9 Creative Meeting Agenda Templates for Your Next Gathering
Without a clear agenda, any meeting can get off track. Discover several creative meeting agenda templates to keep your next gathering organized.
No two types of meetings are quite alike, and the right agenda to make each one a productive business meeting varies too. Using a creative meeting agenda template ensures that you cover all the key points and your team members walk away feeling confident about what’s next. Plus, when a meeting stays on task, you never have to think, “Man, this could’ve just been an email!” Don’t let your meetings be like that — find a template below that works for all your problem-solving, brainstorming, and one-on-one needs.
- How to use meeting agenda templates
- 9 creative meeting agenda templates
- Why meeting agenda templates are important
How to use meeting agenda templates
The meeting agenda is a list of meeting talking points and the time allotted to each. Your templates can help you properly organize and time these points with generalized headings and topics relevant to the type of meeting you’re holding. Feel free to modify them as needed, but don’t entirely erase them – use them as mostly-written agendas rather than totally blank slates. You can encourage other folks attending the meeting to add talking points too.
9 creative meeting agenda templates
From formal meetings to sales team meetings, the below sample meeting templates should help you plan any occasion. Bonus tip: As you take your meeting notes, you can organize them into the same categories and order as these templates.
- Project kick-off meeting agenda template
- Brainstorm meeting agenda template
- Performance review meeting agenda template
- Sales team meeting agenda template
- Leadership team meeting agenda template
- One-on-one meeting agenda template
- SCAMPER problem-solving meeting agenda template
- Standard team meeting agenda template
- Board meeting agenda template
1 Project kick-off meeting agenda template
The kick-off meeting template ensures that everyone is on the same page when beginning a new venture. It will help you explain a project’s background, purpose, scope, timeline, and roles. It also leaves plenty of room for questions. This way, you can present your vision of the project and deliverables and give everyone room to ask about any unclear points. If you’re setting out into uncharted waters with a new project, this template can replace stress with reassurance.
2 Brainstorm meeting agenda template
To motivate your team and get the ideas flowing, look no further than the brainstorming meeting agenda template – umbrella not required, but sometimes encouraged for a downpour of creativity. This template sets ground rules and prompts for brainstorming and gives everyone a chance to vote on ideas. It’s a true gathering of the greatest minds.
3 Performance review meeting agenda template
Regular performance reviews are key to a team member’s growth, and the performance review meeting template is its trusted companion. The template gives you space to recognize the team member’s great work while also including space for constructive feedback. With this agenda, you can easily help your team members feel valued, seen, and supported during what can often be a stressful occasion.
4 Sales team meeting agenda template
Sales team meetings are all about productivity and efficiency, and your sales meeting agenda should reflect those goals. To drive great results, implement a sales team template that makes space for metrics review, pipeline updates, wins, roadblocks, and meeting action items. When you keep your sales team on track, you keep them on target.
5 Leadership team meeting agenda template
Leadership team meeting templates set the right tone from the beginning with a structure that gives your company’s higher-ups all the information they need. They’re effective whether you’re gathering the head honchos to look at your quarterly finances, plan out a growth strategy, or anything in between. The leadership team meeting template includes updates, metrics review, wins, roadblocks, feedback, and priorities to help everyone get on the same page.
6 One-on-one meeting agenda template
One-on-one meetings can feel intimidating – how often are you meeting alone with just one other person from your team? A one-on-one meeting agenda template can help you feel calm before and during your meeting. It can help you just casually chat with a team member while setting expectations. That’s important whether you’re training a new team member or catching up with someone you’ve worked with for ages.
Michael Lopp, the author of Managing Humans and The Art of Leadership, has additional advice on how to run great one-on-ones. “The important part of regular 1-on-1s is not that information is conveyed, but it’s about you being consistent as a leader,” he says. “What is more important than trust and respect in all directions on a team? A 1-on-1 over time will show your team that you care about that.”
7 SCAMPER problem-solving meeting agenda template
SCAMPER is an acronym that stands for “substitute, combine, adapt, modify, put to another use, eliminate, reverse.” This problem-solving technique lets your team explore unconventional ways of thinking through seven different perspectives. A SCAMPER template breaks down this method into meeting agenda sections so you can use the acronym for the best possible conversation.
8 Standard team meeting agenda template
Gathering your team weekly is super important. That’s because success is way more likely when you regularly get everyone on the same page. With a standard team meeting template, you can keep your team on track as you get all your ducks in a row. The template covers old business, new business, next steps, and action items. It’s way more general than any other template on this list, so you can easily customize it to perfectly fit your weekly meetings.
9 Board meeting agenda template
The board meeting agenda template resembles meeting minutes. That’s because board meetings are highly formal, so an agenda that resembles the most formal type of meeting notes makes the whole affair much easier.
With this template, you can easily leave space for a call to order, roll call, and review of the previous meeting’s minutes. You can then discuss open issues and new business before closing things out and submitting your meeting minutes. Your board meeting agenda template will make sure your meeting minutes are cohesive, organized, and effective – the agenda basically becomes the minutes.
Why meeting agenda templates are important
Below is a broad overview of why all the above meeting templates are so important. Actually, this advice applies to any meeting agenda. After all, most of the above agendas are highly customizable, so you can repurpose them for other, more niche meetings.
- Help with structure. A meeting needs order, and a creative meeting agenda template provides that so your team can stay on task. With a firm meeting structure, you’ll more likely achieve your goals and get your team members on the same page going forward.
- Save time and resources. There’s nothing worse than wasting your team’s time. A clear agenda born from a creative template can give your employees valuable time back since it leaves less room for going off track.
- Promote organization. Having an organized meeting to kick off a project or update team members on progress is a great way to stay organized from the start. When a project’s beginning is clear, you establish the right path from the jump.
- Establish clear next steps. Agenda templates ensure that you leave enough time to discuss next steps – a common oversight if you’re writing your own agenda. Leaving space for next steps makes it much more likely that everyone walks away knowing what’s expected of them.
- Encourage collaboration. When you distribute an agenda well ahead of time, you keep your team engaged and collaborative. After all, a template that offers space for group brainstorming, or breaking off into smaller groups, can get everyone working together. This sort of collaboration provides fresh perspectives that can help you stay ahead of the curve.
Come prepared with a creative agenda
A well-planned meeting with a clear purpose typically leads to better communication, clearer goals, and more productive meetings. A creative meeting agenda template that includes clear topics, goals, and some time for questions is a great start. Fellow offers a variety of highly customizable and free meeting agendas for virtually every meeting type under the sun. With these templates, you can help your team build great meeting habits and make the best of their talents.
