Effective meetings

7 Tips for running Effective Meetings

Make the best use of your time together.

Reflect and adjust

Define your purpose

Be Inclusive

Create a clear agenda

Start on the same page

Make it timely

Invite the right people

7 common meeting types

Decision-making meetings: An action needs to be taken by a group Problem-solving meetings: Group needs to come together to solve a specific problem Team-building meetings: Build cohesion and improve ways of working for a team Brainstorming meetings: Generate new ideas or make links between concepts One-on-one meetings: Meeting scheduled between two people for a specific purpose

Quarterly/strategic planning meeting: Time set aside to focus on strategy and goal executionCheck in meeting: Space to monitor progress on tasks against expected outcome.

Invite the right people

Before sending out that invite, think critically about who needs to be in the 'room' for your meeting.

• Have you included decision makers?
• Are diverse perspectives included?
• Could someone be filled in with meeting notes after the fact instead of attending live?

Limiting the number of attendees typically leads to more effective meetings.

Keep it timely

• Experiment with a 30 or 45 minute meeting instead of 60 minutes.
• Challenge yourself to create and stick to a clear agenda.
• Schedule meetings during your best focus time so you can lead well.

Reflect and Adjust

Try new strategies to make meetings more impactful and then reflect and adjust, as needed.

Watch this brief video from Atlassian on agenda building tips. Check out agenda templates on the wiki.

Be Inclusive

• For hybrid meetings, engage virtual participants early and often
• Make meetings a safe place to ask hard questions
• Assign roles to divide up meeting responsibilities such as a rotating facilitator, notetaker and timekeeper (Bias has a habit of creeping in without this structure.)

• Incorporate ways for different kinds of participation (e.g. for introverted, internal processors, different learning styles, etc.) and ensure participants from traditionally marginalized groups have a chance to contribute."

Check Observance Calendar for Conflicts

Start with the right context

• To make the most of meeting times, try adding an agenda to your meeting invite and or sharing pre-reads ahead of time.

• Sharing context ahead of time helps everyone to make the most of time spent together and supports inclusive meetings by giving everyone the time and resources to participate fully.