How to run a Meeting

Don’t be the person who schedules a meeting that should’ve been an email.

Preparing a meeting notes document can help keep you honest, and at the very least ensures that the meeting itself is productive.

Here is what goes through my head when I feel like I need to have a meeting…

What problem, goal, or outcome do I need to schedule the meeting for?

Articulating on paper what seems obvious in my head can be shockingly difficult!

Writing it down helps me:

• Articulate what the point of the meeting is for other people
• Realize I don’t need to have a meeeting at all
• Consider that I can send email or instant message instead
• etc…

What discrete topics do I expect to cover during the meeting?

Agenda items, time boxed.

Listing the topics to cover helps me:

• Quantify how many unique topics to cover
• How long the meeting should be (hopefully 30 minutes or less!)
• Who needs to be present for the meeting vs. informed of the outcomes

Who do I think needs to be involved?

List each person. Inviduals can be specified as required or optional.

This helps me:

• Get the right people together
• Keep the size of the meeting manageable

Share the meeting note document ahead of time

Given the proposed agenda, this allows the invitees to:

• Give constructive feedback on the goals, agenda, attendees
• Mentally prepare, ask questions ahead of time, etc.
• Opt-out (they can stay informed via the meeting notes afterwards)

During the meeting

Some things to consider while I’m having the meeting.

I hate to say this but Ice breakers, while cheesy, are also helpful because they actually “break the ice” and force a bit of socializing which is especially important in a remote or hybrid meeting. (The hard part can be keeping them lean!)

There are three active roles a well-formed meeting should have, and each role should be designated to a separate person.

Roles and responsibilites:

• Facilitator: Leads the meeting, guides/interrupts the conversations while also making sure everyone participates (DEIB), etc.
• Note taker: Level of detail should be useful for absentees. Avoid being verbose. Elicit help from the group aggregating links/pictures/docs/etc. shared during the meeting.
• Time keeper: Holds the group accountable to the time boxed agenda items. Can interrupt the conversations.

As the facilitator I think it helps to point out that me or the timekeeper may interrupt conversations (rabbit holes) for the sake of the greater meeting.

Action items

If I just had a meeting, we probably wrote down things we want to do.

Each item needs three things:

• Assignee/owner: An unassigned task is doomed.
• Concrete actionable task: An unclear task will never get “done”, ask the group “what is the definition of done?”.
• Due date: And a missing due will leave the task hanging forever.

Scrutinize the action items and make sure they’re important and help achieve the meeting’s goals.

Meeting Notes Template

Anatomy of a Meeting Notes document:

1. Title/summary
2. Date/time
3. Attendees
4. Goals/outcomes
5. Agenda (time boxed topics)
6. Action items

The Confluence Meeting Notes template is not a terrible place to start.