3 Effective Meeting Agenda Examples & How to Write Your Own Next
We have all attended meetings that go off topic or over the established meeting time. Worse, we’ve all been in meetings that weren’t needed.
Sitting through those can be a painful reminder of how meetings often develop a reputation for being a waste of time
Meetings can be a great way to collaborate, brainstorm and get together with team members, clients or external partners. However, when they waste time or don’t accomplish their goals, they can be a drain on your team’s valuable resources.
Why do we need meeting agendas?
Meeting agendas provide structure to your conversation and ensure you stick to the allotted time and don’t go off-topic. An agenda helps think critically about what will be discussed and focus on the problems and conversations that need to be tackled.
If you find yourself without much to include in a meeting’s agenda, it’s typically best to cancel. Sharing an agenda with team members in advance helps keep everyone on the same page and enables participants to prepare for the chat in their own time.
In addition to other useful things to include, like check-in questions for meetings, agendas help you make the most of the time you’ve set aside. Whether your meeting is virtual, hybrid, or in person, agendas provide a framework that helps keep your meetings on track.Let’s take a closer look at three meeting agenda examples.
One-on-one meeting templates
Depending on the goal of your meeting, the structure of your meeting agenda will change. For one-on-one meetings—such as an employee review, for example—your agenda doesn’t have to be exhaustive.
Outline a few simple points that you want to cover and share it with the other participant. For a review, a meeting agenda sample template might include topics like performance, key metrics, and future career goals.
Team meeting agenda template
For team meeting agendas, be thoughtful about the document format and the use of your team’s time. For example, if multiple stakeholders are involved, reach out to them in advance to determine if there is anything they need your support on or want discussed at the meeting.
While your team is likely familiar with projects’ progress, your external partners won’t be as up-to-date. Include project details in these meeting agendas so everyone can prepare in advance.
Don’t overshare, but adding as much information as possible ahead of time is helpful. That way, meeting attendees can be ready for the discussion and come prepared to answer your questions, or ask questions of their own.
Town Halls and all-hands meeting agenda format
Meeting agendas can also be incredibly valuable as a resource for large all-hands style meetings.
For example, quarterly town hall meetings are a good opportunity to level-set with your company, department, or team. You will have the chance to share important information about events, changes, and answer questions.
A structured meeting agenda for a town hall ensures that essential topics are discussed and let everyone know what you plan on talking about during the meeting.
Agendas also give insight on how time will be used, workers may look forward to a Q&A section at the end of these types of meetings.
To optimize meeting time, your agenda can include a link where workers can submit questions ahead of time. That way, managers can ensure that relevant questions are selected and answered with supporting documentation, research or insights.
Know what you need
Figuring out how to write a meeting agenda can be tricky. Be clear about your objectives and goals and communicate them effectively. Ask yourself: What do I need to get out of the meeting?
Once you keep your goals in mind, you’ll be able to structure the meeting around achieving them. You can also review meeting agenda samples online or check out meeting agenda examples from colleagues and mentors to get an understanding of what a good meeting agenda template looks like.
When you are building out your agenda, consider the best meeting agenda format. Some helpful things to include are:
- Action items. These represent outstanding tasks that need to be completed or issues that need to be resolved. They may be addressed in the meeting but you can also assign action items to a team member. That team member will complete the action item before the next meeting or a separate deadline. Larger action items may take longer, so the team member can provide updates at future meetings.
- Informational updates. This component of agendas is intended to share information with the team. Alternatively, you may ask an attendee to give an update or offer information about something they are responsible for, providing an opportunity to level set with the team.
- Discussion topics are topics that need to be talked about at the meeting. This can be to get a better understanding or to work through a complex problem.
- Relevant files: Attach documents to a note or use a cloud storage provider to directly link information relevant to the meeting.
If you don’t have many items that need resolution or if you’re still waiting on more information, cancel the meeting and reschedule it when you are prepared.
The format of meeting agendas forces you to think critically about how time is used during meetings. As a result you’ll know when a meeting isn’t needed.
This will free up time for everyone involved, so they don’t need to sit through a pointless meeting. The saying, “This could have been an email” is so popular for a reason. You can often share information through other communication channels if it doesn’t merit a meeting.
Updating the agenda after your meeting
Bring your documentation to the next level by updating your agenda after the meeting. A summary of the conversation helps you highlight what was discussed and any action items or new ideas that resulted from the conversation.
Discussion summaries with action items attached to a meeting are widely known as “meeting minutes”.
Meeting minutes serve as an official record of what was discussed, the decisions made, and the actions to be taken. Effective minutes ensure everyone is on the same page and can serve as a reference point for future discussions.
There are different ways of writing meeting minutes, from excel to word and PDF templates that can be manually filled out. We’ve found that AI meeting minute generators are arguably the most effective way to quickly write up in-depth minutes of a meeting.
How should you write and attach meeting minutes to your agenda? We’ll share a quick process you can implement today to start getting more out of your meetings.
Writing effective meeting minutes with the help of AI
Writing meeting minutes can nowadays be done within a few minutes with dedicated apps. AI tool Bash has a dedicated meeting minute writer that enables you to record, transcribe and summarize meetings, all in one place. Try out the dedicated workflow.
- Record your meeting: You can record directly from within the Bash app or upload the meeting audio or MP4 file to Bash. You can also take Bash on the go with iOS or Google Play apps and record in-person meetings and discussions.
- Turn the audio into a transcript: We automatically transcribe your conversation
- Apply the simple meeting minutes template: Select “Meeting Minutes” from the template gallery
- Adjust the output: Select the tone, audience, persona and even the output language for your simple minutes.
- Manually finetune: Once Bash generates your minutes you can make changes with the in-app editor. There is also a Q&A chat that has access to your meeting transcript in case you want to ask more in-depth questions.
- Share with others: Directly share the topic with others so they can ask AI questions, access the transcript or turn your meeting discussion into something new with 80+ templates.
Benefits of using Bash for meeting minutes
Many teams have transitioned from Word or Excel templates to Bash for creating concise summaries, action plans and meeting minutes.
Users of the simple meeting minutes template highlight several benefits:
- Time efficiency: Bash transforms conversations into structured minutes, allowing you to focus more on participating in meetings and less on documentation.
- Accuracy: The tool’s automated transcription captures every detail, providing an accurate record of discussions, decisions, and action items, minimizing human error.
- Customization: You can adjust the tone, style, and format to meet your organization’s standards, ensuring consistent and audience-aligned output every time.
- Enhanced focus: With Bash, team members can engage more fully in discussions without the distraction of manual note-taking, leading to more productive meetings.
- Easy sharing: Bash enables seamless sharing of minutes and transcripts, ensuring all team members, including absentees, have access to meeting outcomes and action items. AI support within Bash allows users to easily navigate the transcript without scrolling through the entire conversation.
Use a tool that can do it all
When you create a meeting agenda, you will need a tool that enables you to draft, store, and share your agenda. Rock offers a variety of tools that you can use for every step of meeting agendas, including storing them where you can find them in the future.
When you need a meeting agenda
With Rock, you can draft your meeting agendas in the Notes mini-app and save versions of a sample meeting agenda for future use. In addition to including it on meeting invites, you can store the agenda in a shared space with meeting attendees so everyone has the opportunity to review it.
Anyone in the space can contribute to the content of the agenda. This provides helpful context while still providing you with enough authority to decide on what is included on the agenda. Notes on Rock also integrate with Cloud storage providers such as Google Drive, Dropbox and Figma.
This means that relevant folders are easily accessible from each respective meeting agenda. Your team won’t have to shuffle through different or outdated versions of your agenda. Everyone will be on the same page, with the same agenda.
A dedicated comment section under every note also enables people to easily record new questions, updates or add questions, as needed. Agenda management is made easy with your meeting agendas (and meeting notes) in one centralized place.
You can quickly search for and find agendas from past meetings. If you have a question or want to follow up on something from last month’s meeting, you can easily pull up that agenda to reference and add comments.
When you don’t need a meeting
Assign tasks to the appropriate team member to complete work without a meeting beforehand. This ensures accountability for action items. Continue the conversation on the task level instead of scheduling a dedicated meeting for them. Using task management is a great way to get asynchronous work done.
This is especially true for remote teams who have to navigate the time differences and various work schedules that can make scheduling a meeting difficult. Rock offers a task board feature in every space so your action items are easy to share and complete.
Replace unnecessary meetings with tasks. This makes your team more effective and productive.
In Rock, you and your team members can collaborate via built-in messaging. People can catch up on the latest information, details or updates by just checking the chat or overall space. With mini-apps like topics and files, your team will have 24/7 access to information.
Work on new projects, tasks or priorities without waiting for anyone. Save meetings for brainstorming and value-adding discussions. For everything else, communicate with tasks, notes and messages on Rock.
