6 Types of Team Meetings You Need (And 4 You Don’t)

U.S. companies lose billions annually due to meeting mistakes, such as miscommunications and ineffectiveness. Inefficient team meetings usually occur because they’re unnecessary — in many cases, an instant message or email would have sufficed. In others, organizers don’t follow clear agendas, ignore time limits, or fail to use digital tools, like AI agents, that can handle administrative tasks like taking meeting minutes and sending next steps.

David Chaudron, an organizational psychologist and managing partner of Organized Change, and Erin Baker, a psychologist, leadership coach, and former corporate leader shared their insights around when a team meeting is necessary and how to run them efficiently.

With their expertise, we compiled this list of the six types of meetings you need to maximize employee productivity — and four you can take off your calendar completely.

6 types of team meetings you should have

These meetings will give you the most bang for your buck. Here’s how to make the most of them.

1. Kickoff meetings to start projects on the right foot

If you’re rolling out a new project or initiative, your team must align on what it involves and their role in it. A kickoff meeting is a great place for everyone involved in a project to get on the same page.

“Kickoff meetings are effective for several reasons,” said Chaudron. “People have to know what the long-term goals of the [project] are going to be so that they can align themselves properly. They really need to know their part in it, [and] you need to get their buy-in. The buy-in is particularly important so they can be enthusiastic about whatever is going on.”

2. Weekly check-ins for ongoing projects

Weekly check-ins give you a chance to discuss where projects stand, where they’re headed, and how you’ll address any potential challenges that may arise.

Be mindful not to overdo it; a meeting cadence of once a week should give you plenty of opportunity to track progress and overcome roadblocks. If you need updates more frequently than that, consider asking for them in a dedicated team or project management plan rather than getting everyone in the same room. Creating automated workflows for weekly check-ins can be especially useful for this purpose.

3. Monthly strategy sessions for alignment

It can be easy to get so caught up in your day-to-day work that you lose sight of the overarching strategy. A monthly team meeting with fellow leaders can help you align on strategic goals and evaluate progress.

Use these sessions to review recent performance and important learnings. Then, align on your objectives for the month or quarter ahead. To continue collaborating between meetings, consider putting your key takeaways and any other important resources into a shared canvas where all meeting attendees can collaborate in real time.

4. Quarterly reviews for performance assessment

It’s important to have meetings that center around current needs and future goals. But if you want your team to grow, it’s just as important to have regular retrospective meetings to review performance and discuss key learnings from past projects. Quarterly meetings give teams a chance to assess the success of finished projects and strategize for the ones ahead.

“No project ever goes perfectly,” said Baker. “Retrospective meetings are a great opportunity for people to come together to talk about what went well, what didn’t go so well, and what will be changed for the next project.”

5. Onboarding meetings for new team members

When you hire someone new, they have a lot to learn before they can begin contributing to the team. Onboarding meetings help facilitate that training and get them up to speed.

“Onboarding meetings can be great for helping people understand the organization’s structure, what projects are coming up, how their role and work will fit into the broader picture, and to set early expectations for what the person should do in their first few weeks and months,” said Baker.

Chances are, you’ll need to host several onboarding meetings, including:

• 1-on-1s. Introduce new hires to leaders, managers, and other team members in a personal setting.
• Team meetings. Connect new hires with their teammates so they can understand team dynamics and how their role supports others.
• Tools and logistics training. Teach new team members how to use any systems or software specific to their role.

“[Onboarding meetings] signal to the new employee that the company cares about them and is invested in ensuring they have a smooth transition into the workplace,” said Baker. “It’s also a great place for a manager to share what will make their relationship effective over the long term.”

6. Annual planning meetings for forward-looking strategies

An organization stagnates if leaders don’t gather regularly to review and evolve business strategy.

During annual planning meetings, your leadership team should review goals, assess successes and failures, and create a new or improved strategy for the upcoming year. This may involve brainstorming sessions, financial planning meetings, and in-depth strategic discussions.

When bringing together a large group of people who all have unique insights to share, it can be beneficial to record the session and document ideas with digital collaboration tools. Slack AI can assist with meeting administrative tasks like taking meeting notes so that everyone can stay focused. It can also send notes and action items to a shared canvas in the huddle thread for quick access after the meeting.

When a team meeting can be skipped or streamlined

Now that you know which meetings produce results, let’s talk about meetings that are typically less effective — and why you can skip them.

1. Redundant daily stand-ups

The practice of holding daily stand-ups was popularized by the Agile development method, but having a meeting every day of the week doesn’t make sense unless you’re specifically following that method (and sometimes even if you are).

It’s rare that so much happens during one day that the whole team needs to meet about it. Instead, teams can meet asynchronously. Encourage team members to share updates as they occur in project-specific Slack channels.

2. Meetings without a clear agenda

“Oftentimes people will schedule meetings but not be clear [on] what they want to get out of it,” said Baker.

This is a surefire way to waste your — and everyone else’s — time. If you want to have effective meetings, decide exactly what a meeting’s goals are, create a clear agenda to reflect this (including next steps), and share it with your team ahead of time. This gives everyone a chance to come to the meeting with questions or discussion points.

Teams can create and add to meeting agendas directly in a Slack team or project channel using lists or canvases. These are visible to everyone in the channel, eliminating the need to send an email out to the whole team.

3. Repetitive project updates

Project check-ins are a great way to share developments and discuss problems, but there’s no need to hold status update meetings, according to Baker. “A round-robin of what people are working on can be handled over email or a collaboration tool,” she said.

Reduce the number of weekly in-person meetings by setting up periodic digital check-ins instead. Slack users can easily automate this process by sending reminders to specific team members or a project channel. This way, everyone knows to post an update on their work at a regular cadence.

4. Duplicate meetings

When working on a cross-functional team, you may end up inviting the same people to meetings on the same topic. To avoid wasting anyone’s time, try to invite everyone who may need to contribute to a conversation the first time it’s covered.

If you’re concerned you may accidentally leave someone out, create digital project boards or centralized repositories of information that anyone on the project can access. This helps absent team members catch up and avoids creating redundant meetings.

Maximizing productivity in necessary meetings

Even necessary meetings can waste your time if they’re not well organized. Always create a structured agenda and set clear goals and time constraints to help everyone stay engaged and productive.

Tips for effective team meeting agendas

Following these four tips can help you prepare an effective agenda that keeps your meeting on track:

1. Define your purpose. Ask yourself what needs to be achieved by the end of the meeting. This is the purpose of the meeting. Write this down at the top of your agenda so it’s clear to everyone.
2. List topics to cover. Determine what information or topics need to be discussed. Listing these, along with any other key details, will make up the bulk of your agenda.
3. Ask the team. Source agenda items from your team ahead of time. Ask them to email you topics they want to cover or use a digital tool — like Agentforce in Slack— to create a cohesive agenda with team member input.
4. Establish next steps. End the agenda by determining next steps and assigning action items so everyone understands where to go from there.

How to convert meetings into digital communications

You can reduce meetings even more with digital tools like instant messaging, virtual collaboration, and AI automation. Use these pointers to determine how best to convert meetings into digital communications:

• Status updates. When you need to share information but don’t need to collaborate or get feedback, send a status update via a project or team channel, or send a direct message to whom it concerns.
• Missed meetings. If you miss a meeting, catch up with Slack AI. It can summarize missed video meetings or entire Slack conversations to get you up to speed quickly, so you don’t have to throw extra time on your calendar.
• Audio meetings. Need to talk in real time without the formality of a video meeting? Chat briefly in an audio-only huddle directly through Slack. This can take the pressure off meeting face-to-face and let you get straight to the point faster.
• Collaboration. Sharing ideas and working with others doesn’t always require a face-to-face meeting. Instead, virtual collaboration tools like canvases provide a way to swap ideas, files, documents, and more in real time or async.

 

Say goodbye to time-wasting meetings

Team meetings have the potential to either be valuable and productive, or ineffective time sucks that detract from your day or cause you to lose momentum. Only holding meetings you actually need — and using digital tools to optimize your time — can help you make the most of each workday. Creating clear agendas and ending meetings on time are vital for ensuring you and your teammates stay on track and get more done.

Want to use Agentforce and Slack AI to make your meetings more efficient? Contact our sales team to find out how.