll pay attention to the information that does relate to them.