Let’s discuss weekly team meetings. We will explain you the importance of them, how to use them effectively and will provide you with a free PDF team meeting agenda template that can be used right away as guidelines.
Why having weekly team meetings is so important
Let’s quickly go over several important reasons on why having structured weekly team meetings is useful.
They strengthen team spirit
Having regular team meetings encourages people to be more open in their communication, feel more personal towards other teammates and thus develop stronger bonds within the team.
They keep people involved
Giving your team members the opportunity to explain their work and ideas is a key factor in making people feel appreciated. Problems will also get heard by more people and thus may result in useful opinions which would otherwise be unheard.
They assure smooth information exchange
According to studies, around 24 billion hours is wasted on unnecessary meetings every year. That is a huge amount of wasted time that could have been used for productive work instead. Having reoccurring weekly team meetings keeps the information exchange usefully brief and maximizes the time for productive work.
They establish routine
It is a pain to focus on your personal weekly work flow when the meeting schedule is irregular and unexpected. You will suffer in loss of productivity and higher general stress levels. Knowing when your team meetings are happening helps schedule tasks more conveniently to make sure everything will be completed due deadline.
They help managers in their decisions
Having too much irrelevant and too little important information on employees’ work has a damaging effect on an otherwise healthy leadership. Gathering the same important metrics each week from a weekly team meeting maximizes the flow of important information while minimizing the irrelevant information.
How to structure a team meeting agenda?
The smartest way to structure your team meetings is to first analyze your team’s work flow. For example, if you set the team goals by month, you should include a part in the weekly team meeting for the monthly goal updates. If you have yearly goals however, having a dedicated time each week for those updates might not be worth it.
Aspects to think about when developing a team meeting structure
- How frequently does our team set goals?
- Are the tasks our team members work on small and specific or more general? (small and specific tasks are common in development teams for example)
- How many people are in the team? If a team is larger than 10 people, having one overall meeting might not be as productive as initially expected. Try to divide a larger team in groups so that people with more similar work will be in the same group.
- What kind of task management software do we use? Building team meeting structure around the software you use is extremely useful because this will enable you to use the software while having meetings as a presentation/guide.
The 6-Step Method (Team Meeting Agenda Template)
the 6 step team meeting agenda template is built around the methodology of PPP – Plans, Progress and Problems.
Step 1 – Introduction into the meeting
Say a few opening words, discuss nonwork related things for a couple of minutes, introduce new people. This helps break down the ice and get people in the flow of talking. You can also try some of the icebreaker activities to get the meeting started.
Step 2 – Urgent announcements
This section of the meeting is dedicated to urgent company or team wide news that may raise questions from the audience. Announcements with lots of questions are bad for email communication due to scattered answers, irrelevant notifications etc.
Step 3 – Progress
Progress will be the first 1/3 of the PPP methodology used. In this section, every team member will take turns to quickly talk about their last week’s progress.
Step 4 – Problems
When the progress is discussed, move on to problems. Once again, every member in the team takes turns to share their problems in a general manner and listen to others about their problems. This will result in people sharing their opinions and potentially finding solutions in unexpected places.
Step 5 – Plans
Every team member will set themselves 3-5 plans based on previous discussions and will not reveal them to the rest of the team. Nothing too specific but just enough to give an overview of their general activities.
Step 6 – Closing words
Give a conclusive overview of the team as a whole, praise people for their good job, wish them good luck for the week and motivate them to start work.
[Free PDF] 6 Step Team Meeting Agenda Template
Best PPP Software of 2022
To support the 6 Step meeting process, we suggest you try out a software like Team Compass that uses the same framework as the meeting agenda.
Team Compass provides the whole team with weekly automated reports that can be used in meetings, is a workplace where team members can enter their next week’s plans and where they can discuss their problems with other teammates.
Team Compass is priced at $29/month flat.
Try it out in your team. No payment, no credit card, free for the first 14 days.