Michael Hyatt and Co. published a book a few years ago called No Fail Meetings, and I highly recommend it. He was tired of wasted time, inefficiencies in his company, and lack of inspiration and direction once meetings were over. With his experience with running a large book publishing company for 14 years and then running his own business for nearly a decade, he has been in thousands of meetings.

He has five steps that frame how he shapes meetings that work:

1. Decide. What is going to be covered and who is going to attend
2. Schedule. With all involved parties at the right time and location
3. Prepare. What is the goal of the meeting and what items need to be covered? Use a results-driven agenda.
4. Meet. Always start the meeting with what the goal outcome of the meeting is. Be intentional, efficient, and productive
5. Follow Up. Review your notes on what tasks have been completed and what is still outstanding.

Michael also references using a template agenda so you can be guided by the template to move the meeting forward and stay on task. If you get derailed by another topic, give that topic a name, make note of it, and address it after the meeting. Give your team a sense of acknowledgment, but remind them that this isn’t the objective of this current meeting.

I like scheduling touchpoint emails/texts/phone calls with my team members to check in and remind them that I’m available to help serve them, and that I care about what they are working on.

My hope is that you can get the most out of your team meetings and continue to create buy-ins from your team and empower them to be solution finders within your organization.

Download a copy of our free team marketing worksheets here. Want to learn even more? Check out our book and video course, Unify Your Marketing.