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Good meetings don't happen on their own! Team meetings at work can quickly devolve into chaos without a plan. If you struggle with staff meetings that are not productive, it's time to review your preparation and what needs to improve.
Poor meeting planning wastes business time and leads to projects without focus and tasks that never complete. If your clients aren't happy, this could result from meetings that don't help your team serves clients well.
Check out these tips to strengthen your meetings with a staff meeting agenda template.
Determine the goal
Why are you meeting? A gathering of your team should have a clear purpose before the meeting begins.
Setting an expectation or deliverable helps make the time spent in your meeting more productive. Are you:
- Bringing on a new client?
- Launching a project?
- Having a routine status meeting?
- Needing ideas for a new campaign or product launch?
No matter the purpose, develop the meeting's agenda with the goal in mind. After you know what you need to accomplish with your team, start making a path for it to happen.
Define the meeting time
How much time did you allow for the meeting? Is it enough time? Is it too much?
A quality meeting takes place within just the right amount of time. Building your team meeting agenda starts with knowing how much time you have with your team.
Make sure you book enough time to meet your goal through the meeting. However, booking too much time can be tiring for people in the meeting when a shorter meeting could have been more helpful for their schedules.
Whether you have a quick 30-minute time block set aside or you need a half-day to tackle a project, be smart when booking and planning the amount of time you need.
Document the agenda items
Don't worry about putting the staff meeting agenda in the right order just yet. To start, make a list of all things that need to happen to guide your team through an efficient and fruitful meeting.
A good meeting agenda includes:
- A list of people who need to be there
- Why you've gathered and the meeting's goal
- Background to set the tone of the meeting or set up the desired outcome
- Discussion time for problems or anticipated roadblocks
- Assigning roles
- Deadlines and tasks
- Next steps or a next meeting date
As the meeting owner, you set the agenda and manage the time for each item that needs to occur before the meeting ends. It can help to assign timeframes for each agenda item to keep the meeting on track.
Deliver the agenda
Before the meeting begins, make sure the agenda gets to those on the list to attend. A quick email with the attached plan can help to remind them of the meeting coming soon. With plenty of notice, the agenda in-hand helps your staff come prepared and ready to move through the agenda items.
To help inspire more team meeting ideas, being prepared is key. If you've ever been in a meeting with more silence than talking, it might have lacked enough preparation to keep ideas flowing and people talking.
Making an agenda ahead of time takes time and work, but having fruitful meetings is worth the effort! Using the right meeting preparation app can help minimize the work to outline a plan and conduct better meetings.
Don't delay discussion
Even the best agenda can't make your meeting happen without you! Once you create a good agenda, apply it.
As the meeting owner, you must make sure the group follows the agenda. Watch the clock and keep the discussion focused on the items outlined in the agenda. Assign someone to take notes about decisions, next steps, and assigned roles.
Be sure to end the meeting on time. A schedule helps you stay on task, but sometimes a discussion is too important to cut short simply because the agenda says to move on. However, ending a meeting on time helps your team feel valued as you respect their time.
A good agenda is a guide, but it's not set in stone. If you need more time on an item, set another meeting to dive in deeper. If new ideas or issues come up, adjust the agenda to resolve conversations, then book another meeting (with a fresh agenda) to keep a project moving forward.
Document the meeting
A fruitful meeting isn't worth the time if the decisions and next steps from the meeting get lost after the meeting ends. With the right tools, your team meeting agenda template can easily adapt to meeting notes for everyone who needs a follow-up report.
Make sure your team stays on track with the tasks and role assignments that took place during your meeting. Taking notes in the same application that helped create your agenda keeps everyone on track and informed.
When it's time for a follow-up meeting or to review progress, your agenda and meeting notes go hand-in-hand. Reduce questions when people who came to the meeting can access prior meetings, agendas, and meeting notes to keep projects on track.
Do it again
When you create the right mix of a good agenda, hosting a fruitful meeting, and thorough meeting reporting, repeat it for every meeting! Your staff will love the time you put into better gatherings.
You'll also enjoy more productivity and meetings that run better.
Don't neglect the staff meeting agenda
A meeting without a staff meeting agenda is doomed to fail. However, with the right planning, approach, and tools, meetings become more enjoyable and fruitful!
Let Meetric show you how to transform your company's meetings. Meetric helps you prepare a useful agenda, keeps meetings moving, details clear next steps, and keeps all meeting goers on the same page. Take a tour to learn more!
