10 meeting agenda examples to help you get more done

A meeting agenda is a must-have for anyone who’s serious about getting things done and using their time wisely. Without one, it’s easy to get lost, distracted, or head in the wrong direction.

But plan ahead and everything’s mapped out in front of you — including your discussion topics, timing, and final destination. There’s no confusion, and nothing gets left behind.

Plus, people love when you put in the prep work — research shows 64% of employees get excited about meetings that are well-planned. 

Here are 10 free meeting agenda examples created by industry experts. They'll help you achieve more when you meet and keep conversations on track!

1. Weekly team meeting agenda 📅

Suggested time: 55-85 minutes

This in-depth team meeting agenda template from Herne Varnish is the perfect way to check-in with team members and evaluate long-term priorities. The warm-up gives you time to give status updates and spot patterns across the entire team, and the following 30-60 minutes give you room for a deeper discussion. 

With enough space to tackle big issues, this agenda template is ideal for leaders that are big on collaboration and curiosity. It also means you can pick up issues early, discuss them, and resolve them before they become a problem. 

➡️ Try this weekly team meeting agenda template

2. Project kick-off meeting agenda ⚽

Suggested time: 60 minutes

Work through your project launch in a clear, structured way with this sample meeting agenda. Adrian Neumeyer is the brains behind this template that features room to talk goals, scope, timelines, and responsibilities. 

Use this agenda template to give you the confidence to run your meeting with purpose. It’s great for the kick-off phase of major projects, where everyone needs a clear understanding of their role and how it fits into the bigger picture.

➡️ Try this project kick-off meeting template

3. Creative brainstorm meeting agenda 🧠

Suggested time: 50-80 minutes

Our favorite creative brainstorm meeting template is by Todd Henry, author of Herding Tigers. It helps you bring structure to a meeting that can often feel chaotic, so you can get the most from the session.

A major part of this agenda template is the focus on the pre-meeting prep. It prompts everyone to complete their “homework” and come to the brainstorming session ready to come up with ideas and solve challenges together. 

➡️ Try this creative brainstorm meeting template

4. Design review meeting agenda 🎨

Suggested time: 30-45 minutes

The mastermind behind this agenda template is Jessi Bradshaw, a UX designer who believes the focus should be on deciding who’s at the meeting in the first place. This clear yet simple agenda helps you stick to the decisions that matter most when you have everyone around the same (virtual) table.

What helps make this meeting agenda example even better is the prompt to send the design links to everyone ahead of the meeting. With the files in easy reach, your participants have plenty of time to review them before the discussion. 

➡️ Try this design review meeting template

5. All-hands meeting agenda 👐

Suggested time: 45 minutes

Host better all-hands meetings with this easy to use agenda template. Update everyone on the metrics that matter, then dive into a special topic. Send out an anonymous form via Slack before the meeting to capture any questions your team members might want to ask. 

This is the all-hands meeting agenda we use here at Vowel! It helps our bi-weekly staff meetings run smoothly, with enough space to talk business, celebrate achievements, and host an AMA.

➡️ Try this all-hands meeting template

6. Marketing team meeting agenda 📣

Suggested time: 60 minutes 

Marketing team meetings can quickly lose focus, with so many channels and projects to cover. This agenda template example from Andy Crestodina helps you build a better foundation for your future team meetings. 

Kick things off with a positive overview, then review what’s happening now. Leave space to talk about future opportunities, and a section to roundup actions. While this template is designed as a marketing team meeting agenda, it also translates to other teams that work in a similar way — like design or sales. 

➡️ Try this marketing team meeting template

7. Project retrospective meeting agenda 🔙

Suggested time: 30 minutes

We shared a great project kick-off template earlier — now it’s time for one to help you close projects with more purpose. Creator Marie Prokopets recommends this agenda for teams that want to understand their project successes and challenges on a deeper level. 

This project meeting agenda template template is an ideal way to bring more collaboration to your project retrospectives. The way it’s structured creates an equal space to discuss, surface ideas, and solve problems together. With a focus on customization, it works for projects across different teams and niches — not just agile project management.

➡️ Try this project retrospective meeting agenda template

8. OKR-setting meeting agenda 🎯

Suggested time: 60 minutes

Performance reviews and OKR-setting sessions can be overwhelming, but this agenda template from agile coach Ben Mancini will help you stay focused on the goals. It features short sections that review previous OKRs and what makes a good objective, followed by a longer section to agree objectives. 

This agenda takes a unique approach to OKR setting, with this session focused on objectives and a second follow-up that sets key results. This gives everyone the chance to process properly and not hit burnout in a 2-hour long session

➡️ Try this OKR-setting meeting agenda template.

9. Empowering 1-1 meeting agenda 🤓

Suggested time: 45 minutes.

This agenda template comes from Kristi Hedges and takes an empowering approach to hosting one-on-one meetings. Shape your agenda by adding bullet points under the first two sections, then collaborate on your agenda before and during the meeting. 

What’s wonderful about this 1-1 meeting agenda example is the focus on your direct report taking center stage first. This empowers them to speak up and raise issues, without it feeling like a one-sided discussion. 

➡️ Try this empowering 1-1 meeting agenda template.

10. Leadership meeting team agenda 📋

Suggested time: 45-60 minutes

Creator Shawn Kent Hayashi suggests this agenda helps create a culture of “preparation, accountability, participation, and collaboration” — which is perfect for your leadership meetings. The structure might feel new compared to a traditional leadership meeting agenda, but the practical structure soon becomes second nature. 

Start the meeting with good news, then have everyone share updates on what they’re accountable for. Continue to keep each other informed, and check in on your “issues list”. Hayashi recommends keeping this as a running list that everyone can contribute to between meetings, so you can act faster on problem areas 

➡️ Try this leadership team meeting agenda template.

How to create more effective meeting agendas

A good agenda helps you make sure everyone knows what’s happening, that each topic gets discussed, and that action items are highlighted in the meeting notes. They should be the standard for almost every meeting!

Here’s some advice on how to prepare an awesome agenda for an upcoming meeting.  

Figure out your goal

Understanding your meeting objective or goal is KEY because it helps you plan better meetings from the start. Once you know your meeting goal, you can decide on the right agenda format, discussion topics, meeting length, and materials required.

“Reverse engineer an outcome. Think of what you want to be different because you gathered, and work backward from that outcome.” - Priya Parker, The Art of Gathering

If your goal is to check-in on how team members are doing after a big org shift, a simple agenda with sections for updates, questions, and action items is ideal.

For a brainstorming session, your agenda needs to contain guiding questions and clear time blocks so participants know when to get creative and when to share ideas with the group. 

You might decide to share your meeting goal or objective at the top of your agenda — this can be a great way to keep everyone focused on what matters. 

Decide what to discuss

With your goal in mind, you can start to introduce discussion topics that help you achieve your objectives. These will often be formatted in a list style, in an order that makes sense for the way the discussion will unfold. 

Your list of topics might be very specific (like in a sales meeting) or broader, to allow for more casual discussion (like in a relaxed team meeting). They could be styled as questions to prompt discussion, like “how can we work better together as a team?”, or as clear topics like “financial update” or “review of proposal for Client A.” 

Whether you opt for a question-style agenda or one that’s more clear-cut, opt for simplicity and clear language so it’s easy for all of your participants to follow along and take part in the discussion. 

Follow up from the last meeting (if it's recurring)

What are action items without follow-up? If you have a recurring meeting like a 1-1 or weekly team sync, it's important to look back at the previous week when creating your new agenda, to ensure you can follow up on action items or outstanding questions.

This is where it pays to be organized with your agendas, storing them in a place where it's easy to see what happened the previous week.

Vowel includes recurring meeting support — meaning you can easily see agendas from past recurring meetings when you're working on an upcoming meeting agenda.

Involve other participants 

We’re all more likely to take part in discussions where we’re interested in the topic or have a vested interest. Collaboration is a simple way to make your meeting culture better. Invite other participants to help you plan the agenda to get them engaged right from the start — it’s a great way to combat the fact that 73% of people do other work in meetings.

While it's important for one person to own the meeting agenda, asking for input is a great way to make meetings more inclusive. Ask your team members for their suggestions on what to include in your weekly catch-up meeting. Share your creative brainstorm template with others in the early stages, so they can help you organize a better session.  

With Vowel, it’s easy to share your agenda in advance and edit it in real-time — for both organizers and meeting participants.

Assign time to each topic

It’s easy to get lost in conversation and for a simple decision-making prompt to turn into a debate. Keep your meeting on track by giving each discussion topic a clear amount of time. 

Allocate enough time to each topic that you can introduce it fully, allow for discussion, and close it before moving on to the next agenda item. This might be 5 minutes for a company news update, or 15 minutes to discuss a project roadblock. 

With any meeting, give yourself a buffer zone so you don’t overrun. If you don’t get enough time to discuss a topic fully, plan a follow-up meeting instead, or continue the conversation async. As you host more meetings, you’ll get a feel for how long each topic needs — especially with recurring meetings like staff meetings or all hands meetings.

You can add timers to your agenda in Vowel by typing /timer in the shared notepad and entering a number of minutes to start the countdown. Adjust as needed as your meeting progresses!

Prepare documents in advance

Not every meeting has papers, charts, or briefs that need reviewing in advance. But for those that do, your participants should have access to these well before the meeting so they can spend the meeting engaged in discussion and not trying to read important documents.

Preparing and sending your "pre-reads" in advance is a must-have for formal gatherings like board meetings and committee meetings. Your board members need the chance to understand the challenge or proposal and consider it fully. 

But pre-meeting work isn’t limited to just formal meetings. Share your presentations, ideas, drafts, and work-in-progress pieces with your team members. Give your participants access to your OKR-setting workflow. Send a copy of your targets and progress ahead of a sales meeting. Give people all the resources they need to help make better decisions. 

Focus on action items

Meetings with purpose often have an end result in mind — whether that’s to gather ideas for your upcoming company retreat, or to decide which proposal to present to a client. Create room on your agenda for action items, so they remain a focus throughout. 

You might have your action items set before the meeting even takes place. This is common if there are obvious outcomes or next steps — like a proposal that needs to be sent, or a plan needs to be finished before the next meeting. Or you may have a section with action items from a previous meeting, to get an update on whether everything got completed. 

In other meetings, these deliverables won’t be known until the meeting takes place. You can (and should!) still reserve space on your agenda for these.

Use Vowel to update your shared notes in real-time as your action items surface, tagging the person you're assigning the action to.

Preparing effective meeting agendas is like any skill — it gets better with practice. Try a few agenda templates, experiment with styles, and you’ll soon be able to streamline your workflow so that creating a productive meeting agenda comes naturally.

Run better meetings with the right agenda templates

Meeting agenda templates are a shortcut to better meetings. They’re used by experts, tested by real-life teams, and loved by leaders that want to get better results from their discussions. 

When it comes to creating agendas, be guided by your goals and the people involved. For an informal catch-up with a team member, the two of you can agree on a handful of bullet points or questions to use as your meeting agenda.

For formal meetings or client meetings, a more detailed agenda can guide you through decision-making and make sure multiple perspectives are heard in the appropriate amount of time. Whatever the meeting, make all your meetings better by being the agenda advocate in your company!

And to make the most of your meeting productivity (including setting an agenda for every conversation), try Vowel for free!

It's more than just a video conferencing tool like Zoom or Meet — it's a collaboration tool that turns your meetings into searchable, shareable knowledge.