How To Reduce Meetings in the Workplace
Introduction Every manager has been in a meeting that went on way too long, or spent too much time discussing things that could have been
How to Write a Great Team Meeting Agenda
Table of Contents
How to Write a Great Team Meeting Agenda
Before you schedule your next meeting, outline your expectations with a team meeting agenda. A meeting agenda keeps the meeting focused, addresses important topics and ensures that you don’t forget anything. Give your employees the same outline so they can take notes and refer back to the agenda as needed. We have many free meeting agenda templates you can get.
Team meetings are infamously boring. With a great agenda, you’ll hold your employees’ attention while covering the objectives. Everyone walks away feeling like they learned something–and they’ll look forward to future meetings. Here’s how to write a great business team meeting agenda.
Steps to Writing a Group Meeting Agenda
According to the agenda definition, an agenda can be a list of topics or minutes for a meeting. Follow these steps to write a dynamic agenda that’s more than a list of topics.
Define Your Objectives
Before you start, choose the topic for this group meeting. What do you want to accomplish? Maybe you want to talk about sales, highlight project results, reflect on the past year, brainstorm new ideas, review everyone’s progress or talk about obstacles. Your meeting could cover multiple topics at once as long as you keep it focused and organized.
Afterward, write a brief overview of your objectives. You don’t have to go into detail, but start the meeting with an overview so your employees know what to expect. This keeps the meeting focused and helps your employees get ready to participate. If you have a loose objective, ask your employees what they want to take away from this meeting.
When you deliver your objectives, get right to the point. A good meeting makes the most of your employees’ time so they don’t miss out on precious working hours. Clearly defining your objectives also keeps your employees focused-if they don’t know what to expect, their minds will wander.
Figure Out What You Need
Next, figure out what you need from employees. For example, do you want everyone to talk about their projects during the meeting? Do you want a specific employee to talk about their sales for the week? Add this information to your team meeting agenda template, and set aside time for every presentation.
Next, tell your employees ahead of time so they have time to prepare. Don’t surprise your employees by calling on them in the middle of the meeting–they won’t know what to say. Instead, send them the agenda and outline your expectations. You can use a software like Meetingforgoals to help you prepare and send out an agenda ahead of time.
๐ PRO TIP: You do not need to start a meeting agenda from scratch. Check out our FREE meeting agenda templates.
Add a time limit to your group meeting agenda. Some presentations get long-winded, so you’ll need to know when to wrap it up and move onto the next objective. You’ll see your employees checking the clock if the meeting goes on longer than planned.
Divide the Agenda into Topics
When you read an article online, you expect the author to divide each topic into different sections. An undivided block of text is practically unreadable. Similarly, when you write your meeting agenda, divide the agenda into topics so you don’t overwhelm your employees with too much information at once.
For example, if you’re reviewing the last quarter, you could divide the agenda into the following subjects:
- Talk about our accomplishments
- Point out sales metrics
- Share statistics from the competition
- Discuss how we could improve
- Talk about our OKR vs. KPI
- Follow up with an action plan
With their agenda in front of them, your employees can follow along and address each topic as it comes up.
Start with Check-in Questions
Engage your employees right away by starting the meeting with a question. Everyone loves talking about themselves, and you’ll be able to share ideas, build relationships and learn from each other. If you want to keep the meeting business-oriented, here’s a few questions you could start with:
- What have you accomplished this week?
- What did you learn from our last project?
- What could our team do to make your performance even better?
- What do you think we should stop doing?
- Which employee deserves a shout-out this week?
- How do you define the difference between a goal vs. objective?
- As a leader, what do you need from me?
- Which company event are you looking forward to the most?
- What motivates you to work hard every day?
If you want to keep the meeting light and conversational, start with a casual question. Try to avoid the standard “How was your weekend?” questions–everyone tunes those out. At the same time, avoid controversial topics that might cause an argument. Here’s a few questions that will get people talking:
- What’s your least favorite song on the radio right now?
- What’s your morning routine like?
- What type of food could you eat every day?
- What was the best trip you ever took as a child?
- What’s a movie that you love but everyone else hates?
- What do you like about being an adult?
Start by answering the morning meeting question yourself so your team learns about you and no one feels like you’ve thrusted them in the spotlight. This is true for skip level meetings as well as meetings with your peers.
Follow Up with Action Items
Once you’ve outlined your objectives, discuss what you’re going to do about it. Add a list of action items to your agenda. These action items can be easily assigned to someone and a due date given during the meeting. This could involve distributing tasks to employees, setting new performance goals, completing training, reaching out to vendors or preparing reports for the team.
At the end of meeting, you could add new action items once you figure out what your employees need. You could also leave the list of action items blank and add them to the agenda when you know how to proceed. Just make sure you give your employees concrete solutions.
At the very least, preparing a good meeting agenda partially ensures that the meeting is productive, provided the other aspects of the meeting hold water. If you are looking for productivity tips then here is a great productivity handbook.
Despite the advantages of having a good meeting agenda, it is one of the most ignored aspects of conducting meetings in the professional context.
Advantages of a Good Meeting Agenda
Before we move into the nuts and bolts of preparing meeting agendas, let us look at why it is essential, and as the organizer, you should care about them.
- Meeting agendas ensure that no critical topics are ignored through lack of time or forgetfulness. If something is on the agenda, it is up to the organizers to make time for it in the meeting.
- The ability to prepare for the meeting is a luxury in today’s workspace, even though we all know that preparation will yield much better outcomes.
- A well-planned meeting schedule ensures that time is managed well and you do not overshoot the meeting duration unless it is inevitable.
- Having a clear meeting agenda also ensures that the meeting stays on track and any diversions are addressed and remedied by the host/organizer.
What to Include in the Team Meeting Agenda
While the requirements of meeting agendas are subjective in that each team has its priorities, there are a few key elements that are common denominators to most meetings.
- Meeting timings and venue: When is it happening and where.
- Main topic: The overarching theme of the meeting (e.g.; review, brainstorming, etc.)
- Sub-topics: The different points we will touch upon during the meeting.
- Objective/goal: The purpose of the meeting and what a successful meeting would entail.
- Overview: Quick summary of things we will discuss, providing context to the shared sub-topics.
- List of attendees: All the stakeholders attending the meeting.
- Relevant documents: Any documents that might help set more context and help attendees prepare for the meeting.
- Pre-requisites: Any conditions or learning attendees must go through to get the most out of the meeting.
- Call to action: Next steps & action items after the meetings and the follow-up strategy.
Use tools to help guide you. You can easily schedule and manage your meetings using a super calendar such as the Routine calendar app. You can also easily create your meeting agenda using Meeting For Goals.
Check out these meeting agenda templates that you can get for free!
Best practices for preparing a good meeting agenda
While the ingredients of an excellent meeting agenda are straightforward, implementing some of these best practices will make this recipe a success.
Seek Input From Team Members
When creating a meeting agenda, you must take input from other stakeholders to include all the critical topics that are feasible and necessary for that meeting.
Select Topics That are Relevant to the Stakeholders
Only invite people who can contribute and those who are necessary for the meeting instead of making a general invitation to the team. A vetted group will make the meeting more productive and effective.
Try to Find Answers to Questions
A meeting should be goal-oriented, and that becomes easier when the agenda of the meeting is framed as answer discovery for essential questions. For example, instead of “Decide on a brand color,” it could be framed as “What color would best represent our brand?”
Classify Topic Goals into Different Sections
Every meeting topic will have its resolution or type. Some topics will entail sharing information, some for seeking input on a decision, and others might be making a decision. Whatever the resolution type, it is important to set this ahead of the meeting.
Estimate and Allocate Time for Topics
One of the most critical responsibilities of the organizer is to estimate and allocate time for topics. This is done to ensure that the meeting doesn’t overshoot and the attendees don’t end up spending a lot of time on something that might not be worth it.
Specify How Attendees Can Prepare for the Meeting
Telling how people can prepare for a meeting will alleviate unnecessary stress of preparation and make for better/more productive meetings.
Try to share documents they can review, tests they can take, colleagues they need to talk to, etc.
Identify POC for Each Topic (if possible)
To make a topic or resolution action, it would help to assign someone from the attendee list the point of contact (POC) for that topic so that people know who to reach out to for clarifications or follow-up.
Final Thoughts
There you have it, How to write a great team meeting agenda! With these tips you are sure to improve your meetings and make them more productive. Prepare your first meeting agenda and send it to your team members by signing up for free here!
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Meeting For Goals Editorial Team
Meetingforgoals helps teams eliminate useless meetings that do not advance the company goals. Our software helps you align meetings to company goals, to have a meeting agenda, allocate action & responsibility and save time. Never have a bad meeting again ๐ช
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