How Meeting Agenda Templates Help You Plan Better Meetings

We’ve all been there before: you get called into an important meeting. One hour later, the “important” meeting ends and you leave feeling like it was a waste of time. 

You can’t help but feel frustrated.

And you're not alone. After Atlassian surveyed over 5,000 people, they found that 51% of respondents have to work overtime a few days a week due to meeting overload. 

They also found that 62% of workers often attended meetings that didn't state the goal in the invite.

Enter meeting agenda templates.

A well-designed meeting agenda template can turn an unstructured, unproductive meeting into one that uses everyone’s time effectively. A well-designed meeting agenda means that attendees: 

• Have a solid grasp of what will be discussed and what to expect
• Will know ahead of time how they can show up prepared
• Understand what the goal and expected outcome of the meeting will be
• Have the knowledge needed to bow out if they feel they won’t be of use in the meeting
• Leave the meeting with clear next steps (and deadlines) 

Setting an agenda for every meeting means that your team has clear expectations for what should occur during each meeting, and ensures every single minute is used efficiently.

So let's get into it!

What is a meeting agenda template?

A meeting agenda template is essentially your blueprint for a productive meeting. 

It's a document, often created using tools like Google Docs, that serves as a roadmap for your meeting. It leads you through your meeting goals, agenda items, and meeting notes.

This is especially important if you have the same onboarding process across new clients or weekly team meetings. A template is essentially a productivity hack:

• For recurring meetings: You have an outline of the core items you want to talk about every time you meet. You can always adjust for every meeting. 
• For new meetings: It prevents you from staring at a blank document. You don't need to start from scratch every time. You can build off of your own or someone else's template.

Why are meeting agenda templates useful?

If you use YouCanBookMe, or any online scheduling software, you already save a lot of time and hassle when it comes to scheduling your meetings. Customizable booking pages, configurable booking forms, and a powerful notifications workflow remove the back and forth of scheduling and let you focus on what you do best.

But if you’re only streamlining your scheduling, and not the actual meetings themselves, you’re still wasting a lot of your valuable time on administrative tasks.

The 4 main benefits of an effective meeting agenda 

Why are meeting agendas key to productive meetings? Well, they offer several crucial benefits:

1. Clarity: They ensure everyone understands the meeting goals and the agenda items up for discussion.
2. Efficiency: They provide necessary guardrails to keep everyone on track. Encouraging attendees to add their own agenda items prior to meeting also means that you’ll be able to prioritize important discussions and cover more bases during the allotted time. Depending on personal preference, you can allot time limits on each agenda item prior to the meeting.
3. Focus: They keep meetings focused on essential topics, preventing you from veering off course into unrelated discussions. Avoid situations where a conversation about one person’s weekend activities turns into a 15 minute debate on whether or not hotdogs are sandwiches.
4. Accountability: They give space to document and assign action items that were discussed during the meeting. This means that individuals are now accountable for getting specific things done post-meeting.

What should an effective meeting agenda include?

Want to take a stab at creating your own meeting agenda templates that foster productive meetings? 

Make sure you incorporate the following elements: 

1. Title/purpose: Gives context for the meeting and outlines the meeting goals
2. Date and time: Makes planning easier for attendees by providing them with specific scheduling details
3. List of participants and their roles: Determines who will attend and lead different segments in each meeting
4. Discussion points: Outlines the specific agenda items the meeting will focus on
5. Identify item “owners”: Designates responsibility for giving context on agenda items and accountability for any follow-up actions
6. Timing: Allocates how long each agenda item will be discussed to help keep the meeting moving
7. Meeting notes: Dedicates a section where attendees can record key takeaways, decisions, next steps, and any other essential information discussed during the meeting

How to ensure your meeting agenda creates a productive meeting

Of course, creating the agenda ahead of time is just the first step to making sure your meetings are productive. In order for your agenda to lead to the outcomes you want, you have to apply it!

Share your meeting agenda ahead of time

If preparation is the key to success, an effective meeting agenda can most certainly help. Send attendees the agenda ahead of the meeting so they understand what your priorities are and the topics you want to cover.

You can include a link to the meeting agenda in the automated reminder emails provided by your online scheduling tool so you’re sure attendees see it in advance.

Encourage people to contribute their ideas and agenda items pre-meeting

When you share the meeting agenda ahead of time, you should also encourage attendees to add in their own items. Remember, meetings aren’t presentations, they’re conversations. So it’s important to foster collaboration before, during, and after each meeting.

Give more people opportunities to contribute during the meeting

Not everyone is comfortable being put on the spot. Some people like to think through ideas and thoughts ahead of time. Sharing a meeting agenda ahead of time gives those individuals the opportunity to prepare in their own way and feel comfortable enough to contribute during the meeting. And, as a result, your meetings will be more inclusive for everyone. 

Stick to the meeting agenda

This is harder than it sounds! 

Whether you have lots of people engaging in your meeting, or it’s a 1:1, meetings can easily go off topic fast. Every time you find yourself veering off-topic, 

Make sure all the meeting participants understand that you want to stick with the meeting agenda. 

Be prepared to intervene if agenda items run long. 

YCBM Insider Tip 💡 Our Head of Engineering, Veronica, has a “red card system”. If someone speaks too long or sidetracks to a different topic, she holds up the red card to indicate they need to wrap up. It’s been incredibly effective; she now rarely uses it because her team quickly understood the importance of sticking to the meeting agenda. 

Share action items after your meeting ends

Ensure a successful outcome to every meeting by sharing notes and next steps after the meeting.

If you’re using an online scheduling tool like YouCanBookMe, you can use automated follow-ups to streamline this process and ensure all meeting attendees receive the same crucial meeting notes and action items. 

Pro-tip 💡 You can go one step further and set who’s responsible, and the deadline for each action item. This keeps everyone in the loop about who to contact for status updates.

Meeting agenda templates for your small business

Having a standard meeting agenda at hand makes meeting prep incredibly easy. 

If you regularly hold meetings that require slightly different agendas, that’s where meeting templates can really help. 

Preparing a separate template for each type of meeting gives you a consistent structure to follow, and ultimately saves you time when preparing. Whether it's a standing team meeting, a 1:1 with an employee, or introductory client meetings.

Let’s quickly walkthrough the different types of meetings you’ll likely encounter in your calendar:

1. One-on-one meeting

If you've got employees, it's likely that you'll want to have recurring syncs with them. While the conversation may differ based on their role, as well as what's happening in the business, here's a starter 1:1 meeting agenda. 

2. Intro meeting with a new client

Of course this will depend on your line of work. For example, Financial Advisors may ask something like "What are your financial goals?", while an Executive Coach may ask "What's your leadership philosophy?" But, like we said, templates aren't meant to be copied and pasted. Instead, they're meant to give you a jumping-off point to build a great agenda that's tailored to each new client.

3. Check-in meeting with clients

Clients want to feel cared for and like they're a priority. So it's important to set up check-ins to ensure that you're able to keep a pulse on how things are going and be proactive if any issues come up.

4. Client offboarding meeting

5. Weekly meeting for small teams

Streamline a weekly team meeting for small teams with this agenda template.

Meeting agenda templates: Your path to productive meetings

In a world full of meeting chaos, meeting agenda templates are your golden ticket to efficient, focused, and action-packed meetings that bring about results rather than frustration.

Explore the different meeting agenda templates (or create your own), adapt them to your needs, and watch yourself become the hero of every conference room.