Use These 6 Types of Meetings for Productive Conversations

If you’ve ever sat in a pointless meeting, then you know how painful they can be. Time is a precious resource in the workplace, and no one likes wasting it in unproductive conversations. While there’s a number of reasons why a specific meeting zaps the life out of attendees, sometimes it’s because the meeting’s format and structure are off. 

Choosing the proper type of meetings for your team is a crucial component of transforming your meetings into smart meetings. In a smart meeting, attendees make more meaningful accomplishments, progress, and connections than ever before. What’s better than that?

Lucky for you, we’re here to help. Here’s six types of productive smart meetings to incorporate into your schedule.

1. Huddles

For quick status reports, holding daily team huddles is the way to go. Huddles are normally 10 or 15 minutes long. They keep your team aligned throughout the week on their priorities. 

Attendees provide updates and talk through any obstacles. To keep your huddles within the confines of a 10-15 minute length, set expectations for how many minutes each person is allotted to discuss what’s going on in their world. 

However, as with any meeting, the number of attendees greatly impacts its effectiveness. If you have a large team, the short and sweet structure of a huddle might not be the best choice for you. 

Alternatively, you could hold huddles for smaller subsections within your team, such as huddles that consist of managers and their direct reports.

2. Kickoff Meetings

Have a project that’s in the works? Time to set up a kickoff meeting. During a kickoff meeting, stakeholders gather to align on several key components of a project to ensure everything runs smoothly.

For instance, stakeholders can discuss long-term and short-term goals (make sure that they’re SMART goals!), roles and responsibilities, and the project’s timeline and milestones. Be sure to discuss which tools you’ll use for project management and data tracking.

Once everyone reaches an agreement on these elements, log everything into a document or a platform so that the stakeholders have a single source of truth to reference at any time.

Most importantly, don’t conclude the meeting without establishing the next steps!

3. Retrospective Meetings

Once a project reaches the finish line, the stakeholders should reunite to discuss the end results in a retrospective meeting. 

These meetings are just as important as kickoff meetings; they play an instrumental role in ensuring that each project is carried out in a more streamlined and strategic fashion than the last.

Start off the meeting by reminding everyone of the project’s initial goals. Then, dive into the data and if the goals were met. Identify as a group what went well and what didn’t go well. Based on the learnings gathered from the project, select several best practices to keep top of mind when diving into the next project.

4. L10 Meetings

Feeling like your initiatives tend to remain stagnant, or progress at a sluggish pace? It might be time to establish Level 10 (L10) meetings. 

L10s zero in on your team’s to-do list, check the status of projects, and prioritize and tackle outstanding priorities.

This type of meeting takes place at the same time and day every week. These meetings are tight; they must start and end on time every time. It’s recommended for these meetings to last around 90 minutes, yet the length will depend on your team’s needs.

Conclude your L10 by asking each teammate to rate the meeting. If the L10 is done right, each attendee should be able to candidly rate your meeting a “10″ (ah—so that’s why it’s called an L10).

5. (Modified) Brainstorming Meetings

Let’s be clear: there’s a right and a wrong way to hold a brainstorming session. Despite popular belief, research shows that teams that hold traditional brainstorming meetings come up with fewer ideas than they would have if they brainstormed by themselves. 

To counteract this and get the most out of your brainstorming meetings (because they certainly hold value), establish a modified version.

Start by setting the expectation that before the meeting, teammates should generate their own ideas individually. Create an “idea think tank” document or repository for people to jot down their thoughts. 

Then, once the meeting rolls around, discuss the ideas collectively. See if anything sticks, or if any ideas could be modified or refined to make them work. There’s a good chance that new ideas will arise as well.

6. OKR Check-in Meetings

So, you’ve set a few OKRs for the quarter. One of the best ways to keep everything on track is by holding OKR check-in meetings. These meetings assist in aligning all the key players, reviewing progress, overcoming obstacles as a team, and sniffing out which strategies will and won’t move the needle. 

OKR meetings are highly effective when they’re held on a weekly basis. You likely won’t need more than 30 minutes to do an overview of the OKR’s top priorities. Above all, everyone should leave the meeting with a sharpened understanding of the next step that they must take to contribute to the OKR.

Create Smart Meetings With Ease Using GoodTime

In a sea of pointless meetings, GoodTime is here to make smart meetings come to life. GoodTime’s meeting scheduling software is free to start and automates scheduling, puts the right people in the room, and generates actionable insights to meet smarter every single time. 

From interviews, to sales calls, to customer meetings, you’ll hit your goals faster than ever before.

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Learn more about how GoodTime can transform the way you meet.