MEETING management Tools

 In this article, you’ll learn:

• Benefits of strong meeting management

• How to build a strong meeting experience

• Six common types of meetings & how to set standards for them

Our template provides generic tools you can use for your meeting management.

Why should I PROACTIVELY MANAGE MY MEETINGS?

All too often, someone thinks a meeting is needed so they throw time on the calendar, show up to the meeting and hope for the best. And many of these meetings end up wasting a lot of time. Instead, you should take an intentional approach to each step of managing your meeting, and this will unlock:

1. A clear, shared expectation of meeting goal and plan

   • By communicating the meeting purpose ahead of time, everyone who is dedicating time to attend the meeting will be aware of why it matters and the plan for the discussion. This sets the initial expectation for a well-run meeting, and participants can be confident their attendance is useful and that they are prepared for the discussion.

2. Opportunity to maximize synchronous communication

   • By sending information ahead of time, engaging your participants, and facilitating discussion among attendees, you are making the most of the time spent in the meeting.

3. Keep the meeting on track and efficient

   • With a strong agenda and good facilitation techniques, you can keep the meeting focused on the goal at hand and achieve your intended outcome. 

How to manage your meeting experience:

Below are the high level steps to managing your meeting experience. Use our templates here to speed up your meeting preparation or take our full Meeting Managing course to become a pro facilitator for any type of meeting.

These are the keys to better managing your meeting experience:

1. Be clear about meeting purpose and goal

   • Decide why you want to meet and what an ideal outcome looks like at the end of the meeting. From there, confirm whether a meeting is the best communication channel for this goal. If it is, decide what type of meeting you need and plan accordingly (more on this below).

2. Gather right participants for goal

   • Once you have your goal outlined, consider who needs to be in the meeting to accomplish your goal. Try to keep the meeting as small as possible to ease the burden of facilitation, but also consider whether there are diverse perspectives you can bring to the meeting to be more comprehensive in your discussion and outcome. 

3. Outline discussion topics based on goal

   • Next, outline what topics you need to cover or activities you need to lead in order to accomplish your goal. Write these out along with how much time you plan to spend on each topic. 

4. Include opportunities for engagement and interactivity

   • As much as possible, try to make the meeting dynamic and interactive for your participants so that you can keep them focused on the discussion and to help you achieve your meeting goal. Include prompts, pauses for questions, and activities that related to your topics and provide space for everyone to engage. 

5. Ask participants to stay present during the meeting

   • Think of your meeting as a shared agreement, you should commit to facilitating the meeting in a way that makes it a good use of time for participants, and they should commit to staying present and engaged in the discussion. Feel free to set the precedent at the start of the meeting by explicitly asking participants to stay present and put down their phones or close their computers. If you notice people getting distracted, politely ask them to come back to the conversation or consider taking a quick break during longer meetings. 

6. Communicate agenda in meeting invite and at start of meeting

   • Set a good first impression and expectation by communicating your meeting goal, agenda, and any background context in your meeting invite. You should never send a meeting invite without a description that provides context explaining what the meeting is for and what you hope to accomplish.

7. Clear sharing out of notes and action items following the meeting

   • Following the meeting, provide a quick recap of the discussion and document next steps or action items discussed during the meeting. You can also share notes or slides from the meeting for the group’s reference later. 

Set standards for different types of meetings

Below are 6 common types of meetings and the best practices you can use to facilitate each.

1. Informational meetings

   • Example: All Hands meeting, Company updates, Onboarding trainings

   • Purpose: Share critical information with a group while providing an opportunity to ask questions and discuss the information together

   • Best practices:

     • Use async channels wherever possible in place of informational meetings

     • Ask that participants stay engaged in the meeting instead of multi-tasking, and make the presentation dynamic and informative

     • Shared the recording and materials as follow up

2. Alignment meetings

   • Example: Weekly Team Meetings, Peer 1:1s

   • Purpose: Align the group with a shared set of information while providing space for discussions and an efficient channel for answering common questions

   • Best practices:

     • Share a collaborative agenda for anyone to add topics

     • Designate a clear facilitator to manage the conversation

     • Take and share notes with clear action items and questions answered

3. Decision-making meetings

   • Example: Quarterly planning meetings

   • Purpose: Converge on a decision while getting input and feedback from critical stakeholders

   • Best practices: 

     • Share context ahead of time including background information, options considered, and strengths/weaknesses of the various proposals

     • Only invite participants whose input is valuable and critical to the decision- try to keep the group as small as possible

     • Capture key discussion points as a reference for how the decision was made and share out with your broader stakeholder group

4. Ideation meetings

   • Example: Brainstorms, Rapid prototyping

   • Purpose: Generate new, fresh ideas while getting input and perspectives from a diverse group

   • Best practices:

     • Come prepared with materials that will help you develop engaging activities (i.e. post-its, markers, etc.)

     • Develop activities that can help people think out of the box and get creative

     • Start with a warm up activity that is easy to participate in and only slightly relevant to the topic at hand

     • Create a safe space for creativity by setting ground rules or guidelines for the discussion

5. Relationship-building meetings

   • Example: Team off sites, 1:1 meetings, coffee chats

   • Purpose: Build relationships and get to know one another 

   • Best practices:

     • Only provide as much structure as will be helpful for the discussion. These will often be much more informal than other types of meetings

     • Try to have fun and make the conversation more meaningful than surface-level conversation

6. Fact-finding meetings

   • Example: Informational interview, hiring interview

   • Purpose: Gather information that can later inform your work or decisions.

   • Best practices:

     • Do your research ahead of time to avoid asking anything you could find out on your own- you want to make good use of your participant’s time

     • Have your questions prepared in multiple formats (in a doc, printed on paper) so you have a backup in case you face technical difficulties

     • Have a good note-taking tool that won’t distract your participant from the conversation

     • Try to make eye contact and engage in the conversation as much as possible instead of focusing intently on taking notes- you can record the conversation if you participant is comfortable doing so which will allow you to fill in missing notes later.

Happy meeting!