7 Types of Meetings: Tips for Running a Meeting at Work

A business meeting is an opportunity to bring together different team members to converse, strategize, and plan around relevant subject matter. Planning meetings well allows an organization to rely on the strength of teamwork to propel its initiatives forward.

Business meetings have both advocates and detractors. Proponents believe they give teams an opportunity to interface in a more hands-on, organic, and open way than would be possible through email or direct messaging. Critics assert meetings can become a time vacuum, cutting into employees’ productivity and contributing little to group success.

Coworkers come together in a variety of different iterations and for a host of distinct reasons. Consider these seven different types of meetings:

1. 1. All-hands meetings: The CEO of a company might request an all-hands meeting wherein the entire staff comes together to calibrate around the focal points of an upcoming period. These staff meetings help ensure staff are all on the same page about what deserves prioritization throughout the entire organization. They also offer a venue for team bonding beyond distinct departments, given the fact they bring together people from all over the company.
2. 2. Board meetings: The board of directors at your organization will come together for important decision-making meetings on a semi-regular basis. In their time together, the board of directors will make important headway about the priorities of your entire organization. These information-sharing meetings center around a company’s financial status and health.
3. 3. Brainstorming meetings: Teams can come together to rethink old methods and processes. These innovation meetings are for ideating better ways to achieve goals effectively and efficiently. Many different types of meetings can double as brainstorming meetings, given how new problems requiring new solutions arise constantly.
4. 4. Kickoff meetings: The meeting leader for a kickoff event is likely to be someone in project management. For example, suppose you need to begin work on a new product. A project manager will plan out deadlines to see if the proposed schedule works for all involved. After this kickoff, you might have multiple project status meetings to keep up to date on everyone’s progress. A final, retrospective meeting might help the team evaluate pain points and successes throughout the entire experience.
5. 5. Onboarding meetings: As new employees begin work at new companies, onboarding meetings enable them to meet their coworkers and being learning their jobs. The combination of socialization and education helps make new hires feel comfortable about acclimating to their new workspace.
6. 6. One-on-one meetings: Managers will often check in with individual team members to see how they’re doing and ensure they’re staying on track. These problem-solving meetings allow a supervisor to provide tailor-made guidance and feedback to an employee one-on-one.
7. 7. Team meetings: Individual departments generally have monthly or weekly team meetings to ensure cohesion. The team manager acts as a facilitator and sets the agenda, while the other workers chime in with concerns or relevant information for their teammates.

Choosing which kind of meeting suits a situation is just the start of the journey. Keep these three tips in mind as you learn to plan and execute any type of meeting well:

• Ask for feedback. Ask your team members to follow up with you about how you could make your project meetings together more efficient and effective. These progress checks ensure everyone feels they’re using their time well when coming together to interface about organizational needs. Whenever you ask for feedback, be open to eliminating or adding more meetings depending on what works best for your team.
• Figure out the right format. Some needs merit a face-to-face conversation, while others might only require a brief “online meeting” via a messaging app or video chat portal. Learning how to run a meeting well involves asking what you need to convey to all the other stakeholders and how best to communicate that information. Try to plan meetings where everyone feels they can both provide meaningful input and acquire valuable information.
• Tailor the agenda to the type of meeting. You might need a formal meeting agenda template in some cases, but other meetings can be far more free-flowing. For example, a rigid agenda could get in the way of a group of people trying to brainstorm together. Think about the type of meeting you’re planning and how much structure it needs, then plan accordingly.

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