Have your staff meetings started to feel like a waste of time? Do they drag on with each person reporting out in excruciating detail on what they’re doing?

About a year ago, we realized our staff meetings at Equality Federation weren’t as productive as we wanted them to be and decided to try a different approach.

For us, one big problem was spending tons of times on each person reporting out.

Here’s how we’ve made our meetings better:

Written Updates

Perhaps the biggest thing that improved our meetings is something we do outside of the meetings. Every Friday afternoon, we email the rest of the team an update that includes highlights of our work from the week as well as any key information we’ve learned about groups we’re partnering with that might be helpful for others on the team to know.

I know what you’re thinking: that sounds like a big pain. But here’s what it does: it shifts the updates out of the staff meeting so people can read through on their own schedule, skip over pieces that are less relevant to them. This frees up our meeting time to focus on working through questions we need to sort out as team.

We’re not too rigid about these: we all use a format that suits us, keep it conversational in tone, and if we’re on the road, we might occasionally get a report out late. Now, here’s the key thing: we actually read each other’s updates, and often respond with questions or just to say “great work” on a particular project.

Rotating Facilitators

Where is it written in stone that the Executive Director has to run every meeting? We now rotate who runs the meeting. It gives us a little variety in facilitation styles week to week and makes it so the ED gets a chance to participate in conversations without always having to be managing them as well.

Meeting Structure

We follow a fixed, but flexible structure for our meetings each week.

Getting Started and Personal Check-Ins (5-10 minutes)

We start off with a quick go-round for folks to share something that’s going on in their lives outside of work. As a distributed team, this is particularly important for us since we don’t have natural “water-cooler conversations.” We try to keep these brief, but it creates a stronger bond when you know a bit more about what’s up in your colleagues’ lives.

Top Three (5 minutes)

Each person quickly, in just a sentence each, identifies their top three priorities for the week. The focus is forward-looking, not on what’s already been done. This helps create a sense of accountability to each other for meeting our goals and can spark discussion topics if there are aspects of those priorities the group needs to check in on.

Executive Director Update (5-10 minutes)

An opportunity for the executive director to quickly highlight and share information the entire team needs to know.

Discussion Agenda (30-60 minutes)

This is the bulk of the meeting time. Over the week, we track things that need a staff discussion in a shared Google Doc, and before we dive into discussing topics, we give everyone a chance to flag additional topics. If we have too much to cover, the facilitator may suggest holding a less urgent item to the following week or scheduling a separate call.

Again, we’re spending this time discussing and working through questions where the whole group’s insight is needed. If it’s a report, we try to handle it on email. If it’s not relevant to the whole team, we try to handle it separately without taking up everyone’s time.

Communications Check-In (5 minutes)

We spend a few minutes making sure our work is coordinated with our communications. Staff may volunteer to write blog posts, share social media ideas, or request a email be sent to members. This brief conversation allows us to ensure we’re meeting everyone’s needs while still being proactive and strategic.

That’s its! This agenda isn’t a cure-all. We still occasionally have an off meeting, but most of the time we leave feeling like we’ve gotten some real work done and enjoyed the time we spent together as a team.

What’s right for our team may not be for yours, but hopefully this post will inspire you to try some new approaches to staff meetings.

What strategies have worked well for making the most of your team’s meetings? Email me your ideas, and I’ll include them in a future post.