Meeting agendas get a bad rep from teams who are short on time and want to make decisions quickly. But it’s important to remember that what gets talked about gets done, and a good meeting agenda stops you wasting your precious face-to-face time talking about irrelevant topics. Many leaders feel unsure whether they are setting their meetings up the correct way to really resonate with their team and ensure actions are followed through. In this article, we will walk you though the correct way to set up a productive team meeting agenda.
Effective meetings are the backbone of successful teams. Whether you’re brainstorming, making decisions, or aligning on strategy, how you run a meeting can make or break business progress. Too often, people begin meandering discussions which leaves attendees feeling frustrated or unclear about next steps. That’s where good meeting structure and strong facilitation come in.
Businesses lose hundreds of hours a year in unproductive meetings. The average business has 12 meetings a week amongst different departments – every minute adds up to a horrendous amount of lost productivity.
Some common issues that may arise during meetings include:
- Not everyone contributes
- The focus moves away from tasks and instead to people’s issues
- People go down rabbit holes that could be addressed offline
- The focus is less on the problem than the solution
- Not being able to keep the energy up (especially in meetings longer than 30 minutes)
So what’s the best way to fix these issues?
In this business advice blog post, we’ll share our 10 step guide to setting up a productive meeting agenda for team meetings to help you save time, boost employee accountability, and drive results.
1. Decide if a meeting is necessary, or if it should be an email
Meetings are valuable for real-time discussion, decision-making, and alignment, but not every situation calls for one. Consider these two factors to determine if a meeting is necessary:
- Are there more than 3 people involved in the decision that needs to be made? If so, you should run a meeting to get alignment before moving on.
- Is discussion needed to be confident in the decision being made? If not, try to propose a solution over email and drive it forward.
If the topic requires back-and-forth discussion, brainstorming, clarification, or has more than 3 people involved, a meeting can facilitate those conversations better than an email thread.
2. Send out a clear meeting agenda in advance
Setting up a meeting agenda lets participants come prepared and understand the goals of the meeting. Include all relevant documents or information to be discussed so attendees have time to review and contribute thoughtfully.
Some common meeting agenda items can include:
- Wins from the week
- Staff updates
- Campaign overview
- Customer feedback
- Progress updates
- Issues and challenges
3. Start the meeting with an icebreaker
This way everyone is encouraged to contribute during the meeting right from the start, and it sets a collaborative tone.
Icebreakers are simple activities or questions that help everyone feel comfortable and engaged, especially in a virtual setting where participants may be more hesitant to speak up. This creates a friendly atmosphere, encourages participation, and helps participants relax before diving into the more serious topics.
Examples could include quick, fun questions like “What’s your favourite movie?” or “What’s something you learned recently?” or giving time for employees to share successes from the week. Icebreakers are often undervalued parts of the meeting agenda, but they are so important. Here are some good examples of icebreaker questions.
4. Assign roles to each meeting attendee
For example, someone could be assigned the role of detecting when speakers are going down rabbit holes and switching attention back to more important meeting agenda topics. Someone else could act as a timekeeper that would flag when a meeting is close to running overtime.
5. Capture each action discussed on screen
During the meeting, display action items and decisions visibly on the screen in real-time. This could be through shared notes or a collaborative tool like Beyond. Beyond is an all-in-one meeting, action-tracking and strategy platform. Using Beyond to capture each action discussed on screen will help prevent people from individual note taking. This is important for ensuring team alignment.
6. Follow up on actions in the next meeting agenda
Holding participants accountable for what they agreed to in the previous meeting is crucial to maintaining progress. At the beginning of every meeting, review the action items from the last meeting agenda to check if they were completed or need further attention. This establishes a culture of accountability, ensuring that work gets done and people are held responsible for their contributions.
7. Watch your meeting time closely
One of the largest complaints we see employees make about meetings is going overtime. Clarify before team meetings how much time each of your participants has to prevent any frustration.
If you’re looking to reduce your meeting times, you can read now how this board reduced their meeting duration by 50%.
8. Call out any judgement when brainstorming
In a brainstorming session, it’s crucial to foster an open, non-judgmental environment where all ideas are welcome. People are more likely to contribute their creative ideas if they feel safe from criticism. You want to create a space where everyone feels comfortable contributing, especially in a virtual setting. Praise in public, criticise in private.
9. Use AI to help focus on productivity – but don’t let it run your meetings!
AI tools can help with scheduling, note-taking, time management, and other logistical aspects of meetings, but they should never replace human interaction. Let’s not forget meetings are about people and oftentimes there are emotions involved. AI tools don’t have the ability to solve human problems yet.
10. Pick a meeting agenda software to help you run your meetings
Beyond is an excellent tool for managing your team meetings effectively. Running meetings properly can be challenging when you’re handling everything single-handedly. Rather than searching through old PDFs to track assigned actions, Beyond stores all this information in one centralised location, saving you considerable time and effort.
Ready to make your own stellar meeting agenda?
Sign up now for a Beyond free trial and see how you can save time and keep your team properly aligned. Beyond helps you run focused meetings, track progress, and keep your senior leadership team moving forward. No more lost actions or forgotten decisions.