Transcript:
Welcome to our Impactful Projects and Planning Microtraining series. I'm Jami Yazdani and I  

started Yazdani Consulting and Facilitation to  help people solve management problems. Through our  

project management and project coaching services,  our planning support, and through leadership and  

management trainings, like this series, I'm  able to support my clients in getting things  

done. In today's microtraining, we're going to  talk about meeting agendas and how to use them  

to solve problems and address team challenges.  If you are watching during the premiere of this  

microtraining, please do engage with me in the  chat. I'll be responding to your questions and  

comments in real time. But you can also reach out  to me directly - visit yazdaniconsulting.com/ipp  

to connect. So first let's talk about how meeting  agendas can help us solve team challenges.  

How meeting agendas help solve team challenges

I really believe meeting agendas are an  underutilized tool in a leader's toolkit.  

They help us set expectations for how we  are going to be spending our time together.  

Leaders can use meeting agendas to direct  conversations to critical topics and tasks,  

and ensure that we're using our time more  constructively. An agenda shared ahead of  

time allows attendees to prepare their own  thoughts and ideas before the meeting, supporting  

a more collaborative team environment.  Meeting agendas can also help us target  

problems and challenges and move collectively  towards solutions. So let's discuss some simple  

Strategies for creating problem solving meeting agendas

strategies for creating and using problem-solving  meeting agendas. To create a more collaborative  

team environment and support transparency, ask  your team for input as you develop the agenda.  

What topics should we cover and discuss? Share  the agenda ahead of the meeting to allow attendees  

to better prepare. If they know the topics that  are going to be covered, they're in a better  

position to bring ideas and actively participate,  so share it at least a day or so ahead of time.  

Your agenda can be a continuing resource  that's used to take notes during the  

meeting, document conclusions, next steps,  for sharing after the meeting. In developing  

meeting agendas and planning for facilitating  conversations, I really like to use my Discuss  

Conclude Remind communication process. So make  sure that there is time in a meeting to discuss  

topics and issues - for folks to ask questions  - but always come to some type of conclusion,  

whether that's a decision or documenting issues or  progress or what was discussed. And then we want  

to remind our teams of any conclusions and next  steps that they need to take after the meeting.

Discuss Conclude and Remind is reflected  in my recommended meeting structure.  

In general, I recommend starting your meeting  with a brief discussion or a reminder of any  

shared goals of the team or of that meeting. This  helps create shared purpose and a shared vision  

of success and can really encourage engagement.  Then you want to dive into those relevant topics  

and discussion, prioritizing collaboration  over information sharing. Don't waste valuable  

meeting time on updates and reports that can  be shared for review before the meeting - spend  

time in the meeting discussing and collaborating.  If discussions turn into a rehashing of the same  

topics again and again, or you never seem to get  to all of the critical topics on your agenda,  

set an amount of time, from 5 to  25 minutes, for each agenda item  

and then move on. Also add time later in  the meeting to address any questions or new  

topics. Finally, we always want to end our  meeting with a review of any decisions,  

conclusions and a discussion of next steps  attendees should take after the meeting.  

So let's look at three common problems often faced  by teams, committees and collaborative groups,  

and I'll share a template for a meeting  agenda that can help address each problem.

Sharing updates and information

A common problem is that too much time is spent  in meetings sharing updates and information.  

These meetings can feel like mini-lectures, with  very little discussion or collaboration. We solve  

this problem by collecting and sharing updates  prior to the meeting so that we can shift the  

meeting's focus to topics and discussions that  actually require collaboration, that actually  

require people to be together. Before the meeting,  ask for brief written updates from each group or  

individual, then share those updates with  attendees to review before the meeting,  

along with the meeting agenda. You can  begin the meeting with a reminder of the  

team's shared purpose or goals or  the specific goal of the meeting.  

Then we want to allow for a brief period of  time early in the meeting for any questions  

about or discussion of those updates that we've  shared. You can add set amount of times for each  

agenda item to ensure time is spent discussing  collaborative items rather than rehashing updates.  

Add any topics that require collaboration, such  as discussions of group activities or projects or  

topics requiring shared decision making. This is  where you should spend most of the meeting's time.  

Then end the meeting with a brief review of  any decisions made, conclusions reached and  

the next steps that need to be taken. Using this  type of agenda should help shift your valuable  

meeting time away from a reading of updates  towards items actually requiring collaboration.  

Developing a strategy

So another common problem is that your team or  committee lacks direction. Perhaps your group  

needs to develop a strategy or determine a shared  purpose. How do you prevent endless discussion  

about options and reach consensus on how to  move forward as a team? We solve this problem by  

developing a few critical questions that will help  drive development of a strategy. Questions like  

"What do we hope to achieve?" "What is one outcome  we absolutely must deliver?" "What is one outcome  

we could live without?" Share those questions with  attendees on a single shared document prior to the  

meeting and ask them to write brief responses  to the questions on that shared document.  

Then you begin the meeting with a reminder of that  team's shared purpose or goals to kind of set the  

stage for reaching consensus. During the meeting, you'll discuss each critical question, focusing  

on areas of commonality and consensus among the  written responses. The goal is to come to a shared  

answer or conclusion to each question. You'll  end the meeting with a review of the conclusions  

reached and a discussion of the next steps needed  to formalize or move forward on elements of your  

shared strategy. Using this type of agenda shifts  idea-sharing and consideration of options to the  

time before the meeting, so that the time during  the meeting is spent coming to conclusions  

and discussing next steps. Another common issue  is that, despite all of the time spent discussing  

Actionable next steps

how to move forward, little is accomplished on  critical tasks or collaborative projects after  

a meeting ends. How can we make sure we move our  meetings from discussion to actionable next steps?  

We solve this problem by clearly defining  outcomes and tasks during the meeting and  

using much of our meeting time to discuss issues  and recognize contributions. Prior to the meeting,  

we can ask our team to contribute to the  agenda, providing updates on progress  

towards specific tasks, and any issues or concerns  that need to be brought to the group. So again,  

we'll begin the meeting with a reminder of  the team's shared purpose or goals and the  

outcomes we are working toward to set the stage  for continued engagement. Then spend some time  

discussing or reviewing progress toward existing  tasks before discussing any issues or challenges.  

Be sure to recognize progress toward project or  team milestones and call out the contributions  

of the team - gratitude goes a really long way in  encouraging folks to complete future tasks. Then  

end the meeting with a review of any decisions  made and the next steps that need to be taken,  

clearly assigning due dates and responsibilities.  

After the meeting, you can follow up with  a review of those tasks and deadlines.  

This type of agenda borrows from project  management and agile best practices, using  

meeting time to collaborate on issues and making  tasks and next steps clear during the meeting  

so that your team knows what is expected of  them after the meeting ends. So those are a few  

Outro

very simple strategies and ideas for using meeting  agendas to address common team problems and  

challenges. If you want more ideas and templates  for creating better meeting agendas, you can  

download our free Problem-solving Meeting Agendas  Guide at guides.yazdaniconsulting.com/agendas.  

If you need help coming up with critical questions  or addressing your specific meeting and team  

challenges, visit yazdaniconsulting.com/contact  to schedule a time to talk  

and find out all of the ways to reach out to  us. So thanks for participating in our Impactful  

Projects and Planning Microtraining series!  Visit yazdaniconsulting.com/ipp to view all  

the sessions in the series, learn about upcoming  premieres and connect with us. Thank you!