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This meeting policy was created with the purpose of setting clear expectations around meeting habits and behaviours in our company. Meeting facilitators and attendees should follow the guidelines in this policy to ensure that meetings are inclusive, collaborative, and a good use of everyone’s time.

What’s inside Definitive Meeting Policy Template:

1 🎯 Objectives

• Run meetings that are effective and organized
• Create conversations where everyone’s voice is heard
• Promote an environment of psychological safety
• Leverage technology to boost meeting productivity

2👤 Roles

1) Organizer

A meeting organizer is the individual who scheduled the meeting, sent invitations to those who are essential to attend and shared the meeting agenda prior to meeting. The organizer should set the objectives and goals of the meeting ahead of time, meaning you and all of the meeting participants have a clear understanding of why the meeting is taking place and what will be discussed. Make sure to think twice about who you’re inviting and let your meeting agenda guide that decision!

2) Host

Hosts should facilitate the timely and productive execution of meetings. It’s your job to keep the meeting on track in terms of time and productivity to achieve your objective. It’s also your responsibility to ensure psychological safety for everyone involved, meaning ensuring the environment is welcoming, everyone is being heard and participation is balanced. Don’t forget to double-check that all of the decisions, next steps, and tasks are documented in detail, include due dates, and are assigned to specific participants, so everyone knows what they’re responsible for. 

3) Attendees

Attendees come prepared to every meeting by having read the agenda, pre-reading, and completing any prep-work or outstanding action items. Attendees collectively take notes so the host can focus on facilitating. It’s a good practice to rotate the role of notetaker amongst attendees for recurring meetings.

4) Optional or Informed Participants

Optional or informed participants may or may not be able to attend a meeting. These attendees should take it upon themselves to review the post meeting report. If any questions arise they should direct these to the host of the meeting.

3 📕 Playbook 

1. Plan your meetings. An agenda must be sent 24hrs in advance if there is no pre-reading/prep-work, or 48 hours in advance if there is pre-reading/prep-work.
2. Prepare for your meetings. Read the agenda and prep documents and review action items. No agenda, no meeting.
3. Always start meetings on time; stragglers should enter quietly in person or on mute remotely.
4. Start on a positive note. Kickstart the meeting with good news, celebrations, announcements, or personal updates.
5. Record decisions and action items. If it’s not in the meeting note, it didn’t happen.
6. Review outstanding action items and readjust priorities and expectations.
7. End your meetings 5 minutes early if it’s a 30 minute meeting and 10 minutes early for a 1 hour meeting.

4 💬 Psychological Safety

1. Restate important points made by attendees.
2. Loop back around to attendees trying to speak.
3. Throughout the conversation, create space for quieter attendees to express their opinion (for example, by asking them what they think).
4. Never give constructive individual feedback in a team meeting; save this for one-on-one meetings. Positive feedback is welcome in a team setting!
5. Don’t hold side conversations while someone is speaking.
6. For hybrid meetings, focus your attention equally on people in the room and the camera.

5 📏 Measuring Success

1. Send a feedback request immediately after the meeting for one-time discussions and on a quarterly basis for recurring meetings to measure effectiveness. 
2. Communicate how you’ll implement changes based on the team’s feedback in your next meeting. However, avoid mentioning who shared the feedback.
3. Another way to measure meeting effectiveness is to look back at the action items tab to understand if tasks are being completed on time, and if there are any blockers or insightful patterns developing.