Nobody wants to attend a meeting that’s boring, poorly-planned, or stressful. The key to any successful meeting begins with preparation. If you start with a good plan, you have better odds of a successful and focused meeting that your attendees will feel good about.

In the Harvard Business Review article, “How to Design an Agenda for an Effective Meeting,” Roger Schwarz, organizational psychologist, speaker, and leadership team consultant, explained how vital the agenda is: “An effective agenda sets clear expectations for what needs to occur before and during a meeting. It helps team members prepare, allocates time wisely, quickly gets everyone on the same topic, and identifies when the discussion is complete. If problems still occur during the meeting, a well-designed agenda increases the team’s ability to effectively and quickly address them.”

We’d love to share with you the recipe for writing constructive agendas so that you can start having effective meetings today.

Six Ways to Create More Effective Agendas

1. Set Clear Objectives

Before you begin to piece together a meeting agenda, you must first clearly identify the objective of the meeting. Make sure you can clearly articulate WHY you are having this meeting and WHAT you need to accomplish by the end. Make your focus even more finite and identify if the purpose of addressing the objective is to inform, seek input for a decision, or receive help in making a decision. The angle will determine how you structure your agenda, and therefore your meeting. 

We follow a set of meeting mantras at Voltage Control to keep us from wasting precious time and resources at scheduled gatherings. Take a few moments to get clear on the big goal of your meeting and the objectives you need to meet by the end of it.

2. Focus on Essential Topics

Once you identify the purpose, it is time to begin agenda construction. Rule one of facilitation club is to help the group communicate as effectively as possible. One way to help this is by eliminating any topics or talking points that do not coincide with the purpose of the meeting and the goal of trying to be reached. 

Clearly define the essential topics, with each serving as a segment of the meeting. Arrange them in order of importance or relevance to create a natural flow as the meeting unfolds.

3. Set a Realistic Schedule

A robust agenda helps facilitation run smoothly and produce successful results. Take your meeting outline and assign each segment a specific time slot. Go with your instinct. This is a skill that will improve over time. If you don’t set time boxes around your activities, you can bet that you won’t get to everything on your list. However, this doesn’t mean you’re inflexible. For example, if a meaningful conversation happens and takes up more time than expected, check-in with the group, acknowledge that you’re going over, and figure out where to shave-off time later in the agenda.

If you are planning a more extended meeting, be sure to build in ample time for breaks. Keep in mind that the ideal meeting length is no longer than 60 minutes. Build these breaks into your plan at times when you think energy will be waning.

Finalize the timing by naming a start time and end time, then stick to them. With up to 55 million meetings held each day, and employees averaging six hours per week attending them, one of the top reasons so many people dread meetings is the fear of it being too long or running past the end time, cutting into their own work time. 

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When you build a reputation of ending meetings at the scheduled time, attendees are more likely to develop trust and increased liking to attending, which will boost morale and help productivity. Finishing on time is respecting everyone else’s time.

4. Work Collaboratively

If you are scheduling a long meeting, you might want to call in help. Two heads are better than one. Find a partner who can help you build the agenda and meeting activities collaboratively. Having an agenda partner also helps you stay on track–do they see something you don’t? You can more easily identify any holes or issues with the agenda when you have a second set of eyes.

5. Reflection Time

One of the commonly overlooked aspects of an effective meeting agenda is not making time to debrief. It is imperative that you schedule in time to reflect on what was discussed and decided on in the meeting 

Establish post-meeting tasks to bring the decision made in the meeting to life and keep the forward momentum going. Set clear deadlines for when these tasks need to be completed before the meeting is adjourned so that everyone knows what is expected of them, and steady and timely progress can be made.

6. Write it down

Once you’ve gotten your agenda where you want it, you’ll need to put your schedule down in words. Send them the plan beforehand. Doing so allows everyone the opportunity to look it over and consider what will be discussed and prepare before they enter the meeting, which improves meeting quality and discussion. You could also take a bit more time and use a template like these here to create a more detailed and professional looking agenda

It is also beneficial to hand out a physical copy of the agenda or display it on a projector if in-person, or send it in an email or share it on Zoom if virtual, from the start of the meeting. A visual reference present throughout the session helps to keep the group on task.

A meeting is only as strong as its agenda.

Need help designing your next big meeting?

Voltage Control facilitates design thinking workshops, innovation sessions, and Design Sprints. Please reach out at hello@voltagecontrol.com for a consultation.

The post A Recipe for Writing a More Effective Meeting Agenda appeared first on Voltage Control.

Here on the Voltage Control blog, we talk a lot about becoming better facilitators – but facilitation isn’t the only key ingredient to having a magical meeting. The entire meeting process, from the very beginning through the metaphorical epilogue, needs to be managed with care and intention. Here are our top 12 tips for effective meeting management at all stages of your meeting planning process.

The Before

Familiarize Attendees with Tools Beforehand

If you are using any kind of tool beyond a piece of paper and a pen in your meeting, provide these tools to your participants ahead of time along with instructions on how to become familiar with them. Throwing tools at your participants minutes (or mere moments!) before they are to be used sets them up for failure. What’s worse, struggling with the tools early on in a meeting is likely to knock their confidence and lower their participation and level of engagement from that point forward. If you plan to use many unfamiliar tools or tools that are complicated to learn, consider scheduling a short orientation before your actual meeting. Taking 30 minutes to give your participants a 101 on their toolkit can make all the difference.

Set Clear Goals & Communicate Them Ahead of Time

Your participants should never walk into a meeting without an understanding of what it is meant to accomplish, nor should you be planning a meeting without a clear objective in mind. Focus, engagement, and clarity of thought during your meeting will dramatically increase if participants have time to think about the project, problem, decision, or discussion at the core of your meeting ahead of time. Send invitees a brief on the meeting’s goals and expectations along with their invitation; this will allow them to decide whether they feel able to contribute in a meaningful way before responding to your invitation.

Create an Agenda Tailored to Your Goals

Build your agenda with intention – and build it around the objective of your meeting. Copying and pasting the same vague agenda points time and time again will not serve your meeting’s purpose or the work of its participants. Each item on your agenda should have a definable purpose in service of the larger objective. Avoid non-interactive presentations, lectures, and infodumps; your meeting should be spent doing the work. Don’t forget to include breaks and to pad your agenda items with a little extra time in anticipation of questions, unexpected delays, and longer-than-expected discussions.

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Be Strategic About the Logistics

Meeting management can require a great deal of time spent considering logistics. This time may not seem particularly exciting at first glance, but don’t disregard the logistics of your meeting as insignificant. These details can make or break the efficiency and effectiveness of your meeting. For example – did you know Mondays are the worst day to hold a meeting, followed closely by Friday afternoons? Afternoon meetings tend to perform better than morning meetings, with Tuesday afternoons holding the award for the best time to meet. Where you meet also matters. Is the room you want available at the time of your meeting? Does it have the equipment that you need? What is the atmosphere like? If you’re meeting virtually, does your meeting software have the correct capabilities for the activities you’ve planned? Approach the logistics of planning your meeting with a strategy in mind.

The During

Be a Leader, Not an Official

Group meetings are for collaboration, not for status reporting. When you’re in the meeting room, you are not a supervisor – you are a leader. It is your responsibility to guide your team to do the most effective, meaningful work that they are capable of, not to be a supervisor behind a desk waiting for updates. Get your hands dirty. Participate. Engage. Be a leader, not an official.

Be a Friend to the Facilitator

If you’ve managed the planning of your meeting but opted to bring in an outside facilitator – or perhaps another member of your organization – to facilitate the meeting you have planned, be a friend to the facilitator. If you see something that you think the facilitator may be missing, whether that be something big like misalignment or something small like a question, help your facilitator become aware of it. If you have insight or perspective that your outside facilitator may not have any way of knowing, bring that into the room and help them better understand the context that your participants already understand. Watch for ways you can make the facilitator’s job more efficient or effective and assist them in those ways.

Bring a Scribe

Managing a meeting (and/or facilitating a meeting) requires full focus and attention. Bring a scribe to take notes for you so that you can give the discussions and activities your attendees are participating in your full attention. Your scribe can help participants move forward by creating a visible record of the decisions that have been made and subjects that have been discussed, which will help prevent circular conversation. They can also keep a record of who is responsible for what tasks after the meeting is over so that no one leaves the meeting wondering, ‘wait, who was supposed to do that?’

Stick to the Agenda, But Not Too Closely

Your agenda is not a suggestion, but it’s also not a holy book; it should be followed, but not to the letter of the law. Aim to finish each discussion and activity within the allotted time frame, but if good work is being done it may be best to go a little long and shave time off later in the agenda. Striking a balance between time management and flexibility requires you to be in the moment but thinking two steps ahead. Ultimately, what matters is progress towards your objective; keep your end goal in mind at all times and use your time however will best serve your arrival at that goal.

The After

Archive All Meeting Documents

Keep every artifact from your meeting that you can – the agenda, MURAL workspaces, Google Docs, hand-written notes, etc. Non-digital artifacts can be stored in an archive drive as scans or pictures. By creating a record of the work your participants have done through the course of your meeting, you can communicate this work to other teams within your organization asynchronously. Showcasing your team’s work in this way helps keep everyone in the org in-the-know and may inspire other teams to have more magical meetings as well. Documents from your meeting archive can also be referenced when questions about past decisions arise; you’ll have a record of exactly how and why that decision was reached. This will prevent you from rehashing the same conversations over and over.

Send a Follow-Up

Directly following the ending of your meeting, send a follow-up email in which you reiterate key points and decisions that were made. This should include next steps for the team as a whole and a list of individual subsequent tasks as well as who is responsible for each one. As the meeting manager, do this before you even leave the meeting space while your memory is still fresh. This follow-up should also include a link to your archived meeting documents so that participants can reference them as they continue onward with their next steps.

Follow Through

After following up, follow through. Meeting management isn’t over when the meeting is over; you must continue to manage the continuation of the projects, procedures, and decisions at the core of your meeting. Check in with your team about the tasks and responsibilities assigned to them during the meeting and offer them guidance should they need it. What happens in your meeting must be carried into the future or the time has been wasted. Don’t leave the good work behind in the meeting room.

Solicit Feedback

Be sure to ask your participants for feedback about your meeting – both positive feedback and constructive criticism. Even the most magical meetings can always be better, and even the most effective meeting managers have something to learn. While it is great to include time during your debrief in the meeting room to offer feedback, there is something to be said about hindsight. Setting up a google form is a great way to gather anonymous feedback from your team after your meeting is over; just be sure to include the link in your follow-up email.

Want to learn more about how to run better meetings?

Check out our upcoming workshops & events! We host regular meetups, boot camps, summits, and virtual workshops–from Professional Virtual Facilitation Training to our annual Control the Room Facilitator Summit. Learn more: https://voltagecontrol.com/events 

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Culture of any kind is complex and multi-faceted. Meeting culture is no different; there isn’t one silver bullet that will completely transform your team’s meeting culture, as it is made up of a lot of little pieces.

Fortunately, those little pieces can be organized inter larger buckets to make tackling them bit-by-bit less overwhelming. Here’s Voltage Control’s recipe for a better meeting culture. 

Psychological Safety

Collect Feedback Often (and Anonymously)

Collecting and implementing feedback is one of the most important things you can do to make your meetings better. Good meeting culture is not one-size-fits-all; different teams need or desire different environments and expectations. Sometimes finding the right fit for your team is going to take some trial and error. Feedback is how you turn the error into a learning opportunity.

Collect feedback often, and do it anonymously. Teams who are given opportunities to provide feedback regularly become more comfortable with the practice, thus giving better feedback. Anonymous feedback is particularly valuable because it can uncover major issues with psychological safety or flaws in the system that team members may be uncomfortable calling out publicly.

Everyone’s Input is Equal (Not Just Management’s)

The unspoken assumption on any team is that management’s opinions are the ones that matter and everyone else is just there to do their job. This dynamic damages the work of the team by limiting their room intelligence and stifling diversity of thought. The only way to fight against it is to openly state that this assumption is untrue – and then follow through on valuing the input of every team member.

Lay Out Expectations for Handling Conflict

Good meetings where real, deep work is happening are bound to result in disagreement, which sometimes breeds conflict. Your team knows this, and it may result in hesitance to contribute with confidence (or contribute at all) during group discussions or collaborative work. This can cause circular conversations in which no one wants to take a real stance or – worse – great ideas to never be spoken.

By laying out clearly defined expectations and procedures for handling conflict, disagreements will be less daunting for your team. They will know exactly what to expect from conflict and be given peace of mind that escalation will not occur. Pre-established expectations for conflict will turn disagreements into an expected, routine part of collaboration rather than an unpleasant social interaction to avoid at all costs.

Ask Your Team What They Need

Just like good meeting culture, psychological safety is not one-size-fits-all. The best thing you can do is ask your team what they need to feel safer, more confident, and more heard.

Clearly Outlined Procedures & Expectations

Meeting Mantras

Here at Voltage Control, we live and die by our meeting mantras. They are our holy grail for successful meetings at our company. Implementing a short list of meeting mantras within your team helps keep good meeting habits top-of-mind. Post them on the walls of your meeting rooms (virtual or physical) and reference them until they are second-nature.

Meeting mantras should help your team improve their efficiency and be more intentional during meetings. Our meeting mantras are a great starting point, but allowing your team to collaborate on a list of their own may yield better results. Team members will be more likely to take the mantras to heart and adopt better meeting habits if they have a hand in creating them.

Send Agendas Early

Your team should never walk into a meeting room unsure of what they will be doing. Send meeting agendas with enough time to give everyone a fair chance to read them over. Participants who are able to look over the agenda in advance will have ample time to prepare; this may mean familiarizing themselves with tools, reading up on a subject they are unfamiliar with or preparing thoughts on a particular project or issue.

Sending agendas early will also give the meeting host an opportunity to receive feedback on both agenda points and chosen invitees. If a participant feels that very on the agenda is relevant to them or their work, they will have an opportunity to suggest another team member who may help the participants do better work than they could. If participants do not understand how agenda points are in service to the goal of the meeting, they will have the opportunity to give that feedback, allowing you to make adjustments to your agenda (or clarify the meeting’s objective).

Distribute Debriefs With Next Steps

Directly after a meeting ends, a debrief should be sent out to all participants reiterating next steps. Any tasks or responsibilities assigned to team members should be clearly listed with the time frame that they need to be completed in. Key discussion points and decisions should be recapped. If applicable, instructions for providing anonymous feedback regarding the meeting should be shared.

Meetings Are Opportunities, Not Obligations

No Unnecessary Meetings

No more meetings that could have been an email. Meetings are opportunities to collaborate, to reach important decisions, and to harness room intelligence. Unnecessary meetings are a waste of both time and money, and they put a bad taste in the mouths of the attendees. Before a meeting is called, the host needs to perform a Should We Even Have a Meeting Test.

Invite the Right People

It can be tempting for a host to invite everyone they can think of to their meeting, but this is a mistake. Participants who are invited but have nothing (or very little) to contribute will feel frustrated at having their time wasted; they will also hold others back from doing deeper work.

That isn’t to say that only the people closest to the work being done should be in attendance. Inviting people outside of your core project’s team to workshop an idea or prototype can be a wonderful way to challenge your team. Inviting others that can see what your team can’t is great for providing a fresh perspective and refreshing enthusiasm for the work. Just be sure that every invitee will bring something valuable to the table.

Make Meetings Optional

Even the most carefully-crafted invitee list can’t account for every variable. Sometimes we are unable to bring our best selves into a room. If you leave it up to the individual whether they will be a valuable asset to a meeting, you can empower everyone to bring their best selves. A team member who is distracted with a more pressing matter or unable to focus due to a personal matter will not be engaged, creative, or responsive.

Optional meetings are amazing for participation and productivity. Team members who feel obligated to be at a meeting are much less enthusiastic about contributing than team members who feel that they are there by choice. Making meetings optional may seem like an unconventional choice, but it is almost guaranteed to result in more engaged, more productive meetings.

Want to learn more about how to run better meetings?

Join our upcoming Virtual Facilitation Workshop to facilitate all of your online meetings like a pro. In this fun, fast-paced, hands-on class, you’ll sharpen your facilitation skills through practice and peer feedback. Sign up today!

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1. Make Sure You Actually Need a Meeting

How many times have you been sitting in a meeting thinking ‘this could have been an email?’ Before you start planning your meeting, think critically about its purpose. Will this be a valuable use of the participants’ time? Unnecessary meetings waste both time and money. Status updates and other information relays are better delivered through asynchronous communication. Your meeting should require the active participation of its attendees towards a clearly defined, specified goal.

2. Thoroughly Prepare

Prepare your meetings with all the care and forethought of a surgeon preparing to operate. You will lose the trust and attention of your participants if your meeting is disorganized or chaotic. Prepare a thorough agenda with activities that will work towards your goal, gather all supplies you may need, and distribute invitations (as well as your agenda!) to your participants ahead of time. If your meeting will be in person, be sure to book a space with room and equipment that will work for the activities in your agenda. If your meeting will be remote, prepare all technology ahead of time and make sure participants will be ready to use it; if you are asking them to use an online tool that they may be unfamiliar with, be sure to provide instructions or a brief tutorial.

3. Invite the Right People

It may be a habit to invite everyone, but this will not set your participants up for success. It would not be a good use of the time or skillset of a marine biologist to invite them to participate in a workshop regarding electrical engineering. Invite only participants who will be directly affected by the meeting’s content or who can reasonably contribute to the problem that is being solved. It may benefit your meeting to make it optional; this will ensure that every participant in the room feels that the meeting is relevant to them and that they have something to contribute.

4. Brush Up on Your Facilitation Skills

No matter how experienced you are, it never hurts to go back to basics. Get focused by giving yourself a refresher on foundational facilitation skills. If you’re out of practice, new to leading meetings, trying out new techniques/approaches, or otherwise feeling unready, it may be beneficial to rehearse a little. Workshop that new activity with another group or read up on techniques for asking good questions. The world of facilitation is always developing new strategies and techniques. Circling back to refine and develop your basics every now and then is one of the best ways to honor a growth mindset.

5. Set Expectations

At the beginning of your meeting, clearly outline what you expect from your participants as well as what they can expect from you. Expectations may range from putting away electronic devices to being open to new ideas. Consider posting expectations somewhere participants can see them during the meeting, such as a whiteboard. This will allow you to use them as a tool to get your meeting back on track should participants need a nudge; for example, if a participant is talking over another participant, you can reference your meeting expectations to remind them that each participant’s time to speak should be honored as their own.

6. Foster Psychological Safety

One of Voltage Control’s meeting mantras is Foster Emotional Safety. Participants who feel safe to share ideas, express opinions, and be themselves are more engaged, more productive, cooperate more effectively, and create better work. Beware of assuming that you understand how your participants are feeling. Take moments to check in and ask each person how they are feeling. Psychologically safe meetings are better able to benefit from room intelligence.

7. Follow Your Agenda

An expertly-crafted agenda means absolutely nothing if it is thrown out the window the second your meeting commences. Remaining loyal to your agenda will help you stay on task and ensure that your meeting ends on time, which is crucial for maintaining participants’ trust. Be sure to post your agenda where all of your participants can see it. This will help eliminate time-wasters such as irrelevant discussion and jumping the gun, as all participants will know what they are to be focused on in the moment as well as what they will have the opportunity to discuss later on in the meeting.

8. Always Debrief

Your meeting should always, always, always end with time for the group to debrief. Use this time to emphasize major takeaways to your participants, clarify next steps, set deadlines, and assign tasks and responsibilities. This is also a wonderful time to get feedback from your participants about how they feel similar meetings can be more effective in the future.

9. Send a Follow-Up Email

A follow-up email should be sent to participants within 24 hours of your meeting’s conclusion. If it’s possible, it is best practice to write this email directly after the meeting is over, before moving on to your next commitment. This will guarantee that the work and discussions handled during your meeting are still fresh in your mind. Your follow-up email should include the following:

• A thank you for attending
• Meeting highlights
• Tasks that need to be completed going forward
• Responsibilities given to specific people
• Deadlines for tasks and responsibilities

10. When in Doubt, Hire a Facilitator

Some meetings are best-handled by professional facilitators; this is why the profession exists. Professional facilitators can help your team tackle a difficult or sensitive matter, solve a problem they’ve been stuck on, or even hit the reset button after a history of unpleasant or unproductive meetings. If you’re unsure whether your meeting needs a professional facilitator, check out Voltage Control’s article Should Your Organization Hire a Workshop Facilitator?

Need an expert facilitator for your next meeting, gathering or workshop? Let’s talk.

Voltage Control facilitates events of all kinds, including design thinking workshops, innovation sessions, and Design Sprints. Please reach out to us at hello@voltagecontrol.com if you want to talk or for a consultation.

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