Meaningful Meetings

For any meeting, whether informal critique or stakeholder presentation, it’s important to set expectations when soliciting feedback: what do you want input on and what do you not?

Prior to scheduling your next meeting, take a red pen to the invite list and ask, who really needs to be there?

Finally, whether it’s asking for volunteers to take the next steps, or asking for feedback on what’s been shown or discussed, don’t feel you need to finalize everything in real-time; sometimes it’s best to give folks a day or so to raise their hand.

No agenda, no attend-a: Before the meeting starts, create an outline of what you want to discuss, clarify your intentions, and include any context people need to know in the notes.

Share your screen: During the meeting, share your screen while taking notes to ensure that everyone is aligned during the discussion — it’ll also help you visualize your thoughts and stay on track!

Action items: At the end of the meeting, have an actionable list of next steps and assign someone to each task (i.e: “[Person] to do [specific task] by [defined date]”) to help everyone stay accountable for the meeting’s outcomes.

Always have a clear purpose and include an agenda; bonus points for including key outcomes. When you share the outcome widely, you can reduce the number of people who need to be in the meeting and you'll prevent information silos. Also, if you haven’t assigned a facilitator, note-taker, and decision-maker — you better be ready to be all three 😅.