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Meetings are one of the most important parts of an organization, especially for those in a leadership position. It is imperative to run meetings using effective techniques and tools that encourage participation from all types of people. This article walks you through ten steps on how to make your next meeting more productive with less hassle than ever before
The “how to give an update in a meeting example” is a free template that will help you run effective meetings. The 10 steps are listed below.
Effective meetings are critical to your company’s success because they guarantee that staff are on board with your goals and are working effectively. You’ll need to prepare ahead, know what you want to accomplish, and develop an agenda to lead a successful meeting.
Here are the procedures to guarantee that your meetings are productive. These are divided and organized by the tasks you should do before, during, and after your sessions. We’ve also provided a free agenda template to assist you in organizing them:
Free Agenda Template for Effective Meetings
Our meeting agenda template has placeholders for each phase of running a successful meeting. You may use it as a guide to arrange your agenda before the meeting, write issues you’ll address during the meeting, and plan next actions following the meeting.
- Download Free Agenda Template for Effective Meetings as a DOC or PDF file
Prepare for your meeting ahead of time.
Before you organize a meeting, think about what you want to get out of it and who needs to be there. A meeting is a method of exchanging information that allows for two-way communication. It may be used to get feedback on choices or guarantee workplace alignment.
A meeting, on the other hand, may not be the most fruitful mode of communication if you’re presenting information rather than seeking conversation. Instead, why don’t you write an email or record a brief audio or video message? It all begins with a clear vision of what you want to achieve.
1. Decide what you want to achieve.
The objective of a meeting should be to discuss project updates, lessons learned, or consumer feedback. There may be no reason to meet if you can’t conceive of one. For example, “weekly or monthly” corporate meetings are useless unless you know what you want to gain out of each meeting event in advance.
Before you organize a meeting, consider why you need to meet in the first place. The following are some questions to consider when deciding if a meeting is the best use of your or your participants’ time:
- Is there any information I need to share with guests that they’ll need to be able to ask questions about?
- Are there any choices on which I’d want participants’ input?
- Is there anything I need to make sure everyone hears and understands in order for them to help fix?
- Is there any compliments I’d want to give in front of the team to encourage others to do better?
- Are there any project changes that team members should be aware of in order to know what they should do next?
- Is there any information or insights from the team that I or others should be aware of?
- Is there any training or safety protocols that need to be updated, reviewed, or comprehended?
2. Create and document a schedule
Create an agenda to help you prepare for your meeting and validate that a meeting is the appropriate method. The agenda will specify what you want to achieve, how long you expect it to take, and who will be the best person to deliver each issue and/or encourage comments on it.
To help you think through your subjects, we’ve included a basic meeting agenda template and an example below. This agenda form will assist you in preparing your meeting and determining who should attend.
This expert in the field of business concurs:
I’ve always found that targeted meetings are the most productive. Start with a goal in mind and move backwards from there—but don’t include anything that isn’t required.
Knowing what you want to get out of the meeting and having an outcome-focused agenda can help you plan the session properly.
— Jim Woodhead, A for Agency’s Managing Director
As an example, consider the following:
Time period and presenter are shown in this example agenda.
3. Determine who will be required to attend.
Many workers despise attending meetings because, very bluntly, the information is irrelevant to the attendees. As a result, just invite the persons whose comments or updates you need to your meeting. Invite folks who have a stake in the project if you’re planning a meeting. Only invite people whose views will be considered if the gathering is to make a decision.
It’s possible that you’ll have more meetings, but they’ll be smaller. Consider if just a tiny portion of the agenda belongs to them instead of forcing a big proportion of workers to attend a major team meeting. If this is the case, have a smaller meeting focused just on that issue, with only those persons whose opinion or buy-in is required.
Woodhead continues:
Keep the guest list as short as possible. Leave folks out if they won’t bring value or are simply making up numbers; they’re wasting time and space.
4. Settle on a Format, Time & Location
You’ll need to decide on a meeting structure in addition to deciding who will attend and what you want to achieve with the meeting. A brief telephone meeting (conference call), for example, may suffice if you need to make a rapid decision that includes numerous individuals. Among the questions you could have concerning the structure of your meeting are:
- Is it necessary for us to meet in person?
- Is it necessary to have the meeting in secret (away from prying eyes)?
- Is it possible to have the meeting over the phone? (Or install a phone line so that those who are far away or traveling can attend?)
- Would a video conference meeting be more convenient for our attendees?
Face-to-face meetings are preferable if you’re presenting sensitive material or an easily misinterpreted subject since they enable meeting participants to ask questions, read body language, and hear replies.
To prevent others from hearing secret material, certain meetings, such as those that include financial information or staff changes such as layoffs, may need to be conducted in a private room or offsite.
If your team is spread apart, a video conference may be the best option. This cuts down on travel time and allows everyone to be in the same “room” much quicker. Your meeting format may be included in your agenda template so that everyone on your guest list is aware of how you want to conduct business.
Choose a time that is convenient for all attendees.
The easiest part is arranging the meeting. Remote workers, those who operate in a different time zone, and non-exempt employees, however, must be taken into account. You’ll also want to schedule your work around your busiest times.
If you manage a restaurant, for example, you could want staff to arrive 30 minutes early for a 30-minute discussion about menu and pricing adjustments. However, some workers may have problems with daycare or transportation before their hours begin.
You may need to arrange the same meeting many times if you have staff that work in various time zones or shifts. If you have hourly workers, asking them to remain an hour late for a meeting might result in you having to pay them overtime.
Duration
The majority of business meetings are planned for one hour. The normal adult’s attention span, on the other hand, is just five to ten minutes. Shorter, more frequent meetings are preferable, with documentation, pre-work, or follow-ups in a different format augmenting the meeting.
Meeting Lengths on Average Attentiv.com is the source of this information.
If your meeting is about sales objectives, for example, give them out or email them ahead of time. Then, see if any of the salespeople have any questions about accomplishing those goals. Your audience may get bored if you merely read the objectives week after week.
By outlining ahead of time what material will be delivered and keeping the meeting focused on those areas that need discussion/understanding and engagement, you may have more focused, but shorter meetings. In other words, if meeting participants can read the material for themselves, the information may not need to be presented or read out.
5. Make a list of those who will be attending.
A meeting may be easily scheduled using an online calendar after you’ve decided on a time. You may also alert your workers that you’ll be holding a meeting if you’re already utilizing a communication app, such as Homebase’s free employee communication and messaging tools.
Consider using Homebase. to help you plan your meeting and keep track of time for hourly attendees. You may join up for Homebase’s free time and attendance software without providing a credit card. Read our Homebase review.
Consider using Homebase.
Managing the Meeting During the Meeting
Two elements that will boost the efficacy of your meeting are how you start and conclude it. We humans like being sociable and keeping up with what’s going on with our peers. Meetings are a good place to do that. Too much socializing, on the other hand, might derail your meeting’s agenda.
If your participants won’t be able to see each other otherwise, invite them to arrive a few minutes early so that your meeting may begin on schedule.
6. Welcome & Greet Attendees
To take advantage of the face-to-face time that participants spend together, some meeting planners choose to open their meetings with a cultural or team-building exercise. They see team development and culture building as important aspects of their meetings.
Even if you don’t want to create relationships with your guests, it’s a good idea to welcome them when they arrive (no differently than you would greet customers walking in your door). Tell them what you’re aiming to achieve. “I’m delighted you’re here,” you may say, for example. In five minutes, we’ll get started. I’m hoping that after this meeting, we’ll all be on the same page.” This helps to concentrate your audience’s attention on the reason they’ve come.
Woodhead provides a few more ideas for productive meetings:
Phones should be left outdoors. When I walk into a meeting, I’ve always been chastised for leaving my phone on my desk or in my bag, but it’s necessary to maintain concentration and attention on the discussion rather than on other issues.
Clients get refreshments, not the staff. When you’re catering and giving tea and cookies, meeting time might seem like dead time. People who are looking forward to their next brew will be able to have it sooner.
7. Review the Agenda & Get Feedback
While it may seem formal, an agenda review is important for setting the tone and keeping your meeting on track. If your meeting is on safety measures, for example, you may discuss the findings of a recent safety audit and decide to adopt three of the recommendations. Then, maybe, in the conclusion, you’ll take questions. Attendees will be more focused as a result of this. It’s also a good idea to give them a deadline, such as “we aim to be finished by noon.”
Before you start talking about your themes, ask the audience if there’s anything they’d want you to address that’s connected to the issue. For example, one participant could have a question about how to discuss safety concerns with others, while another would want to know where to get the MSDS.
If you like the idea, you may put it on your to-do list. If not, write it down and propose a later chat or a one-on-one talk. In either instance, you’ve made guests feel like active participants rather than spectators.
8. Go through your agenda items one by one.
Go through each item on the agenda one by one. You may start each one, go through the subject, get comments, and then go on to the next one. Alternatively, you might request that all questions be postponed until the conclusion. To avoid your meeting becoming a monologue, it’s a good idea to engage your participants throughout it.
To do this, have various participants offer the material, discussion subject, or decision criteria. As a result, you’ll be able to conduct the meeting while also giving your guests a stake in the meeting’s results.
Place items in the meeting room that don’t belong there.
Someone will inevitably bring up a subject or problem that is just indirectly linked to the meeting topic, if not unrelated at all. If you want your audience to remain engaged, put those ideas in a parking lot and tell them you’ll follow up later.
If you make an off-topic remark or ask a question, your meeting may go off course, and other participants may lose interest in you. As Woodhead points out:
Keep your focus on the message. It’s nice when a team gets along, but discussing the football game or the newest piece of news isn’t moving things forward. Drifting away from the issue is a waste of time and energy.
A parking lot might be as basic as a list on a piece of paper, a whiteboard, or a flip chart. Attendees will be confident that their proposal or criticism will not be forgotten if they can see it written down.
One expert’s approach to meetings is as follows:
The first thing I do is center myself by meditating and concentrating on the outcome I want. Because introverts’ energy drains rapidly, this is extremely crucial.
Then, one hour before the meeting, I’ll deliver a well-thought-out plan. Once in the meeting, I established the tone, emphasizing the significance of remaining focused on the group’s purpose.
Finally, I save the questions and comments until last. The advantage of deferring questions till the conclusion is that doing so risks leading participants into a rabbit hole and detracting from the meeting’s purpose.
— Deborrah Ashley, Thrivoo Marketing’s Authority Positioning Strategist
9. Make a list of the next steps.
When holding meetings, one of the most common errors made by company owners and managers is failing to capture the next actions. If you make a choice at a meeting, such as to modify a practice or finish a project, you must record and follow up on that decision. Otherwise, the words will float about in the air until someone asks, “Whatever happened to that?” at the next meeting.
In other words, someone must be responsible for each action item, decision, or next step’s follow-up.
You may keep track of results, choices, and follow-ups in the next steps area of our template. Give each one a name. It’s a good idea to provide a follow-up date so that each agreement is fulfilled within a reasonable time limit.
Here’s an illustration:
At the conclusion of each meeting, the next actions should be written down.
After Your Meeting: Recap & Follow Up
If an issue is serious enough to warrant a meeting, it is important enough to follow up on. This may be accomplished by sending a simple email to remind participants of the terms of their agreement. Alternatively, you may plan project activities in advance to ensure that the following actions are performed and finished.
Consider utilizing Insightly for free Software for Project Management that can be used to monitor due dates and deliverables in any sector. You may customize your activities and process in Insightly to match your specific business requirements. On Insightly, we wrote a review.
Consider using Insightly.
10. Make sure you’re following up on your action items.
You may also use our template to keep track of your follow-up chores. Following up on the following items is a good idea:
- For people who have accepted particular duties, reminders regarding deadlines are sent.
- Follow up on action items you’ve committed to supply, such as information.
- Changes that must be made to procedures or documentation
- Feedback on ways to make future meetings better
Whether you want to know if your meeting was worthwhile, email a feedback form that includes questions like: What did you find most valuable? What can we do to make our next meeting better?
Free survey tools, such as Survey Monkey, are just one of many free business apps that you can find useful for your small company.
Next Steps Email Template is a free email template that you can use to document your next steps.
Here’s a basic email template for reminding guests of follow-up tasks. If this is a regular meeting, you may wish to remind attendees of the next meeting’s date and time so they can “save the date.”
- As a DOC or TXT file, you may download the template.
Here’s an illustration.
Thank you very much for coming to our team meeting! Here are some more reminders.
- This week, be sure to say hello to new team members Emily and Caleb!
- Changes to Homebase will be reflected in our timekeeping documentation.
- Don’t forget to place your order for t-shirts and sweatshirts before Friday.
- After Friday, those of you who wish to distribute the news release on your own social media pages may do so. On our website, a link will be displayed.
Please save the date for our next meeting, which will take place at 9 a.m. on Monday!
Meetings Alternatives
If your initial preparation phase (before to your meeting) revealed that you don’t actually need to meet, but merely need to communicate information or obtain feedback, you may want to investigate one of these other meeting options.
Communication Instruments
Communication Instruments like phone, text, and email are obvious. But newer communication and collaboration tools allow you to accomplish many of the same things that a meeting would accomplish in much less time.
Let’s assume your sales staff meets every Friday afternoon to review the week’s sales. Could that data be connected in a Slack spreadsheet, or could a graphic from your CRM program be forwarded?
Instead of debating the data that each team member can see or read for themselves, you may cut your meeting short and concentrate on sales recommendations.
Slack, a free online communication and collaboration platform, may be useful for exchanging basic information and addressing inquiries that may not need a meeting. Alternatively, you might utilize Homebase’s communications features in addition to scheduling and time monitoring. Homebase is a completely free service.
Consider using Homebase.
Software for Project Management
Project management tools can accomplish what many meetings set out to do—keep everyone on the same page. The best Software for Project Management clarifies who does what, and when.
It may also provide links to documents and inform you of what occurs before and after each activity. These kind of tools may help you save endless hours of meeting time. Employees and team members may independently locate the information they need.
Insightly is a Software for Project Management that starts at free for up to two users and can be used by small businesses to keep track of internal activities or to monitor projects for clients.
Consider using Insightly.
Feedback/Survey Tools
Employee data, ranging from workplace happiness to tools required to be more productive, may be collected using survey tools instead of meetings. In fact, they could be more successful than holding a meeting to ask the same questions, since some people (19.5%) feel hesitant to give their opinions in a group setting.
Let’s imagine you’ve just introduced new software and have heard some complaints. Consider doing a feedback survey instead of holding a team meeting where only the loudest will voice their issues and others may remain mute.
Find out what they like about it. Find out what they believe they need more training in. Inquire about their difficulties. In a conference, exposing this information may take hours, however a well-written survey could get to the crucial elements much faster.
You may then convene a meeting to share the findings with the team, as well as your care and concern. Then, at your discussion, discuss how you’ll deal with the software implementation challenges.
Zoho Survey is one of a number of free small business tools available. It provides free access to confidential employee surveys with up to 15 questions and 150 replies.
Test out Zoho Survey.
Peer Coaching/Training
Many firms and managers believe it is necessary to meet with workers in order to give training. Group training in a meeting style, on the other hand, is only effective in two situations: new recruits and new systems.
New employees are learning the ins and outs of your company. As a result, meeting with them as a group during their onboarding period is an excellent idea. It’s also a good idea to go through the changes (and answer queries) as a group when you deploy new systems like software or processes.
If some workers are younger and others have been around for a long, coaching and training don’t function well in a team meeting setting. The reason for this is that experienced workers will be bored (since they already know the knowledge), while new employees will be scared (because they don’t want to ask questions that their colleagues may consider foolish).
As a result, rather than holding a huge meeting, if you’re delivering coaching or training, it’s ideal to do it in smaller, homogenous groups or one-on-one, where the content is relevant to each participant.
Most Commonly Asked Questions (FAQs)
To assist you in planning a good meeting, consider the following questions and answers:
Is There Such a Thing as Too Long for a Meeting?
Of course, it is contingent. If a tailgate safety briefing on a job site lasts more than 10 minutes and employees are ready to go to work, it may be too lengthy. If meetings are scheduled back-to-back, office sessions that take more than 50 minutes often lead participants to be late for their following meeting.
The organization of a meeting and the aim of a meeting are more essential than the duration of the meeting. Business managers, for example, may be able to remain interested for hours during strategic planning sessions if the meetings are well-structured, with enough of activities, breaks, and interaction. To ensure that your meeting is a beneficial use of everyone’s time, we suggest concentrating less on the meeting time period and more on the meeting agenda.
What Does Meeting Management Entail?
The process of arranging or hosting a meeting is referred to as meeting management. As the meeting manager, your job would be to ensure that the meeting started on time, that the business objectives on the agenda were met, that the meeting ended on time, and that action items were documented.
Frequently, the meeting manager is also in charge of scheduling and post-meeting follow-up. Meeting scheduling and taking notes may, however, be transferred to a helper, such as an administrative assistant, in bigger firms.
Meeting management also requires the ability to control meeting disruptions, such as a participant who wanders off subject. Distractions and off-topic talks should be acknowledged by recommending that they be put in the parking lot for subsequent follow-up.
What Makes a Staff Meeting Unique From Other Meetings?
A staff meeting is one that is intended for all employees to attend. It will usually contain policy updates, procedure modifications, and subjects that are relevant to all employees. It might be organized to start with successes, then introduce new employees, before going on to important events or dates.
New business, policy changes, or lessons learned may be discussed during your meeting. It might also be utilized to deal with business difficulties. Staff meetings might range from a five-minute huddle at the start of each day to hours offsite with all team members every quarter.
How Should a Conference Call Agenda Be Revised?
Attendees on a phone or video conference might easily get distracted by their surroundings and lose focus throughout the discussion. As a result, if feasible, include remote participants in the meeting by having them deliver a portion of the agenda or answering questions.
Aside from that, remote participants should be given the agenda ahead of time so they may print or read it online and follow along. If you’re looking for a video conferencing service, have a look at our list of the top three best for small businesses.
In addition, if you want remote participants to provide replies ahead of time, consider having them examine materials or prepare responses prior to the meeting. This method also works for face-to-face meetings.
Conclusion
You may typically save time at a meeting by spending 10 to 15 minutes of your own time preparing for it. This makes it more beneficial for everyone who has been invited. Shorter meetings, more successful meetings where real work is performed, and meetings that produce outcomes will all be the norm. Make your meetings more productive by following the tips we’ve given.
When it comes to meetings, there are a lot of things that can go wrong. If you want to run effective meetings, you need to make sure that your meeting is on track. To do this, you should use the “meeting status” command in Slack.
Related Tags
- project status meeting agenda template
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