Did you know? Those in leadership roles attend at least 12 meetings a week. Moreover, it was reported by Zippia that workers waste about 31 hours every month in meetings that don’t achieve much.
So if you’re tired of sitting at a leadership meeting that’s going nowhere, it’s high time you take charge. To help you with that, I’m going to give you 12 effective leadership meeting topics for impactful discussions.
I’ll also go over some agenda items to ensure that your leadership team meetings go as smoothly as possible. So let’s get to it!
Read More: 5 Benefits Of Town Hall Meetings For Your Organization
12 Effective Leadership Meeting Topics You Can Pick From
Here are the 12 leadership team meeting topics we’ll look at:
- Company goals
- Company rules and guidelines
- Performance metrics
- Leadership successes
- Resources and budget
- Important company news
- Employee engagement and development
- Company values
- Innovation and growth opportunities
- Challenging decisions
- Leader reviews
- Leader introductions
1. Company goals
One of the best leadership topics during a meeting is to discuss the company’s goals. What are the long-term and short-term objectives?
More than that, team members should come up with strategic and realistic plans to achieve those goals. Drew Moffitt from Kumospace, a go-to virtual office, tells us why this leadership meeting topic is so crucial:
“This process helps to ensure that everyone is on the same page and that the organization is moving in the right direction.”
To make it more effective, you can even discuss previous goals that are done and dusted. It’s good to evaluate past performances to come up with plans for the new goals you set up.
2. Company rules and guidelines
One effective leadership meeting agenda is to discuss the company’s rules and guidelines. This is a time to either reinforce the policies to the team leaders or talk about new policies added in.
It’s also a great time to find best practices on how to enforce the new and old rules and guidelines. Let me give you one example of a discussion topic about new policies.
Suppose the company has implemented a new sustainability policy aimed at reducing carbon emissions in the workplace. You may need to discuss alternative energy sources for the company operations, as well as what essential business travel can’t be replaced by virtual meetings.
As the leadership team, you may need to plan out and make a few exceptions to balance the sustainability goals with practical considerations.
Read More: How to Run a Meeting with Robert’s Rules of Order for an Effective Meeting Agenda
3. Performance metrics
If you want the leadership meeting to foster productivity, then another great topic is to analyze performance metrics.
For this, you can discuss progress, work quality, areas for improvement, successes, etc… When you deeply analyze the metrics with each leader, you can make better decisions based on what you find.
If the performance metrics are great, then you’ll know that the team is on track to fulfilling the company goals. If it’s not the best, then it’s obvious that better decisions and plans are needed to improve. The best part is that you’ll know exactly where and what the challenges are if you review the metrics.
4. Leadership successes
To promote leadership development, it’s a good idea to hold a meeting solely to celebrate successes. You can make the leadership discussion about strengths, milestones, inspirations, motivation, and whatnot.
Now, this might seem a waste of valuable time. I mean, shouldn’t leadership meetings be all about strategizing and problem-solving? Well, the Indeed editorial team puts it best:
“Celebrating the successes helps inspire the leadership team to maintain a standard of quality and performance.”
5. Resources and budget
Another senior management meeting agenda example is resources and budget. It would be best if you discussed where to assign resources, what budgets to set for specific goals, what are the right investments to make, identify potential financial risks, how to manage those risks, etc…
If you spend time focusing on resource management and financial decisions, you can work together to make the company more financially stable and successful. That’s what you call a successful leadership meeting that isn’t wasting valuable time in the least.
6. Important company news
When there is company news, the first ones to hear about it are those in leadership positions. This is why another engaging and productive leadership meeting topic is about the company news.
The meeting participants need to first discuss the news among themselves. Let everyone give their take on what it entails and what changes it may produce.
After that, you can plan out how to bring the news to the rest of the team. To make it an even more productive discussion, come up with ways to navigate the news with each team.
7. Employee engagement and development
One crucial topic idea for leadership meetings deals with employee engagement and development. This is because these are at an all-time low.
Here are some stats to prove that: A Gallup survey saw a shocking 6 out of 10 employees felt unengaged at work. Moreover, a Lorman study discovered almost 60% of employees have zero access to workplace training.
So as the leaders of a company, it’s best to plan out ways to implement better workplace engagement, leadership training, leadership development programs, etc…
Read More: What Is the Leadership SWOT Analysis and How to Use It for Leadership Development
8. Company values
Company values are an important topic for leadership meetings because they include honesty, integrity, transparency, quality, diversity, and so on. These values have significant impacts on a company’s overall success, culture, and reputation.
It’s good to once in a while review these values less some senior leaders forgot about them. It’s also good to have everyone give examples of how to live by them.
You can even have a section to shout out leaders who embrace these values. This way, the others will be inspired to do the same.
9. Innovation and growth opportunities
If you want to see the company grow, then a relevant topic to discuss is innovation and growth opportunities. Here, you should work with the management team to find new ideas to expand on.
For that, you should all deep dive into new trends, tech, and partnerships. This will help you innovate ideas to keep the company competitive and constantly growing. When the company is ahead in the fast-changing business world, it will see a lot more success.
10. Challenging decisions
Let’s say one of the organizational departments is faced with a tough decision. The leader of that department might want to gather all the other leaders to help them with the situation.
In this leadership meeting, the leader should explain the challenge in detail. From there, all the other leaders should discuss all aspects of the situation. They should then all agree on the best solution and decision. The Indeed editorial team also adds:
“Working together to overcome a common challenge can help strengthen the relationship of the leadership team, reinforcing trust and honest communication.”
11. Leader reviews
To foster collaboration and accountability between leader team members, one idea that can help is to have a leadership meeting on leader reviews. It’s just as it sounds, you’ll be reviewing each other’s work.
For those who did a great job, you can give them the praise they deserve. If someone has struggled a bit, then the leadership team can help and support them. You can even go around and tell each other your strongest and weakest leadership skill sets.
This is a leadership meeting topic that affects everyone’s performance. I tell you, team members will try even more to do better.
12. Leader introductions
Let’s say there are new managers and leaders added to the team. If this is the case, then it’s a good idea to make the next meeting about introductions.
Don’t jump to the complicated topics just yet. You need to ease them in.
So besides getting to know them, you can also use the time to explain how the leadership team works, their role in that team, their responsibilities, and all that. These new leaders will highly appreciate it and can get straight to work without feeling so tense and nervous.
How to Ensure Your Leadership Meeting Is Even More Productive and Effective
OK, having one centralized agenda for a leadership team meeting is great. It’ll be WAAAY more productive and effective already. However, there are other agenda items that you need to consider. I’ll go over them here.
- Let the team’s leaders know about the agenda beforehand. If you want everyone to come in with ideas, research, documents, and the like, they need to be able to prepare. So depending on the importance of the meeting, you should tell them about it 1 to 2 weeks or 2 to 3 days in advance.
- Assign roles to each team member. For a smoother meeting, everyone should have a specific role. You can put Jim in charge of the research. Sarah can be the one to study the performance metrics. William can be the minutes taker, while Emma is the facilitator. As you can see, some of these roles need to work on the topics before the meeting – so assign them early on.
- Make sure important information is documented. In a leadership meeting, there is some highly important information that’s going to be given or decided. And you can’t rely on memory to remember all the details that were talked out. This is why, you need a note-taker or minute-taker that will jot down all the important information.
- Decide how long the meeting will last. If you don’t want the meeting to go on forever and waste precious time, it’s good to have an allotted time. When there is a time, the conversation is more likely to stay on topic. If you don’t want to have to extend the time, you need to consider the topic. If it’s only about introducing new leaders, then it can be rather short. But when you’re talking about big challenges, more time might be needed to discuss and come up with a conclusion.
- Prepare relevant questions. Let’s say nobody knows how to start the meeting. To break the ice, it’s a good idea to prepare some questions to get people talking. Maybe you can ask them what they think about the new company policy. From there, you can make the conversation flow into how to implement that policy and what exceptions to put.
Final Words
Company leaders have packed schedules. You don’t want to waste any more of your and their time by attending meetings that go nowhere. This is why, to make it more productive and effective, you should choose one of the 12 leadership meeting topics.
Having a good topic to talk about is one thing. But to ensure the meeting goes smoothly, you should also follow the action item agendas that I listed here. Combine both, then the effectiveness of the meeting will help everyone involved – leaders, employees, company…
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