Leadership meetings are essential to the success of an organization because they can help decide the leadership team’s focus and keep different leaders in a business in touch. Leadership meetings can help to strengthen communication, set common goals for leaders, and instill trust in employees. Depending on an organization’s needs and the strength of its leadership team, leadership meetings can take place weekly, monthly, or a few times per year.
Ideally, after this kind of meeting, your company’s leaders should feel like they’re going back to their teams having made real, meaningful progress.

Identify the Meeting’s Purpose

Every leadership meeting should have a clear purpose and objective. Generally, the main purpose of leadership meetings is to make decisions, solve problems, and ensure that the organization’s day-to-day operations and processes are in sync.
Successfully running these meetings will ensure that everyone is on the same page, focused on the same goals, and working together to achieve them.
Additionally, having a clear set of objectives will allow for time to be used more productively and will prevent the meeting from being longer than it needs to be. It’s a win-win all around!

Limit the Number of Participants

You need to know exactly what you’re going to talk about in order to make sure you have the right individuals present during your executive meeting. Consider who needs to be there for the discussion to be productive. Who would you call to cancel the meeting if they were unable to attend? Thinking of this core group of people is a good place to start. Only invite extra individuals if you believe they will contribute value to the discourse or benefit from their presence.
In The Surprising Science of Meetings, Steven Rogelberg claims that the ideal number of participants is seven! And that decision-making effectiveness decreases 10% with each additional attendee! Bear this in mind when deciding who to invite.

Send out Agenda and Background Material in Advance

If you’ve read any of our other blog posts, chances are you’ve heard us talk about the importance of sending out meeting agendas before!
Having an agenda is essential to running an effective meeting. Send out the agenda in advance, along with any relevant materials and documents that will be talked about during the leadership meeting. Doing this ensures that you’re giving your colleagues enough time to prepare for the meeting and address any questions that might come up.

An easy and efficient way to do this is with the help of Notiv. Write your agenda in Notiv, sync it up with your calendar and send out invitations to meeting attendees; it’s as easy as that! Nothing gets missed or forgotten. To find out more about how you can create a great meeting agenda that you will actually stick to, click here.

Start and End on Time

This may seem like common sense but it’s important to be respectful of peoples’ time. Not only is it basic manners but also leaders in organizations are incredibly busy people so it is essential that time does not get wasted. If you don’t start on time, you will likely not end on time and this could create a domino effect of meeting participants rushing for the rest of their day.
When you start the meeting (on time!), don’t jump into the main discussion points right away. Start with a bit of small talk to provide a smooth transition for those who are arriving from other meetings.

Confirm Attendance

Confirm attendance and begin thinking of a location for the meeting. Some people might not be able to attend the meeting in person, so make sure that all of the necessary technology is in place for them to readily participate via video call. Once you know how many people will be attending, you can plan for any additional requests and requirements that people may have.

Keep a Written Record

Important meetings, particularly ones like leadership meetings, should be recorded. Not only does this help with remembering details of the meeting at a later date, but a recording of the meeting will also provide documentation of important decisions that were made.
You’ll need a document (or an app) to keep track of decisions and assign action items so that you can keep track of progress and modifications.
Luckily, Notiv is here to help! Notiv uses AI technology to record, transcribe and summarize your meeting minutes. After your meeting ends, you can share the recording and transcript with people who were unable to attend or otherwise need to be aware of what happened.
An added bonus is that Notiv allows you to search the transcript for a specific word or phrase when you need to remember a small detail. Save yourself hours of time by using this tool to refresh your memory.
Notiv is integrated with all your favourite meeting tools such as Slack, Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams and x.ai.
So put down your pen and stop taking handwritten notes! Just focus on the conversation and let Notiv take care of the rest!
To find out more about how Notiv works, click here.

Follow Up

After the meeting ends, send a follow up email to the meeting participants to remind them of what decisions were made and what action plans are in place. You should also use this opportunity to share the Notiv recording, transcript and summary so that participants can refer back to what happened in the meeting and have a word for word transcript of everything that was said, in case they need to refer back to it.

Conclusion

The leadership team meeting should not be something to stress about, but rather, something to look forward to! These meetings, when conducted properly, will make your time worthwhile. It’s critical for your company’s leaders to be unified on the company’s goals and to set aside time to work together on accomplishing those goals, discussing solutions, and implementing new ideas to innovate and inspire.
The key to having an effective leadership meeting is to meet often (even if you don’t think it’s essential!) so that there is constant contact between leaders and no gaps in information, reducing the risk of an organizational blunder.
To learn more about how Notiv can help you plan and execute your leadership meetings, click here.