I have never in 25+ years of professional development had a productive meeting with a manager. However I have had plenty of productive meetings with engineers.

I have never in 25+ years of professional development had a productive meeting with a manager. However I have had plenty of productive meetings with engineers. My impression is that most managers mistakenly think they are productive and bringing value when they interrupt the people who are doing the real work. I have been the CEO of a company for 5+ years and in director/management roles for other companies. My teams were way more productive than the competition (according to our customers) and I almost never had meetings. The only rare exception was when a engineer was stuck or spinning his/her wheels. I would then get a few highly respected engineers together and let them help the engineer getting it resolved. All I did was to facilitate the meeting and keep my mouth shut after explaining the problem we needed to get solved. That’s all I needed to do. I probably spent about 1 hour a day on actual work. Mostly fending off bad ideas from other managers, defending the team from clueless managers who wanted to get involved, and making sure our customers stayed informed and happy.