How to Have Effective Meetings

The ultimate guide to running effective meetings

A great team meeting takes three steps: prepare for the meeting, manage the conversation and take action. Our effective meeting checklist (and the free Spinach AI app!) will help you through each step.

1. Planning effective meetings

Get your meeting on the right track before it even begins with a little prep work. It doesn't have to take over your to-do list – 10 minutes of preparation can go a long way.

  • Set a goal

    Identify the purpose of the meeting so you stay focused. And yes, even those recurring team meetings need an objective.

  • Create an agenda

    Build your meeting agenda beforehand. This gives you time to think about what is important to discuss.

  • Collaborate on agenda items

    Encourage everyone to add items and comment before the meeting. Prioritize items so the most important ones get addressed first.

  • Assign roles

    Designate roles for everyone in the meeting, including a note taker, a task master, a timekeeper and more.

2. Running effective meetings

Our number one tip for running effective meetings? Make the most of your time together. You can do that easily with ground rules, great facilitation and note-taking.

  • Go off-topic (just a little)

    Start off your team meeting with a fun question or topic to get people talking. Some of our go-to's: favourite ice cream flavour, most memorable vacation and top celebrity encounter.

  • Make sure everyone is heard

    Good meetings encourage participation from everyone. If there are quieter participants, have them add notes to the agenda beforehand and encourage them to discuss in the meeting.

  • Stick to the agenda

    Running a successful meeting means staying on track. Let conversations go off the rails for just a little bit – then park 'em.

  • Take notes

    Meeting minutes are the best way to know how you landed at certain decisions during the meeting. Document what you talk about, and who it came from.

3. Taking action after the meeting

A team meeting is only as good as the outcomes you achieve. Take the time to do something with what you talked about.

  • Make decisions and create action items

    Every effective meeting should end with nailing down the decisions made and next steps required. Write them down and get a collective thumbs-up from the group so there is no confusion.

  • Set your next meeting agenda

    Start up the next agenda while you're still together, when the decisions and goals are fresh in your mind.

  • Assign accountability

    Assign someone to each action item to ensure things get done. Clarify exactly what they're expected to deliver on before the next meeting.

  • Follow up on what was done

    This is the hardest habit, but also the most important one for running effective meetings: close the loop by following up on action items and key decisions.

10 reasons your meetings are tanking (and how to fix them)

There are a few common meeting mistakes that may be hindering your productivity. See how many your team is guilty of (and how to get back on track, pronto).

The value of effective meetings

We spend almost 50% of our time in meetings. Done wrong, that time is a real productivity killer. But when meetings are effective and efficient, that together time is crucial to high-performing teams.

Meetings are your time to tackle complex problems and brainstorm amazing ideas on how to achieve your goals. If you’re clear on your plan, a good meeting is a valuable forum for people to ask questions and share issues. From there, you can resolve problems and get everyone on the same page – and get back to getting work done. That’s why holding effective meetings is so important.

Effective meetings are easier with Spinach AI

Spinach AI is jam-packed with awesome features that make it easy to have effective meetings.

  • Seamlessly integrate with Slack, Google and more

  • Create a shared meeting agenda that everyone contributes to

  • Take meeting notes and assign next steps, right in the agenda

  • Access all previous meeting agendas, comments and minutes

  • Track company-wide discussions and insights (with voting!)

Try Spinach AI with your team.

Get started, free!