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Writer's pictureGustavo Soares

11 tips to drive better meetings

Updated: Apr 28




Following the Shopify meeting review trend, we all know how damaging meetings can be for employee motivation and company performance if done wrong.


What about not only canceling meetings but making them better? What if companies have a guideline for every meeting that is created?


Here are things that I try to do and expect when a meeting is scheduled:


Title: Create a clear and summarized title that briefly explains what the meeting is about.


Description: Define a Goal, Context and Agenda.

Participants: Make sure that every person that is invited understands why they are there. Remember to not lose people’s time!

Number of participants: Limit your meeting to the smallest number of people possible. Most meetings with 7+ people are mainly informative and can be done via e-mail or Slack.

Participants Preparation: Inform how people can prepare for the meeting. Maybe reading an article or wiki? Studying topic A? Checking a specific BI Dashboard?

Your Preparation: Come prepared for the meeting! Each meeting might require a different approach to moderation, maybe a wiki to document action points will be enough, but maybe you will need a full-blown workshop.


Templates: Use consistent formats or templates for your preparations and moderations. It will help you and the participants to be more productive.


Action Points: Follow up on action items and decisions made during the meeting. This will help to ensure that tasks are completed and that progress is tracked. On top, people will see that you take your meetings seriously.


Keep it simple: Close meetings as soon as the result is achieved. If you scheduled a meeting for 1 hour and you were able to close the topic in 15 minutes, do not drag the meeting with other topics. Close it and thank the participants for the fast decision-making. People will appreciate your pragmatism :).


Continuous improvement: Evaluate the effectiveness of the meeting, and make adjustments as needed. This includes doing regular retrospectives to gather feedback to identify areas of improvement.


Recurrent Meetings: These type of meetings are the most dangerous ones, they are the ones that if done wrong, usually destroy motivation. Make sure to follow the tips above even more for these meetings!


That is how I try to prepare for my meetings, what about you? Any other tips.

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