It’s no secret that unnecessary meetings can be a killer for productivity. Without a clear agenda, it’s easy for meetings to run over their allotted time. Even if you’re keeping a close eye on the clock, there’s no guarantee that everything that needs to be discussed is going to be brought to the table. While it’s tempting to ditch weekly meetings and focus on a monthly all-hands session instead, regular get-togethers are essential for aligning teams and reinforcing objectives. Need some help ironing out the kinks in your weekly meeting agenda? We’ve got you covered.
Why Weekly Team Meetings Are Essential
Weekly meetings bring many benefits to a business. Some of these deliver instant results, while others yield long-term deliver long-term gains. For starters, they’re an easy way to enhance internal communications. If you’re working remotely, most communication channels are going to be email-based.
However, email correspondence isn’t particularly efficient. You can spend hours waiting for a response to an urgent question. Even then, you might need to clarify a point before getting the answer you’re looking for. It makes far more sense to capture those important messages in a single staff meeting.
As well as helping with time management, weekly meetings can keep your team members on track. If you’re not utilizing regular meetings, your employees are almost certainly wasting energy on things they don’t have to. With a weekly virtual meeting, you can reorient your teams, keeping them focused on productive tasks that are going to drive performance.
Whether your operation is office-based, hybrid, or remote, you need to be nurturing a culture of togetherness and encouraging camaraderie. As an increasing number of companies adopt dispersed teams, this has never been more important. Weekly meetings are an effective way of reinforcing your efforts, helping make a dispersed team feel more connected.
Weekly Team Meeting Structure
Putting together a clear agenda is all well and good, but for a successful weekly team meeting, you need to think about the big picture. Rather than reaching for the agenda templates you’ve been using for board meetings, you need to rethink your approach to team meeting agendas. Need some pointers? Read on for everything you need to know.
Start with Facts and Figures
Kicking off weekly team meetings with metrics is a good way of letting everyone know how you’re doing as a business. Reinforce your objectives so everyone understands what they’ve driving towards. Once you’ve dished out a refresher, you can start getting into the details.
Rather than reel off a list of numbers, tie everything back to these figures and apply them to your goal company goals and objectives. Focus on how your company is performing against forecasts. If you’re depending on multiple teams working on different projects, now’s also the time to underline how these efforts support others.
Aim to keep this section of your team meeting agenda fairly brief. In most cases, you shouldn’t need to spend any longer than 10 minutes on it.
Round-Table Discussion
An effective meeting agenda should include plenty of time for a round-table discussion. It’s the real focus of your meeting and gives everybody the chance to talk through what they’ll be working on during the coming week.
A round-table planning session can get out of hand if you’re dealing with a lot of attendees. For more productive meetings, make sure you’ve received status updates and agenda topics from everyone who’ll be participating. This makes life easier for moderators and ensures you can make any last-minute chances to agendas. What’s more, you can dive straight into the details and start making decisions, rather than spend the bulk of your meeting providing context.
Generally speaking, this section of your meeting should run for around 20 minutes. However, don’t be afraid to be a little more flexible with runtime if you need to be.
What Problems Are Holding Back Performance?
Once updates are out of the way, it’s time to spotlight the hurdles that are causing your teams trouble. This is a staple of daily standup meetings, where agile teams identify blocks and propose solutions. In an ideal world, managers should be able to alleviate the pressures on project management teams there and then. This can be as simple as allocating cover for vacation days or plugging a shortfall with additional resources.
If you get an inkling that there are larger issues holding back your teams, it’s best to schedule a separate meeting to give each problem the focus it deserves. Ultimately, you should aim to clear this section of your weekly meeting in around 10 minutes.
Improve Team Morale with Acknowledgements
With all that taken care of, don’t forget to wrap things up with a few shout-outs. If you’re chairing the meeting, think about reaching out to team leaders and project leads to find out which employees have been performing particularly well.
If you’d rather keep things more casual, open the floor for participants to make impromptu shout-outs. Try to keep this final section brief. A few minutes should be more than enough. You can always pick up on things in more detail when holding one-on-one meetings.
Easy Ways to Make Your Team Meetings a Success
Executing an effective team building isn’t difficult. Need to adapt your meeting structure for a remote-first audience? Below are just a handful of ways you can restructure your agenda items and meeting topics.
Break the Ice
If you’re wary of your meeting running over, it’s tempting to ditch things like icebreakers. However, they’re a useful tool for making your meetings more engaging and encouraging participation. A quick icebreaker game is an easy way of involving everybody, even those wallflowers who rarely contribute. The sooner you get everyone talking, the more likely they are to engage with more important matters. You can keep things focused on business or think more casually when coming up with icebreaker questions. For more icebreakers for work, check out our other article.
Outline Goals
For your meeting to be a success, you need to be clear about what it’s actually for. Some meetings might be focused on identifying productivity blocks and exploring potential solutions. Other meetings might be framed around current projects and performance. Perhaps the goal of your meeting is to ensure everyone is properly aligned, encouraging collaboration and getting stalled campaigns back on track. In every case, a weekly meeting should underline how performance stands against plans.
Make Your Meetings Remote-Friendly
More employees are working remotely than ever before. Even if your company maintains a dedicated office space, you’re probably utilizing dispersed teams. As such, your meetings need to be tailored toward the remote or hybrid working model.
With a remote-first meeting mentality, you’ll ensure a more inclusive space where everyone can participate. Those employees working remotely shouldn’t feel like an afterthought or second-best to colleagues stationed in a head office. This is one of the most important things when preparing for the future of work, as well.
Pick a Time That Works for Every Attendee
This can be a little challenging if you’re dealing with dispersed teams, but it’s important to pick a meeting time that works for everyone. You’ll get the best results if you’re consistent with meeting times, but feel free to test the waters before locking things down.
Are your meeting agenda typically filled with status updates? A Monday morning session is probably a good idea. However, this only works if you can guarantee maximum attendance and participation. Do you plan on making time for brainstorming sessions during your meeting? Hammering out new strategies might not be the most Monday-friendly exercise.
When in doubt, reach out to the people who’ll actually be attending these meetings. Not everybody’s going to give you the same answer, but you can apply majority rule here.
Inclusivity and Accessibility
A successful meeting is an inclusive one. In an ideal world, every participant is going to feel comfortable enough to contribute. However, the reality is a little different. You need to cater to everyone, from the confident and outgoing to the shy and retiring in your ranks.
If you’re getting together in a virtual space, choosing a meeting platform that offers multiple ways to communicate is a good call. An attendee might be itching to share a great idea but lacks the confidence to contribute verbally. However, they might be more inclined to participate if they can share their thoughts in written form or during collaborative brainstorming sessions.
Enhance Participation by Sharing Roles
You might be comfortable taking charge and wearing many hats. However, avoid the urge to tackle every role when hosting a weekly team meeting. To encourage participation and keep attendees engaged, assign designated roles to different individuals.
One person can take charge of any icebreakers or games you’ve made room for. Another can compile meeting minutes and record action items, while another can keep an eye on the time and ensure you’re not running over schedule. Dishing out these responsibilities takes a lot of strain off the moderator, allowing them to actually run the meeting.
Why Shared Agendas Make Sense
Rather than commit precious minutes to discussing status updates, make your meeting agenda a collaborative process. Agendas should also be shared early enough that everyone can enter a session fully prepared. In some cases, a potential solution may be arrived at during the meeting itself. What’s more, a collaborative agenda encourages accountability and is more likely to stir less confident team members into action.
Gloww Online Meeting Features
Looking for an online platform to overhaul your weekly meetings? With Gloww, you’ll find a huge selection of interactive features to tailor your sessions and keep your teams engaged.
Polls
With Gloww, you can use live polls and surveys to gather instant feedback on pressing issues. You can play around with poll layouts and choose how results are displayed.
Sticky Notes
Looking to encourage collaboration? With Gloww’s sticky notes live feature, it’s easy for everyone to share their input on agenda topics. Perfect if you’re looking for quick solutions to project stumbling blocks, this nifty tool is also useful for encouraging more withdrawn employees to participate.
Session Recordings
Even the most meticulous minute-taker can miss crucial meeting notes. Gloww’s session recording functionality ensures every last second of your meeting is captured for future reference.
Import Presentations
Need to deliver more detailed information to meeting participants? With Gloww, you can import PDF files and PowerPoint presentations. What’s more, you’re free to punctuate presentation slides with activities and interactive elements.
Gloww Team Weekly Meeting Agenda Templates
Need some inspiration? Below are just a handful of the readymade meeting agenda templates available from Gloww.
Hippie Green Template for Virtual Meetings
This eye-catching template is perfect if you’re looking to host a more casual get-together with remote or hybrid teams. Loaded with icebreaker games and team-building activities, it’s ideal for getting new hires and remote colleagues working together. Looking to add more scope for team talk and status updates? You can customize every element to your liking.
Quarterly Planning Template
Need to get down to business? With this planning template, you can. Virtual brainstorming, objectives planning, and schedules are all included in this ready-made template. Additionally, a hit-the-buzzer Q&A and word cloud game make this template particularly interactive. What’s more, it’s easy to adapt this one to any weekly meeting agenda.
All-Hands Online B&W Template
If you’re looking for something more professional, this slick black-and-white template is the perfect choice. You can drag and drop PowerPoint presentations and PDF files, while there are plenty of interactive elements and games to break up those longer sessions.
Make Quick Work of Weekly Meetings with Gloww
Weekly team meetings are essential for any business. As well as enhancing internal communications, regular sessions with your teams ensure everyone is kept on track. Need to rethink your meeting agendas? Start with metrics and apply them to goals and objectives. Be sure to leave plenty of space for round-table discussion so you can identify problems, hammer out solutions, and get your teams moving in the right direction.
In the digital age, you need to be applying a remote-first mentality when it comes to weekly meetings. With Gloww, you have the perfect platform for making your team meetings more inclusive and accessible. Take your pick from ready-made templates that can be easily tailored to your requirements. Keep things simple with summary charts and imported presentations, or mix things up with interactive polls, surveys, and games.
Ready to get started with Gloww? Take a look at our templates today. Alternatively, explore our pricing plans if you’re looking to unlock advanced features. Eager to learn more about what Gloww can do for you? Get in touch with the team today via the online contact form.
