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Here's another one that's a bit less obvious: anytime you're scheduling a 1x1 with a report, ALWAYS mention the reason for the meeting. You might think it's obvious or that it's just a normal meeting, but you have no idea how the other person will take it.

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Yeah, I have a close family member who was a manager. Got called in to a meeting expecting to present a monthly report and basically got fired. Traumatised to this day.

"Come to my office for a 1:1 at 3:30. You're getting fired."

The problem with always mentioning the reason is that it then stands out when you don't. Sometimes there is something unpleasant to discuss that you can't put in a meeting invite.

One could argue that the firing decision should be communicated in a meeting intended to discuss either some incident that causes the firing or a previously scheduled meeting on the progress (i.e. lack of it) a performance improvement plan or some equivalent. Firing should not be arbitrary, there's some reason for it that the person would/should know, so that reason (whatever it may be) is a reasonable topic to mention in the meeting invite.

When I was instructed to deliver someone's layoff paperwork I had to do this. I scheduled a meeting with the guy with no good purpose, just a meeting in a weird room nobody usually uses for meetings (we were laying off a lot of people). He immediately asked me what it was for, and of course I couldn't answer. He knew then exactly what it was about.

To expand - every meeting should have a clear agenda that is communicated beforehand. How can anyone expect to be prepared for a meeting if they don't even know what it's about? Spend the 60 seconds it takes to put a description on your meeting request.

Signed, someone who works at a company with a culture of sending blank meeting invites

Yeah. At least twice I got called into a higher-up's office, shut the door, and then they talked about something totally normal that didn't need to be private because the rest of the team was also working on it.

I freeze up sometimes when my flatmate says to me "Hey I'd like to talk to you about something" and then waits a few seconds before bringing up something totally everyday thing that's not a complaint, while I've already flicked through my mental rolodex of possible co-living infractions several times for candidate complaints.

+1 to this being a bad habit. Even when it's not vaguely threatening (which is the default), it's still annoying.

When on the receiving end of a contextless meeting request I usually say, "Sure, what do you want to talk about?"

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