How to Write a Meeting Agenda

Start by naming your agenda. From beautiful poetry to the toughest spreadsheets, nearly every important document needs a name, and the meeting agenda is no exception. The headline should convey to the reader two issues: First, this is an agenda. Second, what is the discussion topic of the meeting. Once you’ve identified a title, place it at the top of your blank document. No need for fancy and complicated titles; Simple and direct is often best in business.

• No need to use large or fancy fonts for titles. In most cases, you should stick to a simple, serious font, such as Times New Roman or Calibri, and keep the title the same (or just slightly larger) font size as the rest of the document. Remember, the purpose of headlines is to inform the reader what they are watching, not necessarily to entertain or distract them.

Include ” who? “, ” where? ” and ” when? ” in the heading. Following the title, the meeting agenda often has a heading that can vary in detail, depending on the level of formality your organization encourages. This heading is usually one line below the heading. In general, here, you’ll want to include brief factual information about the meeting, which is unrelated to the topic being discussed. As a result, those who are not attending can know the time, place and participants. Here’s some information you’ll probably want to include on your agenda. Regardless of the information you choose, be sure to clearly “label” each piece of information (bold content names are a good choice in this case):

• Date and time. Can be combined or divided into two separate parts.
• Location. If your business has multiple locations, you should clearly write the address. Even if there is only one headquarters, you should also specify the name of the room where the meeting will take place (eg Meeting Room #3).
• Attendees. Titles are usually optional and not required.
• Special individual. It could be special guests, speakers or leaders.

Write a brief statement of the purpose of the meeting. Meetings without clearly defined goals are more likely to waste valuable time when attendees have to determine what to talk about. Remove a line after the headline, use bold or underline to highlight your purpose section with headings like “Goal” or “Purpose”, followed by a colon or a line break . Next, in a few concise and to-the-point sentences, describe what was discussed at the meeting. Here, you should only use 1-4 sentences.

• For example, if you’re writing a statement of purpose for a budget meeting, you could use: ” Goals: Outline key budget goals for the 2017-2018 fiscal year and discuss ways to cut costs In addition, Research & Development Director, Mr. Nguyen Van A will present recent competitive research results.
• If you’ve ever written a scientific paper, think of a purpose statement as a conference abstract or executive summary. In essence, you are giving a generalization of what you intend to discuss in the meeting without going into details.

Write a schedule, specifying the main points of the meeting. Scheduling helps avoid a common mistake: business meetings are often too long. Remove a single line after the purpose statement, bold or underline the title of your schedule section. Start typing content that matches the main discussion topic in the schedule. For readability, each piece of content should be written on its own line.

• Divide each content item by recording the start and end times or the estimated duration of each item. Choose one and be consistent in use: mixing the two will make your agenda seem unprofessional.

Allocate time for all special guests. If there are any guests in attendance to discuss important topics, you’ll want to spend a lot of time with them. Give each guest their own piece of agenda content, even if they have more than one topic to discuss. This way, everyone can arrange their own talk accordingly.

• It is best to contact your guests in advance to determine how much time they will need on your topic of discussion. As a result, embarrassing scheduling conflicts are avoided.

Set aside time at the end of the meeting for a Q&A session. During this time, people can ask questions to clarify topics that are still stuck in the discussion, make additional comments, suggest topics for future meetings, or make other comments. . This portion of Q&A time can be made explicit by including as the final content in the schedule. Or you can just mention it after finishing the last part of the meeting.

• If the meeting has come to an end with no further questions or comments, you can always end it early. Many attendees will be grateful for it!

Provide an outline of the topic being discussed – optional. In general, the schedule is the framework people look to to lead the discussion. However, while it doesn’t have to go that far, providing an outline that complements the main points can be of great help to attendees. The outline prompts the organization of ideas presented during the meeting, helping everyone remember the specific topics covered. Here are examples of outline arrangements you may want to use (for more information, see How to Outline):

• I. Priority budget content

  • A. Employee travel budget

    B. Agent fee

    • i. Negotiating for a better deal?

    C. Lobbying costs

  II. Ways to increase revenue

  • A. Alternate Service Agreement

    • i. Presenting options to customers

      ii. Collect feedback

    B. Reinvest in mobile technology

  … and so on .

Check for errors before distributing the conference program. Some attendees may rely heavily on this document, so it would be wise to proofread, check for errors, and completeness before distributing. It’s not just polite to the attendees, but it also shows your attention to detail and the respect you have for them.

• At the same time, making sure there are no errors on the agenda will save you time and save your credibility .

Use templates available in word processing software. Many word processing programs, such as Microsoft Office, Pages for Mac, etc. have templates for a variety of different types of personal and professional documents. These templates make writing professional documents exceptionally quick and easy. Often they are streamlined and have an eye-catching presentation. All you need to do is just enter the relevant information in the appropriate place, and that’s it!

• Although editing software is a bit different, most programs that have the ability to use given templates will let you find them using the menu bar located at the top of the program window.
• If your word-processing program can use a template, but none of it matches the meeting agenda, you can download a suitable template from the software developer’s website. For example, the Microsoft Word template can be downloaded from office.microsoft.com, ^[1] while the Pages for Mac template can be found on the App store.

Or you can also download templates from third parties. If your word processor doesn’t have any agenda templates, even from the official website, don’t worry: there are tons of free templates online. A simple search on your favorite search engine for “meeting agenda template” will yield dozens of related results. However, not all of these results come from official and reputable sources, so it is important to be wise in choosing the right sample to use. Here are a few third-party websites you might want to visit:

• Save Word Templates ^[2] . This is a professional site that provides a variety of quality templates for Microsoft Word.
• Word Templates Online ^[3] . Another good choice for Word document templates. However, this page only has a few options.
• iWorkCommunity ^[4] . A good agenda template for Pages. However, this template is for older (before ’09) versions of Pages.
• The App Store also has many templates for Pages. Unfortunately not all are free. ^[5]

Fill in the blanks in your form. Once you’ve found the right template in your word processor or downloaded the template you like, all you need to do is fill in the required information. Most templates will have clearly marked areas for you to enter your name, time, discussion topic, section titles and the like. Please complete all relevant information to complete the agenda. Once completed, you need to check carefully to check for errors. While convenient, the agenda template doesn’t eliminate errors in spelling, grammar, and factual information on its own.

• Don’t leave any space blank. There’s nothing more amateurish than a schedule with the text “Type content here”. If you don’t want to fill out certain sections of the form for certain reasons, be sure to delete that section instead of leaving it blank.

Make small adjustments to the agenda to suit your needs. Program templates can be incredibly convenient, but there’s no reason you should stick to its built-in style and formatting. Don’t hesitate to change the content and style of your template so that it matches industry standards and your choice of expertise.

• For example, if you really like the look of a certain template but its headings are too long and distracting, feel free to remove the excess from your point of view, as long as it won’t ruin the definition. the format of the document or negatively affect the agenda.