Leadership Meeting Agenda Template For Management Teams

Leadership meetings (or management meetings) are used to align the heads of each department on the key numbers, issues, and strategies within the company. They serve as a forum for analysis, decision-making, and problem-solving.

In this article, you’ll learn about the purpose of a leadership meeting, the recommended frequency, who should be included, and what should be included in a leadership meeting agenda. 

• Purpose
• Frequency
• Attendees
• Agenda
  • Download the meeting agenda library

 

Purpose Of A Leadership Meeting

See also: The Complete Library Of Meeting Types

The primary purpose of a leadership meeting is to get the management team aligned in three key areas:

1. Review the important numbers
2. Discuss the strategic projects and objectives being prioritized to positively impact the numbers
3. Clear the issues holding the company back from reaching the numbers

In the meeting agenda, you should set aside dedicated time for each of the three areas. Each area should get more dedicated time as the complexity increases. For example…

• You’ll review the numbers, so that takes the least amount of time
• You’ll review and discuss the strategic objectives, so that needs more time
• You’ll discuss and decide on how to fix the issues, so that requires the most time

 

Recommended Frequency Of Management Meetings

Here’s an important principle for all meetings: your meeting cadence should match the amount of time you have to change course.

• 🛑 If you have a daily meeting in which you hope to re-do a five-year plan (before the next daily meeting), you have a mismatch in your meeting frequency and the time required to complete the action items.
• 🟢 If you have a daily meeting (a standup) in which you hope to clear the day’s support tickets, your meeting cadence matches your ability to impact what’s discussed in the meeting.

Said differently, don’t overmeet as a leadership team. You’ll end up spinning your wheels and changing course too frequently.

Or, hold different types of leadership meetings:

• Weekly: discuss the weekly numbers and the weekly issues to clear
• Quarterly: discuss the quarterly numbers and the issues to clear in the next quarter
• Yearly: discuss and set the yearly numbers and yearly strategy

With that said, this is most likely the most common frequency for leadership meetings:

Weekly or bi-weekly for 60-90 minutes

 

Who should attend your leadership meeting?

Leadership meetings should include members of the senior management team.

• CEO/President
• CFO
• COO
• Heads of departments (marketing, sales, HR, etc.)

If you’re a small company, this might be just two people who fill all of those roles. In that case, state which role you are filling when discussing a certain metric, objective, or issue. For example, you could say, “Speaking as the head of sales now, here are some issues I see getting in the way of our team closing deals.”

That way, you can hear if certain departments aren’t getting the attention they need.

 

Leadership/Management Meeting Agenda

Want to download the skip-level meeting agenda in Google Docs or Word? It’s part of our meeting agenda library that you can download here. 

Record-keeping:

• Date: [Insert Date]
• Time: [Insert Time]

Agenda items:

• Open discussion (5 min)
  • Set aside time for chit-chat (personal lives, what’s happening at the company, etc.)
  • In the Traction model, this is known as a segue and most companies might call it the introduction
• Last meeting’s action items (10 min)
  • Discuss progress on the tasks you decided to pursue during the previous leadership meeting
  • This is how you commit to doing what you say you’ll do as a team
• Metrics (15 min)
  • Review a set list of the most important numerical measures within the business
  • This might also be known as the scorecard or key performance indicators (KPIs)
  • The numbers shouldn’t change from meeting to meeting and the figures should be prepared before the meeting
• Strategic initiatives (20 min)
  • Discuss the specific projects the team has chosen to purse that will most positively impact the key metrics
  • These initiatives should be set monthly or quarterly, and progress on the initiatives can be discussed weekly
  • This section might also be called priorities or objectives
• Discuss, decide (30 min)
  • Talk about the issues getting in the way, and discuss ways to fix them
  • This section might also be called issues, roadblocks, or concerns
• Next steps (10 min)
  • Turn everything that was discussed into specific action items
  • Each action item should get one owner, a due date, and a specific task that can be completed
• Action items
  • Record the action items here and copy/paste them for the next leadership meeting