Haynes Tran
January 13th,2023 4 min read
At its most basic, a meeting agenda is an outline of the topics and talking points your team can expect to discuss during a specific meeting. A well-crafted meeting agenda helps create effective meetings by aligning your team on the purpose of the meeting and setting meeting expectations. By clearly outlining who on the team is responsible for which topics, the priority of those topics, and the length of time allotted for each point of discussion, you can keep the meeting on track and purposeful.
A meeting agenda template is a reusable resource that lays out the basic elements of a meeting. For a meeting to be effective, it has to have a purpose and clearly defined expectations. A meeting agenda template helps facilitate this by clarifying what the meeting will cover, the roles and responsibilities of each team member, and any resulting action items. For example, your meeting agenda template might include topics of discussion, as well as which team member owns each topic and how long they have to discuss the topic during the meeting.
While our basic meeting agenda template serves as a useful baseline for everything from one-off syncs to weekly team meetings, some meetings require a more specific structure. For example, running a 1:1 meeting with a direct report is pretty different from holding a board meeting with a board of directors and outside stakeholders.
A meeting overview section to keep track of the goal of the meeting, as well as the meeting’s facilitator and attendees.A section for topic suggestions, including the discussion points for each meeting, as well as who on the team owns each topic.A section for action items that come out of each meeting, as well as who owns each task and the corresponding due date. A reference section where you can keep helpful materials, such as previous meeting recordings, slideshow presentations, and meeting notes.