Mindful Meeting Agendas - Volume One

If you are like most of us, the normal response to any work issue or idea is 'let's meet about this.' This response then leads to an hour of frantically searching calendar availability and random pings across the organization to swiftly and skillfully negotiate meeting room movements. Feeling accomplished, we hit send and with almost immediate gratification receive waves of attendee confirmations - all because we perfectly crafted the time, place, and subject line that makes it so easy for attendees to accept without even placing thought behind the yes.

While this rush can make us feel good for a moment, yet we haven't accomplished what we set out to do. Maybe you had a brilliant idea over the weekend and want to start the work to bring it forward, or perhaps your team is closing in on a big sale and requires collaboration to complete it. Whatever the reason is for the meeting, too often we spend more effort getting the meeting on the books than actually setting ourselves up for success.

By making mindful choices when creating a meeting, we instantly set ourselves and others up for success.

In mindful meeting agendas - volume one we will introduce you to the overarching concepts to assist you in creating clear and intentional agenda. In volume two (coming soon) we will dig into each of these to expand your thinking as you begin to use this practice.

Mindful Meeting Agenda

Create a clear meeting purpose and desired outcomes - know what success looks like in this meeting.

The purpose statement is why you are having the meeting and what you want to accomplish during this time. While this may seem simple, some times the why is hiding. For example, maybe your primary reason for the meeting was to discuss a strategy for marketing a new product when, in reality, you don't yet know enough about it to present a plan. In this case, your purpose statement should focus on what you need to learn about the new product, not all the things you can do to market it.

Similarly, the desired outcomes should reflect what you will accomplish in the meeting to set yourself up for success. If your meeting purpose is to review options for meeting a client's needs to increase the likelihood for renewal, you will need to make sure that you have the right people in the room to debrief about the client's needs and discuss available options. You want tangible list coming out of the meeting, a list of accomplishments.

What this looks like in practice:

Meeting Purpose: To identify key selling points, timing, and market competitiveness of the new product.

Meeting Outcome:

• An agreed-upon list of product selling points and features.

• A list of potential target audiences for the product.

• New product marketing strategy timeline. 

Ensure you have the right people in attendance.

After you have the purpose statement and created your meeting outcomes, it is easier to understand who should be a part of your meeting. Depending on what you want to accomplish in this meeting, you will want to create defined roles and responsibilities for attendees and then identify the people that fit the objective, inviting only these people. 

Before office politics come into play, make an effort to determine who around this topic should be informed of the meeting. Typically these are leaders in the organization that have a stake in making decisions and will want to know that you are having a meeting to discuss a particular topic. In the new product marketing strategy example, sales would be very interested in this meeting, but now might just be a time for marketing to learn more from the engineering team. You can inform your sales peers that you are in the process of learning about the new product, and as the marketing plan begins to develop, you will share this with them. The act of being transparent gives the sales team confidence and knowledge of where you are at in the process while allowing you to continue your exploration.

Ask for contribution, and participation.

There is nothing worse than receiving a meeting invite from someone else just to realize you are the one leading the meeting. Before placing the time on the calendar, reach out to those that will be contributing and review your purpose and outcome statement. Chances are this interaction will help you firm up any details you are unsure about and enables others to contribute to the success of the meeting.

It's also a good idea to create some space for attendees if this will be an ongoing meeting. If you expect that this group will meet up to discuss this topic at a regular cadence, we encourage you to spend some time in the first meeting to set up team norms. Team norms set expectations of how you will work together during the session and outside of the scheduled meeting time. One of our favorite team norms is 'be a kind human,' which just means respect and engage with each other, show up on time, and contribute your best. Different team norms might be technology by exception, ask all the questions, or do not discuss internal conflicts externally. 

Send out the meeting invite with the purpose statement and desired outcomes, roles, and responsibilities of each attendee. Providing this information up front will help ensure everyone has a clear idea of how they can to contribute.

Lastly, follow-up ahead of the meeting to reinforce or update meeting purpose and agenda.

Now that you have mastered the mindful meeting agenda, you can maximize your ability to promote concepts without PowerPoint for even greater success.