Agenda Template

About the Agenda Template

There’s nothing worse than a meeting with no purpose. But you don’t have to be a planning genius to make purposeful agendas before the meeting starts. Impress your colleagues and align more quickly with this easy, simple Agenda Template.

What is an agenda?

An agenda is like a roadmap for a meeting. It lists the activities that will happen during a meeting, when they will happen, and in what order. The main purpose of an agenda is to give participants a clear outline of the meeting’s structure. Without agendas, meetings often feel disorganized and you risk leaving without accomplishing what you want.

But an agenda doesn’t have to be boring. That’s why we created this template to make it visual, fun, and interactive. We make it easy for you to sprinkle in your choice of graphics, colors, fonts, and images to give your agenda personality and creative style.

How to create an agenda

Making your own agenda is easy. Miro’s whiteboard tool is the perfect canvas to create and share your agenda with your team. Get started by selecting the Agenda Template, then take the following steps to make it your own.

1. Add the basic details of the meeting. Add the date and goals at the top of your agenda.

2. Define priorities and tasks. Make sure you have a clear idea of what the most important topics of the meeting are. Once you know what the meeting priorities are, jot them down.

3. Collaborate in real-time. During your meeting, you can invite participants to the board and have them add any priorities, tasks, or notes you didn’t think of. Discuss any new items during the meeting.

4. Customize your agenda. Using the template, you can dress up your agenda in graphics, colors, fonts, and images. Don’t be afraid to get creative! Filling out an agenda doesn’t have to be a chore. By making something fun and personal, you can make planning a cinch.

Benefits of creating an agenda

Here are some of the advantages of creating an agenda.

Keeps meetings organized

An agenda promotes structure and helps prioritize the most critical activities of a meeting. This keeps the team focused on important matters, which improves productivity. The mere presence of a formal agenda creates an official atmosphere and discourages participants from wasting time.

A formal agenda also sets the meeting objectives and creates a clear goal. This organizes the direction that the meeting will take and the actions to take after the meeting.

Enables effective decision-making

Agendas give an outline of topics up for discussion at the meeting. This outline prevents the meeting host from forgetting about important topics that they need to introduce.

When all issues are discussed thoroughly, worthwhile decisions can be made as a group in one session. This is far more productive and transparent than hastily making plans outside of the meeting. Input and suggestions from different perspectives boost the quality of performance and create a feeling of teamwork.

Helps communicate important news

Agendas offer an opportunity to make announcements around important business events and meeting goals. Without a formal agenda, announcements may not be communicated to all those who are present at the meeting. Also, agendas provide a space to recap previous meetings. This helps with meeting reflection and reviewing the progress made.

Provides an equal chance to contribute

Agendas usually mention action items that will be discussed during a meeting. This gives all team members a chance to ponder the discussion topics beforehand.

At many meetings, outspoken participants are more eager to participate, while reserved people are more hesitant. However, knowing what will be discussed allows the entire team to research the topics that will be discussed. They can reflect on how the topics will apply to them and make thoughtful, valuable contributions at the meeting.

Best practices for creating an agenda

Keep these best practices in mind when creating your agenda.

Seek input from the entire team

If you want your entire team to be engaged in meetings, make sure the agenda includes a list of topics that reflect their needs. Ask your team members to suggest agenda items together with a reason why each action item should be addressed in a team setting.

Prioritize topics that affect the entire team

Team meeting time is costly and challenging to schedule. This means that it should mainly be used to discuss and make decisions on issues that affect the entire team — and require the whole team to resolve them. If attendees aren’t spending most of the meeting speaking about interdependent issues, they may become disengaged.

List agenda topics as questions the team has to answer

Most meeting objectives are just several words that are strung together in order to form a phrase. For instance: “office space reallocation.” This leaves meeting participants questioning, “What about office space reallocation?”

When you list a meeting topic as a question (or questions) that needs to be answered, it stirs strategic thinking and encourages input. For example, “Under what conditions, if any, should we redistribute office space?”

What should you include in a meeting agenda?

Here are some of the key elements your meeting agenda should include.

1. Agenda header

The agenda header is used to identify the following items:

• The entity, organization, or committee that is calling the meeting.

• The agenda header will bear the name of the assembling body, such as a Board, Advisory Group, Committee, or meeting participants.

• The kind of meeting.

2. Meeting attendees

Your formal agenda should list the participants of the meeting. However, it should also list what agenda items each member of the team will be responsible for.

3. Key objectives

Your agenda must inform all participants what the meeting objectives are, what will be spoken about, and what types of decisions must be made.

The primary meeting objective is frequently a sentence or two that answers two main questions:

• Why are we meeting?

• What do we want to accomplish?

4. Input from your team

Remember to get your team or the other meeting attendees involved in putting together the agenda. The team may well know more about the talking points up for discussion than the organizer.

In this way, you’ll ensure that all main topics and any issues are addressed. It will also keep attendees engaged as they’re involved in the creation of the meeting.

5. The meeting work plan

The meeting work plan is what you want the meeting to achieve.

Ensure that you establish realistic time goals for each issue. It’s always a good idea to allocate a couple more minutes than you think you’ll need per point on your agenda. Very often, a question or discussion point arises that needs solving, which takes up time.

6. Duration and the allocated time for each agenda item

One of the most important purposes of a meeting agenda is to ensure that the meeting runs on time. After all, you want to respect the time of those attending. Defining the amount of time that will be spent on each agenda item will help keep your meeting on track.

Ensure that you establish realistic time goals for each issue. It’s always a good idea to allocate a couple more minutes than you think you’ll need per point on your agenda. Very often a question or discussion point arises that needs solving, and this takes up time.