Meetings Made Better

3 Keys to Run an Effective Team Meeting

by Kari Bergman | March 2025

What if you could transmute that meeting you dread every week into a time that had both form and function …and maybe even a little fun?

We have written blogs on how to rock the check-in, how to create meaningful connection, and key conversations to have with your team, but clients often ask us to help them have better meetings. Frankly, we are not experts on this. We don’t even have it built into any of our programs, BUT we have been on a great journey with EOS and refined the way we meet as a team.

Our team follows the L10 from EOS, with a few modifications. The blog linked does a great job describing this agenda and how to use it for team meetings so I will not do that here. Instead I’ll share what we have learned from experience in applying tools from the experts to run an effective weekly team meeting:

Key #1: Start with connection

While we hope it’s the norm, we know not everyone loves the people they work with (we sure do!)—and that’s okay. Loving your coworkers isn’t a prerequisite for having meaningful meetings, but creating connection is. It can also be the thing that threatens to take our meeting off the rails. Regardless of your level of love or like, it is important to establish a meaningful connection before jumping in and starting the work.

EOS purists affectionately call this section of the meeting “The Segue” and allow 5 minutes for this as the meeting opener, as each member shares both a personal and professional “best.” This helps everyone settle into the meeting and reminds one another of personhood outside of work (connection, yay!). The AGC version is a round of everyone sharing a highlight (or several) of their weekend. This takes more than 5 minutes. More like twenty-5.

One of our clients shared recently that in their executive team meetings, they begin with each person checking in by naming their state of being on a level from 1-5.

There are a million ways this can look, to dig deep and access great ideas for this, check out Chrissy’s blog: Breaking the Ice for Deeper Connections.

Key #2: Make space for what matters

One of the main complaints I hear from folks in our programs – or the hundreds of work-based memes – is that we are spending a lot of time in meetings that feel unimportant, unnecessary, and ineffective.

If we measure how important, valuable, and productive we are based on the fullness of our schedule then packing our days with meetings is a great approach! But I believe that we burn up a lot of creative energy and points on the engagement scale by sitting folks in back to back meetings that do not feel purposeful.

To ensure meetings are purposeful, start by asking:

• • Why are we here?
    For weekly standing meetings and one-offs, establish the purpose for the time which will help identify when the agenda or conversation veers off purpose.
  • Who is in the room?
    Is everyone here that needs to be here? Are there people who don’t need to be here? (Who doesn’t love some time back?!)
    *If you have any folks with the Strength of Includer on your team – they have a great line of sight to this!
  • What do we need to cover?
    Use clear agendas to outline updates, issues, and decisions. There are several sections in the L10 that address these questions, but my favorite is the issues list or the IDS (Identify, Discuss, Solve) section.

It took us some time to get here, but what is at the center of the successful structure is a shared commitment from our whole team to use this weekly space to support moving our collective work forward.

Key #3: Shared responsibility and accountability

Once you have the right people in the room and a clear purpose for gathering, the next key is shared ownership both in preparation and in follow-through. To make this happen, focus on two practices:

Co-create the Agenda
Our team’s agenda is a collaborative document with a section for “issues.” Throughout the week, team members add items to this list. During our meeting we take time to prioritize them and then tackle them together. This shared aspect gives the opportunity for each team member to bring up what feels most important to them.

Identify Clear Next Steps
As you make space for what matters, the discussion will naturally lead to tasks, action items, and next steps. It is important to name clearly who will hold responsibility for each of these and make a record to follow up at the next meeting. Within the meeting, slow down to identify three things:

• • What is the next step?
  • When is it due?
  • Who is responsible? Keep a record of this and follow up at the next meeting.

This builds in collective accountability and provides momentum for things getting done as a result of the weekly meetings.

The AGC disclaimer

We use the L10 agenda loosely and have added sections to the meeting structure to ensure it fits our team needs and culture. We slow down where we need to and over time have learned to speed up in places where we used to get stuck. Because this is the only time our team is all together in a week, we use some of the space for quick updates that certainly could have been an email, but for someone buried in email (me), the message gets through more effectively in this live setting.

Have fun exploring these practices and playing with the structure that will best fit your team’s rhythms and needs. If you want a collaborative partner to explore with, we cannot wait to hear from you!

I’d like to dedicate this to my best friend in the world – you know who you are 🙂

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