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Team meeting – seven tips for a good structure and agenda

Weekly team meetings have always been one of the most important tools for me as a leader. They help to get the week started, and everyone shares their plans for the week ahead. The weekly team meeting is also a fundamental part of a company culture and leadership practices. That is why it is important to understand how weekly meetings are prepared, how they are conducted, and what happens after them.

There is no deliberate right or wrong way to run a team meeting. It is always a realization of existing leadership practices and company culture. It therefore also influences the employee experience.

A good regular team meeting helps in taking the pulse of the team, developing collaboration, increasing coherence, and ensuring that everyone is heard. It also helps in being more proactive in leadership and addressing matters before they turn into problems. Here’s my take on the best practices for team meetings:

  1. Timing and frequency. I’ve gotten used to holding team meetings weekly. Usually, Monday morning has been a good time, just after people have had a chance to do final preparations and check any urgent emails. You should find a time that works for your business and creates a pace that the team can get used to.
  2. Preparation. A good team meeting is prepared in advance. Preparation ensures that you have more time to address and discuss matters. Communicate clearly how you would like the team to prepare for the meetings. The meeting is documented in a location that is easily accessible to everyone to ensure continuity and transparency.
  3. Content. My routines for a weekly team meeting have been refined over the years, and I have concluded that less is more. This means keeping things simple and ensuring that every point on the agenda has a specified purpose.

This is how I create a template for each weekly team meeting, using Humbol:

  • On a scale from 0 to 100, how are you feeling right now? Humbol enables me to use this type of question, which involves the user dragging a marker between 0 and 100. The number by itself does not give a lot of information, but it gives me a snapshot and a good discussion point for the meeting to understand why the participant has answered in a certain way. If you can’t use this type of question, a simple “how are you doing?” also works fine.
  • How was your past week? The purpose of this question is to obtain a quick overview of the person’s past week, including highlights, things they have learned, and what we should have done differently.
  • Your plan for this week? The purpose of this question is to highlight the most important things to get done this week to meet our targets.
  • How can others help you? With this question, I want to allow discussing any areas where team members can help each other.

  1. The best agenda is one that is created together. I try to minimize the recurring agenda items to leave room for comments and important discussion points from the team. This keeps the agenda relevant and interesting, and increases the sense of coherence and focus on the employees.
  2. What you have now is a clear structure for a weekly team meeting, and everyone is prepared. During the meeting, ensure that everyone gets a chance to contribute. Listen to everyone to determine if you can be of any help to them.
  3. Keep track of agreed and open tasks, their schedule, and those who are responsible for them. Ensure that everyone can access the task list, and keep it up to date for upcoming meetings.
  4. Ask for feedback. Ask for feedback on the meeting so that you can learn what to improve on.

There is plenty of evidence to indicate that the way people work in the future will be less tied to any particular location – we will be working wherever is most practical. This heightens the need for leadership to be more systematic, proactive, and consistent. At Humbol, we have already realized this and created a solution that helps team leaders to develop more systematic leadership practices while automating routines. If you would like to know how Humbol can help you and your organization to hold better team meetings, follow this link to schedule an online meeting!