The first step towards planning a meeting is defining what type of meeting it is. While every meeting is unique, being familiar with the six most common types of meetings will help you better identify the goals, structure, and activities best suited for your meetings.
The six general types of meetings:
- Status Update Meetings
- Information Sharing Meetings
- Decision Making Meetings
- Problem Solving Meetings
- Innovation Meetings
- Team Building Meetings
Here is a break-down of the six general types of meetings with examples of the main activities involve in each type. Knowing what type of meeting you are planning will increase the success of your meeting.
Meeting Type 1: Status Update Meetings
Status update meetings is one of the most common meeting types. This category includes regular team and project meetings, where the primary goal is to align the team via updates on progress, challenges, and next steps. Commonly found group activities in these kinds of meetings are problem solving, decision making, prioritization, and task assignment.
Check out our post about how to run status update meetings.
Meeting Type 2: Information Sharing Meetings
Presentations, panel debates, keynotes, and lectures are all examples of information sharing meetings. The primary goal of these meeting is for the speakers to share information with the attendees. This could be information about things like upcoming changes, new products and techniques, or in depth knowledge of a domain. Visual communication tools, like slides and videos, are powerful tools for making the shared information more memorable.
At information sharing meetings the attendees have historically been passive listeners. With new technologies like MeetingSift they can use their smart devices to go from passive spectators to active participants, making the meeting more engaging and productive for all.
Check out our post about how to run information sharing meetings.
Meeting Type 3: Decision Making Meetings
The vast majority of business decisions are made by groups in meetings. While small decisions are made in all kinds of meetings, the more important decisions often get their own dedicated meetings. There are different types of group decision making processes, and care should be taken to choose a process that best matches the situation. A decision making process can include group processes like information gathering and sharing, brainstorming solutions, evaluating options, ranking preferences, and voting.
Check out our post about how to run decision making meetings.
Meeting Type 4: Problem Solving Meetings
Problem solving meetings are perhaps the most complex and varied type of meetings. Whether the meeting is addressing an identified problem, or it is focusing on creating strategies and plans to navigate the future, there are a rich arsenal of group processes that can be used. Scopes and priorities need to be defined, opportunities and threats need to be identified, and possible solutions should be brainstormed, evaluated, and agreed upon.
Check out our post about how to run problem solving meetings.
Meeting Type 5: Innovation Meetings
Innovation meetings and creative meetings often start with thinking outside the box, by brainstorming, associating, and sharing ideas in a broad scope. Meeting participants can then use various techniques and processes to reduce the diverse pool of ideas to a more focused short list. Through ranking, evaluations, and decision making the most suitable idea, or ideas, are identified, and recommendations and tasks can be assigned based on this.
Check out our post about how to run innovation sharing meetings.
Meeting Type 6: Team Building Meetings
All meetings should contribute to team building, strengthening relationships and corporate culture. However, now and then team building activities should be the main focus for a meeting. This category include meetings like include all-hands meetings, kick-off meetings, team building outings, and corporate events. Have participants feel like essential parts of their unit, team, department, branch, and company has all kinds of positive impact on their engagement, performance, and satisfaction.
Check out our post about how to run team building meetings.
How to run successful meetings
Meetings represent a huge value to both companies and employees, so when planning and running meetings you should not wing it and hope for the best. Instead, earning a reputation for running efficient and successful meetings is good for you and your career. To help you make good use of your meeting participants’ valuable time, our meeting scientists have put together a road map on how to run successful meetings.