leadership meeting presentation

11 Leadership Presentation Ideas for Team Training

• By Judhajit Sen
• May 21, 2024

Leadership development topics equip aspiring leaders with the skills and tactics necessary for effective management. These topics for leadership presentations help leaders understand their roles and view challenges as opportunities for growth. Training provides insights into team expectations and highlights critical aspects that drive productivity and efficiency within the company. Moreover, comprehensive management training builds confidence, helping leaders excel in their roles and identify areas for improvement and growth.

Leadership roles are pivotal in shaping organizations. Great leaders possess qualities such as respect, self-awareness, trust, influence, collaboration, and strong communication skills. They are distinguished by their ability to listen, learn, and communicate effectively with their teams. Accountability and a continuous pursuit of growth are essential traits for leaders in any industry. Hosting offsites or retreats for leadership teams can facilitate brainstorming, planning, and training, aligning leaders across departments and providing the tools necessary for success.

Leadership meetings gather vital decision-makers to discuss, strategize, and make critical decisions shaping the company’s future. These meetings are essential for sharing insights, setting goals, and aligning efforts towards a shared vision. Effective communication during these presentations ensures alignment, inspiration, informed decision-making, accountability, and innovation. By focusing on these elements, leadership slide presentations can resonate with the audience’s strategic mindset and their pivotal role in guiding the organization.

Following are 11 leadership presentation ideas for team training.

Key Takeaways

• Leadership training equips leaders with essential management skills, helping them understand their roles and view challenges as growth opportunities.
• Effective leaders possess qualities like respect, self-awareness, trust, and strong communication skills, fostering a positive work environment.
• Leadership meetings are vital for decision-making, goal setting, and aligning efforts toward a shared vision.
• Mastering soft skills, time management, and understanding different leadership styles are crucial for successful team leadership and organizational growth.

Mastering Communication: A Must-Have Skill for Leaders

Effective communication is crucial for any leader. It’s more than just talking—it’s about sharing ideas, giving directions, and understanding your team. This leadership slides idea should be at the top of your workshop agenda.

Here’s why communication skills matter:

Clarity in Ideas: Leaders must present their thoughts in a way everyone understands. Clear communication prevents confusion and ensures everyone is on the same page.

Active Listening: Good leaders don’t just talk; they listen. By genuinely hearing team members’ concerns and feedback, leaders can better address issues and foster an environment of trust.

Empowerment Through Words: Leaders should use their words to empower their teams. Transparent and encouraging communication boosts morale and drives productivity.

Training in these skills can significantly benefit managers and executives. Offer practical tips and exercises to help them communicate more effectively. When leaders master these skills, they build stronger, more loyal teams, paving the way for business plan success.

Navigating Leadership Challenges: Building Resilience and Conflict Resolution Skills

Leading isn’t easy—it comes with its fair share of challenges. Here’s why addressing these challenges should be a priority for your leadership PowerPoint – 

Leading Under Pressure: Leaders face stress and pressure daily. Equip them with strategies to handle crises and high-pressure situations effectively. Developing mental and emotional strength is crucial for overcoming challenges.

Navigating Uncertainty: Uncertainty is common in today’s business landscape, especially with layoffs and economic changes. Leaders must maintain resilience and inspire team confidence during tough times.

Managing Difficult Situations: It is vital to discuss challenging topics like handling problem employees, delivering bad news, or leading initiatives you disagree with. These discussions can lead to growth and provide valuable insights for all leaders.

Managing Emotions: Leaders must also effectively manage their own emotions. Topics like staying humble, overcoming fear, and avoiding burnout are often overlooked but essential for long-term success. Encouraging open discussions about personal struggles is vital to supporting leaders’ well-being.

Resolving Conflict: Conflict is unavoidable in any workplace. Teach leaders how to resolve conflicts constructively. By mastering interpersonal skills, leaders can turn conflicts into opportunities for growth and strengthen team relationships.

By addressing these challenges head-on and providing practical training, you can empower leaders to navigate challenging situations and confidently lead their teams to success.

Maximizing Team Engagement: Key Strategies for Effective Leadership

Employee engagement isn’t just a buzzword; it’s a critical aspect of effective leadership. Keeping your team motivated and committed ensures they perform at their best and stay with the organization longer. This leadership training PowerPoint slides idea delves into the essential elements of team engagement and provides actionable strategies for leaders to implement.

Prioritizing Engagement: Leaders must recognize the importance of keeping their teams engaged. Engaged employees are happier and contribute more effectively to organizational goals. By prioritizing engagement, leaders foster a positive work environment where the team feels valued and motivated.

Strategies for Engagement: Consistent engagement requires deliberate effort. Leaders can benefit from learning and implementing various methods to engage their teams. From recognizing achievements to fostering open communication, there are numerous tactics leaders can employ to stimulate engagement and boost team morale.

The Power of Feedback:  Effective feedback fosters engagement and improves performance.  Offering constructive criticism helps employees understand their strengths and areas for improvement, guiding them toward success. Leaders must learn the art of giving feedback that motivates rather than demotivates, fostering a culture of growth and development within the team.

Building a Supportive Environment:  A supportive work environment is crucial for team development and engagement.  Leaders must create a culture of collaboration, trust, and respect. They can nurture a high-performing and engaged team by providing growth opportunities and recognizing individual contributions. Start already with the hiring process. Include opening of paid training positions, like ones you can check on Jooble . Invest in education of your employees from the very beginning to get the best results in future.

Continuous Learning and Development: Engaging teams isn’t a one-time effort; it requires constant learning and development. Leaders should invest in ongoing training programs to enhance their skills in fostering engagement, providing feedback, and nurturing team dynamics. By continuously improving their leadership abilities, leaders can create a culture of engagement that drives organizational success.

Maximizing team engagement is a vital aspect of effective leadership. Leaders can cultivate high-performing teams that drive organizational success by prioritizing engagement, implementing strategic approaches, and fostering a supportive environment.

Mastering Soft Skills: Empowering Leaders for Success

Effective leadership goes beyond hiring top talent; it requires the ability to inspire and guide teams toward success. This leadership PowerPoint presentation idea explores the significance of soft leadership skills and offers valuable insights for enhancing these skills among team leaders and managers.

The Power of Influence:  Good leaders can motivate and influence their teams. By understanding different motivational techniques and strategies, leaders can foster a culture of enthusiasm and productivity within their teams. From recognizing individual achievements to cultivating a “can-do” attitude, influential leaders inspire their teams to achieve greatness.

Understanding Soft Skills:  Soft skills are personal traits that allow us to interact effectively with others. In today’s dynamic workforce, soft skills foster collaboration, communication, and teamwork. From communication and problem-solving to leadership and adaptability, mastering soft skills is essential for success in the modern workplace.

Building Strong Foundations:  Soft skills encompass a broad spectrum of attributes, each contributing to effective leadership. These skills form the foundation of successful leadership, from communication to critical thinking and stress management. By developing these skills, leaders can enhance their ability to connect with their teams and drive positive outcomes.

Continuous Improvement:  Soft skills are not innate; they can be developed and honed over time. Leaders should embrace opportunities for continuous learning and skill development. By investing in training programs and workshops focused on soft skills development, leaders can strengthen their ability to lead and motivate their teams to excel.

Turning Theory into Action:  While understanding the importance of soft skills is crucial, putting theory into practice is equally essential. Leaders should actively apply soft skills in their daily team interactions, fostering open communication, collaboration, and mutual respect. Through their actions, leaders can empower their teams to thrive.

Mastering soft skills is essential for effective leadership. By understanding the power of influence, embracing a wide range of soft skills, and continuously striving for improvement, leaders can empower their teams to achieve success and drive organizational growth.

Mastering Time Management: Empowering Leaders for Success

Time management is an invaluable aspect of effective leadership that training managers should prioritize. This presentation idea highlights the importance of time management for leaders and provides valuable insights for improving this essential skill.

Working Smarter, Not Harder:  Leaders often juggle multiple responsibilities, making time management indispensable. Leaders can learn to prioritize tasks, allocate time efficiently, and optimize productivity by focusing on this training topic. The goal is to help leaders work smarter, not harder, by enhancing their management skills and achieving maximum effectiveness.

Quality Over Quantity:  Overworking should never be the standard for good work. Effective time management enables leaders to produce sustainable, high-quality results in less time. By mastering time management, leaders can make better decisions, maintain consistency, and positively impact their team members’ performance.

The Power of Delegation:  Delegation is a core function of leadership and a vital time management skill. Leaders must learn to assign tasks to the right people and trust them to deliver quality results. Proper delegation saves time and fosters engagement among team members, inspiring them to put forth more effort and commitment.

Fostering Engagement: Delegation, coupled with effective time management, fosters engagement within teams. When leaders delegate tasks efficiently, they empower their team members and enable them to take ownership of their work. This responsibility motivates team members to perform at their best, driving overall productivity and success.

Maximizing Impact: As John C. Maxwell aptly stated, “If you want to do great things and make a big impact, learn to delegate.” Effective time management and delegation allow leaders to focus on high-impact tasks that drive organizational growth and success. By mastering these skills, leaders can elevate their effectiveness and make a lasting impact on their teams and organizations.

Mastering time management is essential for effective leadership. Leaders can maximize their impact and drive success in their organizations by working smarter, delegating tasks effectively, and fostering engagement within teams.

Exploring Leadership Styles: Empowering New Leaders

Understanding different leadership styles is essential for new and aspiring leaders. This presentation idea highlights the importance of exploring various leadership styles and offers valuable insights for leadership training and development.

Empowering New Leaders: Leadership training for new leaders should include exploring different leadership styles. By clearly understanding various approaches, leaders can develop their own leadership style and identify opportunities for improvement. This training creates a foundation for effective leadership and empowers leaders to lead their teams confidently.

Daniel Goleman’s Six Styles:  Developed by Daniel Goleman, the six leadership styles offer valuable insights into situational leadership. Each style addresses different needs and situations, allowing leaders to adapt their approach accordingly. From visionary to commanding, each style has its unique strengths and applications.

Tailoring Leadership to Situations: Effective leadership requires adapting to various situations and individuals. By understanding the six leadership styles, leaders can assess their team’s needs and choose the most appropriate style for the problem. Whether mobilizing people toward a vision or demanding immediate compliance, leaders can tailor their approach for maximum effectiveness.

Building Versatility: Exploring different leadership styles allows new leaders to develop versatility in their approach. By combining elements of various styles, leaders can create a personalized style that aligns with their strengths and the needs of their team. This versatility enables leaders to navigate diverse challenges and drive positive outcomes.

Continuous Learning and Improvement:  Leadership is a journey of constant learning and improvement. New leaders should embrace opportunities to explore and refine their leadership styles over time. Leaders can become effective and impactful by seeking feedback and experimenting with different approaches.

Exploring different leadership styles is essential for new leaders’ development. By understanding the six styles, tailoring leadership to situations, building versatility, and embracing continuous learning, new leaders can cultivate their leadership skills and positively impact their teams and organizations.

Embracing Diversity & Inclusion: Essential Leadership Training

Diversity and inclusion are vital aspects of effective leadership in today’s global market. This presentation idea emphasizes the importance of fostering diversity and inclusion within teams and offers valuable insights for leadership training and development.

Leading a Diverse Team:  In today’s diverse workforce, leaders must know how to collaborate with individuals from various backgrounds, cultures, and identities. Embracing diversity means bringing together the unique qualities of each team member to work in harmony. Leaders play an important role in ensuring that all team members are equally heard, seen, and recognized for their contributions, regardless of their differences.

Combatting Stereotypes and Bias:  Raising awareness about diversity and inclusion helps leaders combat stereotypes, discrimination, and unconscious bias within their teams. By fostering inclusivity, leaders  create a safe workspace  where team members  feel valued and respected.  This enhances team morale and promotes creativity, innovation, and productivity.

Effective Leadership Strategies:  Sharing practical strategies for embracing diversity and inclusion is essential for leadership training. Leaders should focus on empathetic leadership, foster a positive company culture, and create opportunities for diverse voices to be heard. By embracing diversity and inclusion, leaders can build stronger, more resilient teams that drive organizational success.

Situational Leadership: Situational leadership is paramount in today’s workforce. With a diverse employee base, leaders must recognize that one size does not fit all. Understanding when and how to use different leadership styles with different individuals and situations is critical for success. Leaders should develop scenarios relevant to their teams and encourage discussion on how they would approach each situation differently based on individual needs and circumstances.

Embracing diversity and inclusion is essential for effective leadership. Leaders can create diverse, high-performing teams that drive organizational success by fostering a culture of inclusivity, combatting stereotypes and bias, and embracing effective leadership strategies.

Navigating Change: Essential Leadership Training

Every organization faces change, and leaders must know how to navigate it effectively. This presentation emphasizes the importance of change management in leadership training and offers valuable insights for guiding teams through transitions.

Coping with Change:  Leaders face the challenge of dealing with change, big or small. They must understand how to navigate these situations and effectively communicate with their teams. This includes dealing with new challenges, workflow disruptions, and employee feedback. With proper training, leaders can guide their teams to overcome obstacles brought about by change and maintain productivity.

Addressing Challenges and Opportunities: Change management presentations provide strategies for leaders to address the challenges and opportunities associated with organizational change. Organizations can navigate transitions smoothly by equipping leaders with the necessary tools and presentation techniques , minimizing team disruption, and maintaining business continuity.

Essential Skill for Leaders:  Managing change is a necessary skill for leaders in today’s fast-paced world. The rapid pace of change is driven by various factors like news cycles and social media, so leaders must be adept at managing transitions effectively. Books like “Leading Change” and “Our Iceberg is Melting” by John Kotter offer valuable insights into change management strategies that leaders can apply in their organizations.

Organizational Reflection:  Leaders can facilitate discussions within their teams about how they deal with change and the level of change their organization has experienced over the years. This reflection allows leaders to gain insights into their team’s resilience and adaptability and identify areas for improvement in change management processes.

Change management is an essential aspect of leadership training. By equipping leaders with the skills and strategies to navigate change effectively, organizations can ensure smooth transitions and maintain productivity during periods of change.

Mastering Decision Making: Key Leadership Training

Decision-making is an indispensable skill for effective leadership. This presentation idea explores the importance of strategic planning and informed decision-making, offering valuable insights for leadership training.

Goal Setting for Success:  Setting clear, attainable goals is fundamental for staying focused and achieving a leader’s purpose. Goals provide direction and help leaders prioritize what truly matters. For goals to be effective, they must be well-defined and achievable within a specific timeframe. This clarity ensures that leaders can measure progress and stay on track.

Strategic Planning and Decision Making:  A strategic planning presentation offers insights into setting achievable goals and making informed decisions. Leaders can use these strategies to guide company brainstorming sessions and leadership meetings, ensuring that decisions align with organizational objectives and drive success.

Data-Driven Decisions:  Leveraging data is crucial for making informed decisions. Leaders should prioritize using data and analytics to guide their decision-making processes. This includes implementing key performance indicators (KPIs), objectives and key results (OKRs), and other metrics to track performance. Data-driven insights help leaders make better choices and improve overall effectiveness.

Incorporating Data into Leadership Strategies: Effective leadership involves incorporating data-driven insights into strategies. By understanding and utilizing data, leaders can make more informed decisions that enhance team performance and organizational success. Data visualization presentations can guide how to integrate data analytics into everyday decision-making, ensuring leaders are equipped with the tools they need to succeed.

Mastering decision-making is essential for effective leadership. By setting clear goals, engaging in strategic planning, and leveraging data, leaders can make informed decisions that drive institutional success and foster a culture of continuous improvement.

Running Effective Meetings: Essential Leadership Training

Meetings are a cornerstone of company communication, but they can become unproductive without proper structure. This presentation idea focuses on strategies for managing effective meetings, offering essential insights for leadership training.

The Importance of Structure: Effective meetings require a clear objective and structure. Without these, meetings can waste time and reduce productivity. Leaders must learn to determine if a meeting is necessary, set proper leadership meeting agenda topics, and consider each team member’s strengths. By doing so, meetings can foster teamwork, accomplish goals, and boost overall productivity.

Agenda and Scheduling: A well-planned agenda is crucial for a leadership meeting. Leaders should outline key discussion points and allocate time for each topic. This ensures the meeting stays focused and covers all necessary information. Scheduling meetings conveniently for all participants also helps maintain focus and engagement.

Engagement and Focus:  It is essential to keep employees motivated and engaged during meetings. Leaders can use tips and tricks, such as interactive activities or breaks, to maintain focus. Ensuring that meetings are concise and to the point helps keep attendees’ attention and makes the meeting more productive.

Action Items:  Ending meetings with a set of action items is crucial for ensuring follow-through. Leaders should summarize the key points discussed and delegate tasks to team members with clear deadlines. This ensures accountability and helps track progress in meeting objectives.

Meeting or Email?: Not every discussion requires a meeting. Leaders should evaluate whether an email would suffice. Playing a game with attendees like “Meeting or Email?” can help illustrate this point. By providing examples and encouraging candid discussion, leaders can better discern when meetings are necessary and when other forms of communication are more efficient.

Managing effective meetings is a critical skill for leaders. Leaders can make the most of their team’s time and drive productivity by ensuring meetings have clear objectives and well-planned agendas and end with actionable tasks. This training gives leaders the tools to run productive and engaging sessions, enhancing overall organizational efficiency.

Accountability & Ethical Leadership: Building Trust and Integrity

Accountability and ethical leadership are crucial topics for effective leadership training. This presentation idea outlines the importance of these concepts and provides insights for fostering a culture of responsibility, credibility and integrity.

The Power of Accountability:  Accountability is a crucial trait of good leadership. Leaders who accept responsibility for their actions, whether positive or negative, earn the trust and respect of their employees. This trust leads to a more productive and positive work environment. Leadership training should focus on teaching behaviors that build and enhance accountability, promoting a workplace where honesty and responsibility are valued.

Cultivating Ethical Leadership:  Ethics are fundamental to successful leadership. Leaders must understand the importance of ethical behavior and its impact on organizational culture, employee morale, and long-term success. Training on ethical leadership should highlight the significance of ethics, provide strategies for maintaining high moral standards, and emphasize the need for ethical considerations in daily decision-making across all departments.

Building a Trustworthy Environment:  Organizations can create a trustworthy and reliable environment by combining accountability and ethical leadership. Leaders who embody these qualities set a positive example for their teams, fostering a culture of integrity and transparency. This environment encourages employees to act responsibly and uphold the organization’s values.

Practical Applications:  Leadership training should include practical applications of accountability and ethical leadership. This can involve case studies, role-playing scenarios, and discussions on real-life situations where leaders demonstrated these qualities. Such exercises help leaders internalize and apply these concepts in their daily roles.

Long-Term Benefits:  Emphasizing accountability and ethical leadership leads to long-term benefits for organizations. It enhances team cohesion, improves decision-making processes, and builds a strong reputation for the organization. Leaders prioritizing these values contribute to sustainable success and a positive organizational culture.

Accountability and ethical leadership are essential components of effective leadership. By focusing on these topics in leadership training, organizations can develop trusted, responsible, and committed leaders to uphold high ethical standards, driving long-term success and a positive workplace culture.

Leadership Training: Keys to Effective Management

Leadership training ideas equip aspiring leaders with essential skills and tactics for effective management. It helps them understand their roles, view challenges as opportunities, and build confidence. Great leaders, distinguished by qualities like respect and communication skills, are pivotal in shaping organizations. They listen, learn, and adapt continuously, fostering a positive work environment. Leadership meetings are crucial in decision-making and aligning efforts towards a shared vision. Effective communication during these meetings ensures alignment, inspiration, and innovation. By focusing on these ideas for leadership, different types of presentations can resonate with leaders’ strategic mindsets and their roles in guiding the organization.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

1. What skills are essential for effective leadership?  

Key skills include communication, accountability, resilience, and the ability to inspire and influence teams. Leaders should also be adept at managing emotions and resolving conflicts.

2. How can leadership training benefit aspiring leaders?  

Training equips leaders with the necessary tactics and skills, builds confidence, and helps them understand their roles and team expectations, driving productivity and efficiency.

3. What role do leadership meetings play?  

Leadership meetings gather decision-makers to strategize, set goals, and align efforts, ensuring the company’s vision is communicated and pursued effectively.

4. Why is communication important for leaders?  

Effective communication ensures clarity, fosters trust, empowers teams, and drives morale and productivity, making it a critical skill for leaders to master.

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Leadership Topics for Presentation

Have a presentation or a meeting coming up? Need to find leadership training topics to present on or leadership topics for discussion? The Leadership Mission has you covered! Below is our list of leadership training topics, leadership topics for discussion, leadership exercises and leadership team building activities we have compiled that are impactful for leaders at any level. These are designed to get your wheels turning and have proven to be successful across many different organizations.

Want to jump quickly to one particular section? Here are some helpful links!

Leadership Training Topics

Leadership Topics for Presentation and Discussion

Leadership Team Building Activities

Leadership exercises.

The following leadership training topics are great for leaders at any level. These work best in smaller meetings or groups. These topics are designed to generate great discussion and hopefully yield higher functioning managers.

Soft skills

Soft skills are personal attributes that enable someone to interact effectively and harmoniously with other people. These are critically important in today's workforce as now more than ever our workforces require employees to be able to communicate, work as a team, listen and get along with others. Here is a very brief list of soft skills but this topic is HUGE and you could easily turn each of these topics into presentations.

Communication

Problem-solving

Time management

Critical thinking

Decision-making

Organizational

Stress management

Adaptability

Conflict management

Resourcefulness

Openness to criticism

Change management

Today's world changes faster than arguably any other time in history. Between 24 hour news cycles, social media and the explosion in communication methods between individuals, managing change is an essential skill any leader must have. There are a couple of excellent books on this topic by John Kotter called Leading Change and Our Iceberg is Melting. You can also have a good discussion about how your team deals with change and how much change your organization has (or hasn't) had over the years.

Managing effective meetings

Meetings consume so much of the average working person's time. No matter what kind of job you have, meetings are most likely a part of their day or week at some point. How effective are your people at running effective meetings? When was the last time anyone ever thought about it?

A great subtopic for this presentation can be a study and/or game you can play with your attendees call meeting or email? I'm sure you could easily find a handful of examples of meetings that could have been emails (and vice versa) and let your attendees have some fun guessing. Don't be surprised when your team becomes very candid during this meeting about the need for meetings!

Performance management

Managing the performance of others is an extremely important part of any leader's job. Leader's must also be managers and cannot simply rely on connecting with and "leading" people. At the end of the day, we all have hard metrics we are responsible for. One of the most important ones, is the performance of those that work for us.

This topic doesn't get nearly as much attention as it should and I guarantee you can get some good discussions going around the most effective way to do this for you organization. You can discuss how often this happens, annually, bi-annually, monthly? You can discuss what format it is done in and how the teams respond to them. Get your groups thoughts on the effectiveness of your current system and brainstorm if there isn't a better way.

The Six Styles of Leadership

Developed by Daniel Goleman, the six styles have been a staple part of the discussion around situational leadership for awhile. They describe the different ways you need to lead depending on the situation, the people and various other factors. There is plenty of discussion to be had with this topic and is great for new leaders!

The six styles are as follows:

Visionary — mobilize people toward a vision. Works best when a clear direction or change is needed.

Coaching — develop people for the future. Works best when helping people and building long-term strength.

Affiliative — create emotional bonds and harmony. Works best to heal rifts in teams or motivate people in stressful times.

Democratic — build consensus through participation. Works best to create consensus or get input.

Pacesetting — expect excellence and self-direction. Works best to get quick results from a highly competent team.

Commanding — demand immediate compliance. Works best in crisis or with problematic people.

Managing an inbox

This is something that gets taken for granted all of the time and would make a great leadership topic for presentation. The organization, efficiency and 'cleanliness' of inboxes today can be a sensitive subject. No one wants to admit to having thousands of unread emails just sitting there but chances are, most of your leaders do.

How do you as a company manage that? When was the last time anyone cared? Effective inbox organization can do wonders in taking a manager from good to great. It might also get a good conversation started around communication as a whole in your organization.

Managing a calendar

Just like the inbox, calendar's are criminally misused or underused. They can be a great way to manage the obvious things like meetings and calls. However, they can also be a great way to hold teams accountable, document what you did for reflection and serve as a sort of task list for leaders.

Don't make the assumption that everyone knows how to use the calendars. Technology changes so fast and new features come out all of the time. Even if someone in leadership learned how to use outlook ten years ago in college, it might be completely different now!

Leadership Topics For Presentation & Discussion

This section is about topics that make for great discussions or presentations. Whether it be a small group or large one, these topics are always important in the world of business today.

Virtual leadership

Thanks to 2020, so many of us have had to get used to working virtually, which means we've also had to lead virtually as well. This topic is sure to generate discussion on what is working, not working and how everyone feels about it.

This is sure to be an important topic moving forward as companies must decide what their "new normal" is going to be. You might be surprised at how effective or ineffective working virtually is/was. It might open the door to other conversations surrounding flexibility in the workplace.

Most businesses come down to some sort of execution. Whether it be making widgets, serving guests, healing patients or selling goods, every business has some sort of metric when it comes to executing the core function of the business. When was the last time you discussed not only the results but overall execution as a whole? Can you guarantee that the way things are supposed to be done are actually being done?

Additionally, you can discuss training of new hires, repair and maintenance of equipment, employee productivity and anything that goes into actually getting the job done.

When was the last time your organization had a conversation about your company culture? Are expectations meeting reality? Does your team/company know what culture they are supposed to be creating? Having an open and honest conversation about your company culture is a healthy exercise for any company.

It is extremely important that there be a strong moderator for this conversation as it is easy to go off the rails with this subject. That statement shouldn't dissuade you from having the conversation though! A great book on this topic is Good to Great by Jim Collins.

Company specific leadership topics for discussion/presentation

Do you have specific tasks, goals, metrics or items that your leaders should be discussing with their teams? Have you set an agenda that is being pushed down through the organization? Putting together a list similar to this specific for your team might be helpful for your mid level leaders. This list can give them a clean and easily accessible company approved list of topics they should be discussing with their teams.

Giving your leaders a list of exercises that they could practice either by themselves or with their teams makes a great leadership training topic. It is always extremely important to develop yourself as a leader and the other leaders in your organization. Here are some leadership exercises to get you started.

Quality circles

This isn't so much a topic as an activity but is highly effective, especially if your group allows for crossover from different departments, regions, etc. It is amazing how sometimes just putting a fresh set of eyes on a situation can create positive discussions or solutions around a problem. Spend some times thinking about your attendees and split them into smaller groups.

Come up with a top 5 list of challenges or obstacles that each group might be facing and have them discuss it in a "nameless & rankless" frank discussion. Assign a note taker to each group and charge them with capturing key points and takeaways and for keeping the group on point.

Difficult leadership situations

This is a great topic to discuss with your leaders, especially if your group has a good mix of leadership experience and tenure in it. The following situations are always important to talk about and discuss/share with other leaders. The growth that can come from just talking through some of these situations is priceless. Depending on the size of your group, you can either discuss as a whole or break into small groups and have them discuss the following topics:

Dealing with difficult or problem employees

Handling your team's stress and pressure

Letting someone go

Delivering bad news

Leading an initiative you don't agree with

Managing underperforming employees

Internal leadership challenges

This often gets such little attention, yet is one of the most important factors leaders must deal with, their own feelings. Managing your own emotions and generally how you feel about something is way easier said than done. Just like the previous item, having a good mix of leadership experience and tenure is a great.

Just talking about how their fellow leaders handle the following topics can be vitally important for new leaders and great reminders and encouragement for experienced leaders. Unlike the previous item though, it is crucially important that attendees feel comfortable being open. It is one thing to talk about topics that impact others or are conceptual and something entirely different to discuss personal struggles!

Staying humble

Self confidence

Overcoming fear

Handling personal stress and pressure

Avoiding burnout

Staying motivated

Compartmentalizing competing priorities

Keeping work life balance

Situational leadership scenarios

Situational leadership is extremely important in today's modern workforce. Diversity of all types in employee bases has exploded in the last several decades. That means managers and leaders cannot treat everyone the same. A leader that understands using different leadership styles with different people and at different times is critical.

Develop some scenarios that are relevant to your group and ask them to decide how they would approach one differently over another. There is a fantastic book written by Ken Blanchard and Spencer Johnson on this topic called the One Minute Manager that is a quick read and is very beneficial to new leaders!

The following items are great team builders for small groups or meetings in any professional setting. They are designed to bring team's together, develop teamwork and give any observing leaders some data points about their people!

Build a building

Break your group into small even teams and provide them with their building materials consisting of any combination of the following:

index cards

tooth picks

playing cards

Don't stress over which materials you give them, just as long as it is enough to build a free standing building with! The object is simple, which team can build the largest free standing structure.

Things to consider with this activity:

How will you divide your teams? Be purposeful in how you break them up

Have the teams assign a 'project manager' ahead of time

Take mental notes of how the teams interact and how the assigned managers perform

Qualities of a leader

Break employees into teams and have them share leaders they admire (in any industry). Take notes on the characteristics that these leaders share, then give employees time and space to reflect on the characteristics they share with those leaders before identifying skills they would like to develop in themselves

Use employee notes on skills they would like to develop to design your own training opportunities.

Use employee notes and compare them to your organization. A sort of 'expectations vs reality' mental exercise.

These lists are in no way exhaustive we just think these leadership training activities are great for effective presentations or meetings that will grow the leadership abilities of your team! We'd love to hear from you in the comments below! Or feel free to shoot us an email [email protected]

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10 Presentation Ideas For Leadership Teams and Training

Leadership teams shape organizations for better or for worse. They’re responsible for guiding teams and moving things— big or small— forward. So what makes a great leader versus one that causes employees to leave a company?

When you think of a great leader, it’s probably a specific characteristic that comes to mind. Qualities like respect, self-awareness, trust, influence, collaboration, and strong communication skills can set extraordinary managers apart from mediocre ones. But how leaders listen, learn, and communicate with their employees is just as important. Because of that, leaders— regardless of the industry— need to hold themselves accountable and continuously seek out ways to grow as a manager.   

It’s not uncommon for companies to host offsites or retreats to bring the leadership team together for brainstorming, planning, and training. This helps align leaders across various departments, teams, and offices, while offering them the tools they need to be more successful in their role. 

When preparing a presentation for leadership teams and training, it's crucial to focus on content that resonates with the audience's strategic mindset and their role in guiding the organization. Here are some leadership presentation ideas to help inspire your own content.

Leadership presentation ideas

Presentations can act as a platform to encourage learning and collaboration among different leaders. Do you have a leadership retreat coming up? Here are 10 leadership presentation ideas to help train and motivate your own leadership team. 

Effective leadership strategies

As a recurring training, you might share effective leadership strategies with your executive team. This presentation would act as a refresher of the latest trends and best practices in leadership. This could include insights on empathetic leadership, fostering a positive company culture, and embracing diversity and inclusion.

Change management

How should managers and leadership teams address the challenges and opportunities associated with change within the organization? A change management presentation would provide strategies for how leaders can navigate transitions successfully, with the least amount of disruption to the team.

Strategic planning and decision-making

A strategic planning and decision making presentation will offer insights into the process of setting achievable goals and making informed decisions. Organizations might also use a strategic planning presentation to lead their own company brainstorming sessions at a leadership all-hands meeting. 

Team development and engagement

Team development and engagement is important for the overall success of the team. In this presentation you might share techniques for fostering a high-performing and engaged team, including methods for providing feedback, coaching, and creating a supportive work environment.

Communication skills

Communication skills can make or break a leader. A training session on effective communication in leadership roles could be beneficial for both managers and executives of all levels. Here you could offer practical tips for clear, transparent, and empowering communication.

Leading through uncertainty

Given the current business landscape and layoffs happening across various industries, leadership teams need to know how to handle hard situations. This presentation idea for leadership teams would discuss strategies for navigating uncertainty and ambiguity, including how to maintain resilience and inspire confidence in a team concerned about job security. 

Embracing innovation and creativity

It’s no secret that AI is here to stay, and teams are having to pivot to accommodate new technology. Use a thoughtful presentation to encourage leaders to embrace innovation and promote a culture of creativity within the organization. The slides in this deck could showcase the benefits of adopting innovative approaches and thinking outside the box.

Building high-performance teams

Leaders need the right tools and knowledge to be able to guide positive performance. Employers might offer a training “how-to” on best practices for assembling and nurturing high-performance teams. This deck should include strategies for fostering collaboration, trust, and accountability among teammates. 

Data-driven decision making

As a leader, leveraging data to make more informed decisions should be top of mind. This leadership presentation idea can highlight the importance of leveraging data and analytics in decision-making processes, and offer guidance on how to incorporate data-driven insights into leadership strategies. This could include ways to implement KPIs, OKRs, or other effective ways to track the performance of individual contributors and campaigns. 

Ethical leadership

A wildly important leadership topic is ethics. Upper management should be well-educated in ethical leadership, and how that impacts the success of the team. An ethical leadership presentation could include the significance of ethics, the impact it has on organizational culture, employee morale, and long-term success, and how to ensure it’s top of mind in each department on a daily basis.

Beautiful presentations to drive your message home

You have a presentation topic, now what? The hardest part of presentation design is going from idea to deck with little design skills to back you up. Thankfully, there's a presentation software for that. Insert: Beautiful.ai. Beautiful.ai helps leadership teams create beautiful presentations so they can pack a bigger punch with their message and inspire their audience. Presenters can use one of Beautiful.ai's customizable pre-built presentation templates — like the training presentation — or leverage our AI-assistant to create a presentation from scratch specific to their topic. By creating beautiful decks you can engage your audience, drive your message home, and leave your leadership team feeling inspired to make a difference.

Jordan Turner

Jordan is a Bay Area writer, social media manager, and content strategist.

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How to Create Effective Leadership Meeting Topics and Agendas

By Drew Moffitt • July 12, 2023

Are you tired of unproductive leadership meetings that seem to meander without direction? Do you feel like your team could benefit from a more structured and engaging approach? If so, you’re not alone. The importance of effective leadership meetings cannot be overstated. In this blog post, we will explore how to create effective leadership meeting topics and agendas that drive results, foster collaboration , and make the best use of your team’s valuable time.

Short Summary

• Leadership meetings are essential for successful alignment with organizational goals and informed decision-making.
• Establishing roles, encouraging open dialogue, staying on track and integrating technology can help maximize efficiency of leadership meetings.
• Sample agendas provide structure to ensure essential topics are covered in a productive manner.

The importance of leadership meeting topics

Leadership team meetings, including the weekly leadership team meeting, are essential in ensuring team goals are aligned, decisions are made effectively, and collaboration and communication among team members is encouraged. The purpose of a leadership team meeting is to provide the senior leadership team with the necessary information to make informed decisions regarding the business. It is crucial to prepare well for the next leadership team meeting to ensure its success.

An effective leadership meeting agenda can make all the difference in the success of the meeting. But why exactly are leadership meetings valuable?

Aligning team goals

Aligning team goals is crucial for the success of your leadership team. When everyone is working towards the same objectives, it becomes easier to achieve them and understand each team member’s role in the process. Regular meetings are essential for keeping the leadership team aligned with the organization’s desired direction, ensuring that objectives remain clear and focused as the year progresses.

How can you align your team’s goals during a leadership meeting? By setting clear objectives and priorities for the upcoming quarter and reviewing progress on last quarter’s objectives.

Facilitating decision-making

Informed decision-making is integral to effective leadership . Leadership meetings provide a platform for informed debate and decision-making, enabling your team to tackle challenges and make strategic choices. By fostering open dialogue and remaining focused, company leaders can ensure that all team members have the chance to contribute to the conversation and that their perspectives are taken into consideration.

This collaborative approach to decision-making promotes a culture of trust and ensures that the best decisions are made for the organization.

Fostering collaboration and communication

Regular meetings, such as executive team meetings , foster collaboration and communication, helping break down silos and promote a unified approach to problem-solving. By establishing clear expectations, offering feedback, and acknowledging other team members for their efforts, leaders can create an atmosphere that promotes collaboration and communication within the executive team.

Furthermore, leveraging technology to facilitate communication and collaboration is strongly recommended. With a strong foundation of trust and open communication, your leadership team will be better equipped to tackle challenges and seize opportunities. Kumospace is a great virtual office platform, that lets members of the team stay connected from anywhere.

Essential components of a leadership meeting agenda

A well-structured leadership meeting agenda is vital for ensuring productive discussions. By defining the purpose of the meeting, creating a comprehensive agenda , and highlighting the need for preparation prior to the meeting, you can ensure that your leadership meetings are efficient and run according to schedule.

But what are the essential components of an effective leadership meeting agenda?

Clear objectives

Clear objectives are the backbone of any effective meeting agenda. They help to focus the meeting and provide a framework for discussion. By establishing these objectives, you can:

• Facilitate the transformation of visions into quantifiable goals
• Enhance productivity , communication, engagement, decision-making, and leadership
• Minimize the risk of squandering time and resources

Remember, a meeting without clear objectives is like a ship without a rudder – it’s difficult to steer in the right direction.

Relevant topics

In addition to clear objectives, your leadership team meeting agenda should include relevant topics. By focusing on current issues and opportunities, you can ensure that your meetings are engaging and result in informed decision-making. Some examples of pertinent topics to discuss in your leadership meeting agenda are:

• Updates on ongoing projects and initiatives
• Key performance indicators and metrics
• Challenges and obstacles faced by the team
• Opportunities for growth and improvement
• Feedback and suggestions from team members
• Training and development needs

Strategic planning and goal setting

Discussing these topics can foster engagement and involvement from attendees, maintain the meeting concentrated and productive, and guarantee that all team members comprehend their role and the priorities they should be emphasizing on.

Examples of pertinent topics include:

Performance metrics and analysis

Resource allocation and budgeting, employee engagement and development, innovation and growth opportunities, time management.

Efficient time management is another critical component of a successful leadership meeting agenda. By allotting appropriate time for each agenda item and ensuring that discussions stay on track, you can make the best use of participants’ time and keep the meeting focused.

Remember, time is a valuable resource, and ensuring that your meetings are efficient and productive is essential for maintaining a high-performing leadership team.

5 topic ideas for engaging leadership meetings

So, what topics should you include in your leadership meeting agenda to keep discussions engaging and productive?

Here are five topic ideas that can help spark meaningful conversations and encourage collaboration among your leadership team.

Strategic planning and goal setting are essential for aligning your team around a shared vision and establishing priorities for the organization. By discussing the company’s long-term objectives, reviewing past performance, and setting realistic goals for the future, your team can ensure that everyone is working towards the same objectives and is aligned with the company’s overall direction.

This process helps to ensure that everyone is on the same page and that the organization is moving in the right direction.

Performance metrics and analysis enable the team to track progress, identify areas for improvement, and make data-driven decisions. By regularly reviewing key metrics, your leadership team can ensure that the organization is on track to meet its objectives and can course-correct when necessary.

This data-driven approach to decision-making can help your team make more informed choices, ultimately leading to better results.

Resource allocation and budgeting discussions ensure that the organization is making the best use of its resources and investing in the right areas. By carefully allocating resources, your leadership team can maximize efficiency, reduce costs, and ensure that the organization is well-equipped to achieve its goals.

This focus on resource management can lead to a more financially stable and successful organization.

Employee engagement and development topics play a critical role in promoting a positive work environment and supporting the growth and development of your team members. By discussing strategies for improving employee engagement, providing opportunities for professional development, and recognizing the achievements of your team members, your leadership team can help create a workplace where employees feel valued and motivated to succeed.

Creating an environment of engagement and development requires a commitment from the leadership team. This includes setting clear boundaries.

Innovation and growth opportunities encourage the team to explore new ideas and identify potential areas for expansion. By discussing emerging trends, new technologies , and potential partnerships, your leadership team can ensure that your organization remains competitive and poised for growth.

Embracing innovation and exploring new opportunities can help your organization stay ahead of the curve and continue to thrive in a rapidly changing business landscape.

Tips for running efficient leadership meetings

Now that we’ve discussed the importance of leadership meeting topics and some engaging ideas for your next meeting, let’s explore some tips for running successful leadership meetings and making the most of your meeting notes.

By following these best practices, you can ensure that your meetings are productive, engaging, and valuable for all participants .

Establishing roles

Assigning roles, such as a facilitator and note-taker, is essential to keeping the meeting on track and ensuring that critical information is documented. The facilitator can guide the discussion, keep the meeting focused on the agenda, and ensure that all participants have an opportunity to contribute. The note-taker can capture important information and action items, providing a valuable record of the meeting for future reference.

By establishing these roles, your leadership team can maintain focus and effectively address the topics at hand.

Encouraging open dialogue

Encouraging open dialogue is essential for fostering a culture of trust and collaboration within your leadership team. By promoting open and honest communication , your team can tackle difficult issues, make better decisions, and work together more effectively. To facilitate open dialogue, leaders should create a welcoming atmosphere, pose open-ended questions, and ensure that all team members have an equal chance to contribute.

By embracing open dialogue, your leadership team can enhance collaboration and achieve better results.

Staying on track

One of the most important aspects of running an efficient leadership meeting is staying on track. By adhering to the agenda, respecting the allotted time for each topic, and avoiding unnecessary distractions, your team can ensure that the meeting remains focused and productive.

This efficient use of time will not only enhance the overall effectiveness of the meeting, but also demonstrate respect for the valuable time of your leadership team members.

Sample leadership meeting agendas

To help you get started with creating your own leadership meeting agendas, consider using sample leadership meeting agendas as a starting point. Sample agendas can provide structure and guidance for your meetings, ensuring that all essential topics are covered and that the meeting remains on track.

By tailoring these sample agendas to your organization’s specific needs, you can ensure that your meetings are structured, productive, and focused on the most important topics.

Integrating technology into leadership meetings

In today’s fast-paced business environment, integrating technology into leadership meetings can streamline the planning process, improve communication, and enhance the overall effectiveness of the meeting. Tools like Kumospace , a powerful meeting platform , can help executive teams stay on track and engaged in reaching the goals discussed in leadership meetings.

By leveraging technology, your leadership team can make better use of their time, collaborate more efficiently, and ultimately drive better results for your organization.

In conclusion, effective leadership meetings play a crucial role in aligning team goals, facilitating decision-making, and fostering collaboration and communication. By creating well-structured agendas, focusing on relevant topics, and implementing best practices for efficient meetings, your leadership team can maximize productivity and drive better results for your organization. Remember, the key to successful leadership meetings lies in the preparation, execution, and follow-up. With a clear focus on these essential components, your leadership meetings will be more engaging, productive, and valuable for all participants.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are good topics for leadership meetings  .

Leadership meetings should cover topics such as good news/wins, metrics and business updates, problems and decisions to tackle, business opportunities, learnings and feedback, and action items.

Additionally, consider allocating time to discuss and reflect on specific leadership development program ideas.

How do you make a leadership meeting fun?  

Kick off your leadership meeting with a joke or interactive game, provide food and keep the energy up by adding fun themes, quizzes, and collaboration activities. Mix it up with outdoor meetings, charades, or even virtual escape rooms for an engaging and enjoyable experience .

What are six things that may be on an agenda for a meeting?  

An effective meeting agenda includes six items: a list of topics, action items, activities to be discussed, descriptions for each agenda item, reference materials, and expected outcomes.

This will help ensure that the meeting is productive and focused.

How do you talk in a leadership meeting?  

In a leadership meeting, it is important to get personal, review key metrics and goals of the team, use the red, yellow, and green method for goal status updates, identify issues and challenges and work to solve them, highlight good news and wins, send the agenda in advance, share important updates, record meeting notes collaboratively, capture decisions and assign action items, set production or sales goals, discuss company policy, examine company news, review each leader, introduce new leaders, consider metrics, and reinforce company values.

It is essential to ensure that the meeting is productive and efficient. To do this, the agenda should be sent in advance, important updates should be shared, meeting notes should be recorded collaboratively, decisions should be captured and action items should be assigned. Additionally, production or sales goals should be set, company policy should be discussed, company news should be examined, each leader should be reviewed, new leaders should be introduced, metrics should be considered, and company values should be reinforced.

How can I ensure that my leadership meetings are efficient and productive?  

To ensure efficient and productive leadership meetings, assign roles for each participant, encourage open dialogue, and stay on track with the agenda.

This will help ensure that the meeting is focused and productive , and that everyone has a chance to contribute. It will also help to keep the meeting on track and ensure that all topics are discussed in a timely manner.

Transform the way your team works from anywhere.

A virtual office in Kumospace lets teams thrive together by doing their best work no matter where they are geographically.

Drew leads marketing at Kumospace. Prior to joining Kumospace, he spent his career founding and operating businesses. His work has been featured in over 50 publications. Outside of work, Drew is an avid skier and sailor. A wholehearted extrovert, he organizes VentureSails, a series of networking events for founders and tech investors.

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Leadership Meeting Presentation Templates

A Leadership Meeting Presentation is to ensure that leaders are informed about key issues, aligned with organizational goals, and equipped with the information they need to make informed decisions and lead their teams effectively.

Our templates are designed to enhance the effectiveness of your Leadership Meeting Presentations by making them visually appealing and well-structured. They facilitate effective communication, collaboration, and alignment toward common objectives among organizational leaders.

Download our editable leadership meeting ppt templates

Template 1: Leadership Meeting

Our compelling storylines are the secret of instant presentation building. Try yourself for free. Simply download and use the template or build one yourself with Prezent's free trial.

Tips to create an effective leadership meeting presentation

Define Clear Objectives

Clearly outline the objectives and goals of the leadership meeting to ensure everyone understands the purpose and expected outcomes.

Understand Your Audience

Tailor your presentation to the specific needs and interests of the leadership team, considering their roles, responsibilities, and areas of focus.

Use Visual Aids

Incorporate visual aids such as charts, graphs, images, and diagrams to illustrate insights on data, such as market share and the competitive landscape. Visuals play a crucial role in clarifying complex information and enhancing its memorability.

Provide Actionable Insights

Offer practical insights, recommendations, and action items that leaders can implement or follow up on after the meeting. Clearly articulate the next steps and responsibilities.

Encourage Interaction

Foster engagement and participation by encouraging questions, discussions, and feedback throughout the presentation. Create opportunities for dialogue and collaboration among leaders.

Leadership meetings serve as a platform for discussing strategic initiatives, sharing vital updates, aligning goals, and fostering collaboration among leaders. Hence, it's crucial to create an impactful Leadership meeting presentation that effectively communicates key information and engages the audience. Learn how to create and deliver captivating leadership meeting presentations with our comprehensive guide.

Related Presentations

Related slides, frequently asked questions.

Certainly! Access the presentation decks on Prezent's platform and seamlessly customize templates to meet your specific requirements. Tailor the text to incorporate company-specific information while adjusting language and tone to align with your unique company culture. Modify the slide deck by adding or removing slides to match the agenda of your meeting. Utilize the Slide Library to effortlessly replace existing slides with ones better suited to your content. Enhance your presentation further by aligning it with your brand using a simple, user-friendly interface. With just a few clicks, you can brand-align your presentation for a polished and professional look.

You have the flexibility to edit these Leadership Meeting Presentation templates using either PowerPoint or Google Slides. Our templates are fully compatible with both platforms, offering you the convenience and versatility to customize the content and overall presentation according to your preferences. Whether you prefer the functionality of PowerPoint or the collaborative features of Google Slides, you can seamlessly edit and adapt the templates to meet your specific needs.

To access our resources, start by registering for a free trial with Prezent. Once our experts review your details, you'll receive your login credentials via the email address provided during registration. Your Prezent credentials open the door to a diverse collection of over 35,000 storyline-based decks, best practices-based presentation templates, and more for you to explore. Download the templates of your choice and easily customize them to suit your specific needs.

With Prezent, you get your exclusive dashboard which is specifically created to feature your logos and brand colors. All your brand elements are seamlessly incorporated and tailored to reflect your unique brand identity. The brand compliance feature empowers users to effortlessly maintain a consistent and professional appearance, ensuring a seamless alignment with the brand identity without any hassle.

Yes, the Prezent platform is designed with in-built storylines that cater to a wide range of presentation needs. Whether you're creating a business pitch, a project update, a sales presentation, or any other type of presentation, Prezent provides a diverse library of storylines for varied business communication needs. These pre-designed storylines help streamline the content creation process and ensure that your presentations are not only visually appealing but also effectively convey your message.

By offering a variety of storylines, Prezent aims to simplify the presentation-making process, allowing users to choose templates that align with the specific goals and themes of their presentations.

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Meetings | May 20, 2024

How to Run a Leadership Meeting: Topics and Agendas

There are many types of business meetings : team meetings , 1:1 meetings between managers and their direct reports, distributed meetings , client meetings, stakeholder meetings, and leadership meetings, just to name a few.

Leadership meetings are one of the most important—but why? How can you run more effective leadership meetings in your own organization? We’re here to bring you the management meeting topics, tips, and tricks your leadership team needs to achieve success 👏!

Why Are Leadership Meetings Valuable?

The leadership team sets the tone and focus for the entire organization. This means having leaders that are aligned on company goals and work together towards achieving them, creating the recipe for a successful company 🥣.

Essentially, you want your management team to operate like a well-oiled machine… but this can be incredibly difficult to achieve. Each leader within an organization will have different priorities based on their specific job role or department. For example, the CFO may be focused on finances while the HR Director is likely more concerned with how budget changes would affect their staff. Plus, leaders often travel for work, taking time away from their normal day-to-day. With such hectic schedules and so many things to keep track of, it can make getting everyone together a challenge 😩. How can you overcome these obstacles?

The most important ingredient in this recipe for success is consistency and communication 🗣️! Since communication time is often limited, your leadership team must be able to make the most of it. It’s essential to talk openly, regularly , and effectively in team meetings.

The primary goal of leadership meetings is to make decisions, solve problems, and ensure the organization’s day-to-day operations and processes are aligned. Team meetings are also a place to gather, bond, and build rapport as a leadership unit. Participants should look forward to attending these meetings and leave feeling energized and inspired💡!

However, none of this will be possible if the leaders in your organization never talk to each other or are forced to sit through poorly-prepared and poorly-conducted leadership meetings 😣. On the other hand, highly-productive leadership meetings will ensure everyone is always on the same page, aligned on goals, and working towards them together 🙌. If your company is running a business operating system like EOS™, and you avoid the pitfalls of a bad implementation , you’ll have a head start on having highly effective leadership meetings.

How to Prepare for and Run a Leadership Meeting

Now that you know the importance of effective leadership meetings, how can you utilize them in your own organization?

Our team has come up with the following tips, inspired by a decade of experience running EOS®-style meetings, and learning and growing as leaders over time. We want our meetings to be fast, fun, and effective, with lots of action afterward. Here’s how we do it.

Tips for Preparing for a Leadership Team Meeting

They say you can never be too prepared. The same is true when it comes to meetings. Here are five top tips for prepping for an effective leadership meeting:

• Create a context driven leadership meeting agenda 📝 . A business meeting agenda is a great tool that ensures your leadership meetings stay on track, run on time, and cover all the necessary topics. However, meeting agendas shouldn’t just be a list of things to discuss —a thoughtful agenda will also give context on why each agenda item is being discussed. In your meeting agenda, be sure to add in as many notes or backup documents as possible so all meeting participants can prepare themselves.
• Send the leadership meeting agenda in advance 📧. Once you’ve created your agenda, send it to the other meeting participants for input at least 24 hours in advance. There may be something important that someone else needs to talk about or something you’ve forgotten to add. Plus, by sending the business meeting agenda in advance, you give others a chance to prepare—meaning everyone can make the most of their time. The best case scenario is to use a collaborative tool where everyone can access and edit the agenda as needed ahead of time.
• Prioritize the items in the leadership meeting agenda ⌛. On your agenda, highlight the items that are the highest priority so you can be sure to address them first. This way, if something takes longer than expected, you can leave the less important items for next time instead of pushing back something that needs to be addressed urgently.
• Determine the goal of each leadership meeting agenda item 🥅. Make it clear whether each agenda item requires a final decision or if it’s simply open for discussion. In the EOS® framework, this means distinguishing between problems that need to be solved, information that needs to be shared, progress on your company’s goals, and tracking metrics. Clearly identifying the category each item falls into can help you fly through the meeting faster.
• Do your homework 📚. Be sure to block off an adequate amount of prep time for each leadership team meeting. Start thinking about ideas you may have and devote time to necessary research so you can add value and lend expertise to the meeting. If your team has the capability to share agendas, check out any item where you can add context ahead of time or bring more to discuss from your area of expertise.

Tips for Running a Leadership Team Meeting

Once you’ve got a plan in place, it’s time to execute it. Here are five top tips for running an effective leadership meeting:

• Be respectful of everyone’s time ⏰ . If you don’t start your meetings on time they likely won’t end on time. This can create a snowball effect and before you know it, the entire day is off schedule. Leaders in any organization are incredibly busy, so it’s important to start and end your meetings on time and be respectful of everyone’s schedule. As a bonus, set a timer for each section in your meeting agenda, like Gino Wickman recommends for L10 meetings in his book, Traction . This ensures you have time to get through everything, minimizing the need to drag out the meeting or neglect important topics.
• Keep it positive 😃. In order for your team meeting to yield positive outcomes and results, you must approach it with a positive attitude. Even if there’s an issue you need to address, don’t be negative about it—have an open discussion and work together to reach a solution. Never bad mouth or make fun of another employee, client, project, or situation.
• Eliminate distractions 📵 . As a leader with a busy schedule, you certainly don't have time to waste on distractions—like a ringing cell phone or a fellow manager that’s spending the entire meeting scrolling through social media. In order to minimize distractions and keep everyone focused, it’s best to keep all of your communications silent or on ‘do not disturb,’ and only use technology when it’s part of the meeting (like for remote teams following an agenda together).
• Summarize each agenda item after you’ve discussed it 📄. After you go through each agenda item, wrap up what you discussed before moving on to the next thing. Summarize any issues or areas of opportunity that were identified, and confirm the next steps the group has decided to take.
• Capture decisions and assign action items ⏭️ . You could have the most wildly productive meeting but if you don’t take note of your decisions and next steps, they are likely to get lost in the shuffle and never actually happen. So, be sure to wrap up every leadership team meeting by capturing any decisions and assigning action items to the appropriate people.

5 Leadership Meeting Ideas to Discuss

Here are five management meeting topics and ideas that you may want to implement in your next leadership team meeting:

• Get personal 🤝. As leaders, you’re all busy people, which means you may not get the opportunity to talk about something other than work very often. Try dedicating the first couple of minutes in your leadership team meeting to chat as peers, even if it’s something as simple as sharing what everyone did over the weekend. This allows your leadership team to build deeper relationships which can actually lead to higher quality work, plus sets a positive tone for the rest of the meeting.
• Review key metrics and goals of the team 📏. Definitely dedicate some of your time in leadership team meetings to tracking progress, metrics, and results for various projects and initiatives. This makes it possible to identify whether each team, department, and the organization as a whole is on track to meet its goals so you can course-correct if necessary. If a metric or goal is off-track, flag it to discuss when you discuss other challenges in your meeting.
• Use the red, yellow, and green method🚦for goal status updates. If you find reviewing key metrics and results to be overly time-consuming or overwhelming, try using the red, yellow, and green method for each agenda item. Are you feeling red (bad), yellow (so-so), or green (good) about hitting a particular goal or benchmark? If the team consensus is green, move onto the next item quickly. If it’s yellow, make a note to come back to that item at the end of the meeting if you have time (and if you don’t, put it at the top of the next meeting’s agenda). If it’s red, you know you need to focus the discussion on that item!
• Identify issues and challenges and work to solve them 🙁. When all leaders from various teams and departments come together, it’s a great time to identify issues and roadblocks to success. Then, you can brainstorm and work together to come up with solutions.
• Highlight good news and wins 🎉. Leadership team meetings shouldn't be all negative. Try to have each leader bring one “win” from their team or department to the meeting, then end by going around the room so each person can share their win. This makes it possible for leaders to know what exciting things are going on in other areas of the organization, plus wraps up the meeting on a positive note and boosts team morale.

Leadership Meeting Agenda Examples

Here are a few leadership meeting agenda examples for various kinds of meetings. Keep in mind that these are simply outlines meant to be used as a starting point.

“The Quick Meeting”

Duration: 15 minutes or less.

Purpose: Often referred to as a “daily stand up,” the type of meeting is more administrative in nature and is designed to keep the leadership team in sync.

Sample business meeting agenda: Participants will assemble for an informal go around where each person shares:

• What they worked on yesterday
• What they plan to work on today
• If any roadblocks are preventing them from completing those tasks effectively
• If they’ve made any new learnings or have anything to share that may benefit the rest of the group

“The Weekly Leadership Team Meeting”

Duration: 60-90 minutes.

Purpose: This type of leadership meeting should be routine, and scheduled for the same time and day each week for consistency. The goal is to review what happened last week, discuss any challenges that the organization may be facing, and start planning for the next week. However, it’s important to only focus on a few high-importance issues at a time—don’t lose valuable time talking about less important problems, or think that you’ll be able to discuss and solve everything in just one meeting.

Sample business meeting agenda:

• Intro to the meeting (5 min)
• Review numbers and metrics (5 min)
• Review goals (5 min)
• Highlight company wins and accomplishments (5 min)
• Identify top issues (5 min)
• Agree on a solution and implementation plan
• Assign action items
• Review and confirm actions items 
• Rank meeting and conclude! (5 min)

“The Quarterly Strategic Meeting”

Duration: 2-6 hours, depending on the size of the leadership team and the organization. You can break this meeting into two separate sessions, or schedule an off-site planning day. This helps you take a step back from the day-to-day operations and eliminate distractions—plus can be used as a leadership team building exercise.

Purpose: The goal of this type of leadership meeting is to review progress on last quarter's goals, adjust processes as needed, and set goals and priorities for the upcoming quarter. Perhaps more importantly, these meetings keep the leadership team connected to the overall direction the organization is trying to move in. This can get fuzzy as the year goes on, so it’s important to be reminded.

• Welcome and chat as a team to loosen up before the long meeting ahead
• Go over a high-level review of the leadership meeting agenda and set key goals for the meeting
• Discuss what went well and why
• Discuss what didn’t go well and why, and where course corrections could be made going forward
• Discuss highlights, key learnings, and wins
• Measure success through metrics and KPIs
• Identify if goals were met—if not, where can changes or adjustments be made in order to reach them?
• Take a break
• Have any of our organizational goals shifted? If so, what are our new goals going forward?
• What do we need to adjust in our approach for next quarter based on what we identified that worked well and didn’t previously?
• Define key goals and initiatives
• Define metrics for meeting them, such as new quarterly targets, KPIs, etc.
• Define an action plan, which includes who will be carrying out each initiative, who is responsible for tracking progress towards each goals, and timelines
• Review key decisions that were made to ensure everyone is on the same page
• Identify what will be shared with the rest of the organization and how that messaging will be delivered
• Confirm action items
• Close the meeting by asking if anyone has any final thoughts, and thanking everyone for their time

Run Leadership Meetings with the Tools You Already Use

One big problem with meetings: there are too many things in too many places. One person scribbles an agenda in a notebook, another takes notes in Google Docs, another shows up totally unprepared because they didn't realize they needed to review something in advance.

The problem isn't necessarily with your leaders: it's with your processes and tools. When you're trying to keep track of action items, agendas, and decisions, it's helpful to keep everything in one place so you can reference the information you need.

You can use a dedicated tool for that, but what's even better: expanding on a tool you already love.

If you spend your workday in Microsoft Teams, Strety is for you.

It’s an all-in-one performance, people, and project management tool that lives inside of Teams to work where you're already working. Strety brings together all the features you need to become a better leader and run better team meetings 😊!

With Strety, you’ll be able to:

• Automate scheduling and following up on meetings
• Run more effective and engaging team meetings
• Store info about what you need to cover in a leadership meeting agenda
• Collaborate on team meeting agendas
• Take meeting notes and add comments
• Assign post-meeting action items
• Track progress on action items and goals
• Integrate action items with the software you already use
• And much more!

It’s time to say goodbye to unproductive leadership meetings and hello to Strety 👋! Ready to learn more? Reach out for a demo today!

Run your next leadership meeting with Strety for MS Teams

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Effective Leadership Meetings: A Guide with Agenda Samples

Leadership meetings are those high-stakes, high-reward gatherings where executives and key team members come together to make the decisions that shape the future.

In these meetings, every voice counts, and the agenda is the compass that guides the discussion, ensuring that time is spent wisely and objectives are met with precision. It's where the course is set, problems are tackled head-on, and opportunities are seized.

We'll cover the following steps to run productive and effective leadership meetings.

Step 1: Establishing Clear Objectives

Step 2: designing your leadership meeting agenda, step 3: engaging your leadership team, step 4: executing the agenda, step 5: following through post-meeting, how are leadership meetings different from board meetings.

• Focus : Leadership meetings address operational and strategic planning for the day-to-day management of the company. Board meetings are concerned with high-level decisions, governance, and company-wide policies.
• Participants : Leadership meetings involve the company's senior and sometimes middle management, focusing on internal leadership. Board meetings are attended by the board of directors, comprising internal and external members who oversee and guide the company's strategic direction.
• Frequency : Leadership meetings typically occur more frequently (weekly/monthly) to keep up with the pace of managing operations. Board meetings are less frequent (quarterly/biannually), reflecting their focus on long-term strategic oversight.

The foundation of successful leadership meetings is rooted in the clarity and strategic alignment of objectives. Whether it's a weekly leadership team meeting or a quarterly executive team gathering, having a transparent aim is crucial. It steers your leadership team towards making decisions that resonate with the organization's long-term goals.

Articulate the Meeting's Mission : Pin down the central theme of the meeting — be it driving strategic planning, exploring business development opportunities, or making key decisions. For example, if the leadership team is aiming to expand into new markets, the agenda should prioritize discussion on potential territories.

Gather Collective Insights : Prior to setting the agenda, solicit input from all leadership team members to surface pressing issues and diverse viewpoints. This could involve a pre-meeting survey or a quick roundtable to gather topic ideas from different departments.

Filter Topics by Impact : Not every topic deserves the spotlight. Prioritize items by their potential to affect key performance indicators and address immediate strategic needs. This might involve placing a particular emphasis on reviewing key metrics that inform business opportunities or dedicating time to discuss resource allocation.

Schedule with Flexibility : Allocate time to each agenda item to keep the meeting concise, but stay open to adjusting the flow for unexpected yet critical discussions. This balance ensures that while each topic gets its allotted time, there's room to navigate the conversation based on real-time priorities.

Crafting an effective meeting agenda template is like creating a roadmap for your leadership team meetings. It's about structuring the time spent together to ensure that the leadership team's collective efforts align with the executive team's vision for the company.

Identifying Key Topics

• Pinpoint the essentials: strategic priorities, key updates, decision requisites.
• Estimate a realistic time budget for each topic to keep the meeting on track.

Categorizing Agenda Items

• Sort topics into categories: updates for awareness, decisions for action, brainstorming for innovation.
• This helps structure the meeting flow and sets clear expectations for the type of engagement required.

Incorporating Strategic Pauses

• Schedule brief intermissions after intensive discussions to let ideas settle and encourage reflection.
• These breaks are the breaths between sentences, vital for maintaining energy and focus.

Explore these meeting agenda examples to optimize your leadership meetings:

1. Monthly Leadership Strategy Agenda

• Wins and Milestones : Celebrating successes (5 mins)
• Performance Metrics : Reviewing strategic metrics (15 mins)
• Strategic Updates : Progress on initiatives (20 mins)
• Future Planning : Next quarter’s goals (15 mins)
• Issue Sorting : Prioritizing challenges (10 mins)
• Development Segment : Team growth (Optional, 15 mins)

2. Weekly Leadership Operational Agenda

• Positive Updates : Sharing good news (5 mins)
• Operational Metrics : Key operational insights (10 mins)
• Feedback Loop : Customer and employee insights (10 mins)
• Critical Topics : Deep dive into major issues (30-45 mins)
• Action Summary : Clarifying next steps (5 mins)
• Closing Thought : One-sentence wrap-up (5 mins)

3. Quarterly Executive Review Agenda

• Quarterly Snapshot : Review of progress (10 mins)
• Strategic Questions : Key decisions for next quarter (30 mins)
• Growth Opportunities : Identifying new avenues (15 mins)
• Risk Planning : Mitigation strategies (10 mins)
• Decision Log : Recording outcomes (5 mins)

A truly productive leadership meeting hinges on the active engagement of every participant. Here’s how to ensure that each leadership team meeting is a collaborative effort:

Prepare in Advance

• Share the agenda with precise topics and pre-reading materials well before the meeting to allow team members to prepare thoroughly.
• Encourage members to submit items for discussion, ensuring a sense of ownership and active participation in agenda-setting.

Example : For an upcoming meeting on strategic growth, distribute a competitive analysis report a week early and request input on action items from each department leader.

Time Slots For Planned and Spontaneous Discussion

• Design the agenda to allow for both planned discussions led by department heads and open sessions for spontaneous contributions.
• Actively engage quieter members by asking for their input on specific topics, and foster an environment where different perspectives are valued.

Example : After the marketing director presents the latest campaign results, open the floor for input on improvement from all team members, encouraging even the typically reserved finance team to offer insights.

Leveraging Technology

• Digital Collaboration : Implement collaborative tools that allow for real-time interaction, such as shared documents or live polling during the meeting.
• Efficient Record-Keeping : Utilize a designated note-taker or a digital platform to capture decisions and action items, maintaining clarity and accountability post-meeting.

Example : Wudpecker's AI notetaking tool eliminates the need for you to jot down notes during the meeting, allowing more focus on the conversation flow.

Wudpecker's AI-notetaker...

• Automatically joins and records your meetings, so there's no repeated setup
• Summarizes the whole online meeting's discussions and action items for you (Note: if you're not meeting online, you can still set up a recording system in your physical room)
• Takes max 10 (usually 1-2) minutes after the meeting to give you the summary
• Is compatible with Google Meet, Zoom, and Microsoft Teams
• Keeps record of notes from any previous meeting where Wudpecker was a participant.
• Allows multiple people to have their own Wudpecker recorder in the meeting at the same time and receive their own notes in their account afterward
• Lets you share the notes to other people

Let's see how easy it is to set up Wudpecker's meeting recording software:

1. Sign in to Wudpecker by clicking "Get started"

2. Continue either by connecting a Google or Microsoft account to Wudpecker.

After this, accept the permission for Wudpecker to access your calendar (this is for the purpose of automatically joining calls for a more seamless experience).

3. Make sure the online meeting you want notes for shows up in "Upcoming calls" and that there's an activated toggle button next to it.

If this is not the case...

• Make sure you signed up with the correct account. The items on the menu are all the events in your calendar connected to the account you signed up with.
• Check that the online meeting event you have in your calendar has a meeting link. (Psst: The meeting link needs to be in the "location" of the event)
• Try clicking on the toggle button to activate it (it should be activated/colored automatically).
• If none of this helps, you can always contact us by pressing the chat button on the right bottom corner.

Easy peasy! For any future meetings, just admit the notetaker in each time, and you'll be all set!

4. Once you're in the meeting, allow Wudpecker's Notetaker to join by clicking "Admit".

5. Soon after the online meeting has ended, you'll see notes and a transcript for your meeting in "My Calls".

During the leadership meeting, the agenda is the compass that guides the conversation, ensuring every topic reaches its destination. Here’s how to navigate the journey:

Responsive Facilitation

Guidance Over Governance : The facilitator orchestrates the meeting's pace, giving each topic the attention it deserves while being ready to adjust as discussions unfold.

Time Awareness : Keeping discussions within a reasonable timeframe ensures that all items on the agenda receive due consideration.

Collaborative Engagement

Solution-Focused Discussions : Shift focus from assigning blame to solving problems, encouraging a united approach to challenges.

Real-Time Adjustments : Be prepared to harness the collective intelligence in the room by spontaneously adding a feedback session if time allows, or deferring topics if a pressing issue requires immediate attention.

The conclusion of executive team meetings is just the beginning of the follow-up phase. Here's how to ensure accountability and drive action:

Documenting Key Decisions: Capture decisions and review key metrics, assigning responsibilities to ensure that strategic planning doesn't lose momentum. This helps avoid overlooked waste and ensures that individual managers and team members are clear on their next steps.

Assigning Action Items: Post-meeting, use tools like Wudpecker to streamline the process of distributing meeting notes and action items. This clarity prevents hastily conceived plans and supports the planning process by documenting who is responsible for each follow-up.

Tracking Progress: Between weekly meetings, leverage project management tools to keep tabs on performance metrics and resource allocation. Regular check-ins with team members keep everyone accountable and focused on the company goals.

Iterative Improvement: Invite feedback from leadership team members and other meeting attendees to refine the agenda for the next meeting. This ensures that each recurring meeting is more effective than the last, fostering a culture of continuous improvement and better meetings.

In essence, the journey of an impactful leadership meeting agenda is about uniting a leadership team with clarity, collaboration, and continuous momentum. Here's the essence of what we've covered:

• Setting a clear purpose for our meetings, in line with our organizational vision.
• Crafting inclusive agendas that resonate with all team members, fostering engagement.
• Ensuring productive meetings that drive strategic decisions and action.
• Facilitating open dialogue for a culture of dynamic contribution and team synergy.
• Following up post-meeting with clear action items, leveraging tools like Wudpecker for efficiency.

As we conclude, remember that the power of leadership meetings lies in transforming dialogue into action, guiding teams to company-wide success with each gathering. May your meetings be the catalyst for growth and the cornerstone of effective decision-making.

How do you facilitate a leadership meeting?

Preparation: Know the agenda and objectives inside out.

Guiding the Discussion: Keep conversations aligned with the agenda items, ensuring each point is adequately covered.

Time Management: Respect the allotted time for each topic, extending only when necessary.

Encouraging Participation: Ensure each leadership team member has the opportunity to contribute.

Decision Documentation: Summarize key decisions and assign action items as they arise.

How do you talk in a leadership meeting?

Being Prepared: Understand the meeting topics and prepare your contributions in advance.

Staying Concise: Articulate your points clearly and succinctly to respect the meeting time.

Being Respectful: Listen actively to others and build on their ideas, fostering a collaborative environment.

Offering Solutions: When identifying problems, try to propose possible solutions or pathways to explore further.

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Leadership Summits That Work

• Cary Greene

When executed well, annual gatherings of an organization’s high-level leaders are worth the effort and expense. But for many companies, the leadership summit is a numbing series of presentations in which information flows only from the top—and not that coherently. By applying the appropriate techniques before, during, and after the summit, C-level leaders can seize this rare opportunity to harness the collective knowledge of frontline executives.

Before the summit, it’s crucial to clarify roles and responsibilities (a director, who oversees planning and owns the agenda; a design team; a content editor; and so on), define a clear set of objectives for the summit, design the event around those objectives, and prepare attendees for productive conversations through reading material and brief webcasts.

During the event, a variety of low- and high-tech approaches, from color-coded 3 x 5 index cards to online polls, can capture the thinking of attendees and communicate it upward. And various exercises can help attendees connect in ways that lay a foundation for sustained collaboration.

After the summit, organizers should track commitments made during the event and equip attendees with talking points and presentations that help them discuss with their employees what happened at the summit and how to turn the results into action.

HBR Reprint R1503F

How to stop putting your top people to sleep

Idea in Brief

The situation.

Most large and midsize companies bring together their 50 to 500 top executives every year for a leadership summit. When done well, these events are worth the considerable effort and expense.

The Problem

At most such conferences, information flows from the top down in a numbing series of discursive, disconnected PowerPoints, and sessions address topics relevant to only some people in the room. Participants leave slightly better informed than when they arrived.

The Solution

It is possible to have a productive conversation with hundreds of people at once. By carefully coordinating the event planning and applying some high- and low-tech practices during the summit, leaders can direct the conversation without inhibiting creative responses.

Every year, in virtually all large and midsize companies, high-level leaders come together for a leadership summit.

• Bob Frisch is the Founding Partner of the Strategic Offsites Group . His work includes the best-selling   Who’s in the Room? How Great Leaders Structure and Manage the Teams Around Them (Wiley),  Simple Sabotage   (HarperOne), and 25 HBR articles since the seminal “ Off-Sites That Work ”   in   2006. Bob’s articles are featured in 14 HBR collections, including   HBR’s 10 Must Reads on Teams .
• Cary Greene is the Managing Partner of the Strategic Offsites Group , a consultancy focused on designing and facilitating strategy conversations for executive teams and boards. He is the coauthor of  Simple Sabotage   (HarperOne) and 16 HBR articles. Cary ’s   work is featured in 10 HBR collections.

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How to Get the Most Out of Your Leadership Meetings

“That’s two hours I’m never getting back,” you mutter under your breath, as you stroll out of the meeting room.

It’s the end of the quarter. You are already strapped for time. Now, you are spending a big chunk of it in a meeting with senior leaders.

At the meeting, your CFO says budgets must be trimmed; your CMO doesn’t like what that would do to paid ad campaigns. The Sales Manager asks for headcount to improve the top line; the HR Director wants to hold off on hiring until restructuring has been completed.

After an incessant back-and-forth, you come out of the meeting confused, frustrated, and worn out. And you wonder, “What was even the point of that?”

Sound familiar?

If you’ve been a leader for any reasonable amount of time, you have likely experienced scenarios like the one above. According to Harvard Business Review , senior executives at the average firm spend three days a month working as a collective. In those three days, they spent less than three hours talking about strategy. The rest of the time is spent putting out fires. This is not what you want from your leadership meetings.

Leadership meetings should be less about having debates and more about making decisions. If you don’t make decisions, you don’t have a strategy. And working without a strategy is like driving without a destination – you will go nowhere. The cost of delayed decisions is high, including, amongst other things, resource wastage, bad investments, and product and business stagnation.

In this article, I am going to talk to you about the significance of leadership meetings, how you should prepare for and conduct one, how to follow up after a meeting, and share some tips to help you get the most out of your meetings.

What are Leadership Meetings and Why Are They Important?

Leadership meetings bring together an organization’s top decision-makers (senior executives, managers, team leaders, etc.) to review the firm’s current performance and determine future direction. Together, they make decisions that have a bearing on the company’s financial security and growth.

Decisions have two important attributes: quality and speed. The best decisions are the ones that find a balance between the two.

A quality decision that’s made too late can result in missed opportunities. Ex: A technology company conducts a product audit that reveals they may need to upgrade to cloud-based solutions. The team then spends months deliberating and conducting extensive research. By the time they decide to launch a cloud solution, the market is saturated with competing solutions.

A quick decision that is made poorly can have drastic consequences. Ex: A retail company panics after a sudden drop in sales and decides to immediately implement price cuts across the board. The cuts negatively affect brand perception, as customers associate the price reduction with a drop in quality.

You cannot balance quality with speed without a measure of deliberation. But the discussion must be limited to a finite period. According to an HBR study of 187 companies worldwide, top executives overwhelmingly felt that they spent too much time at meetings discussing issues rather than making decisions. Issues are prioritized by recency. And with no limits to the amount of discussion, agendas end up being transferred from one meeting to another.

Unresolved agenda items and lack of long-term planning can have implications that go beyond financial performance. They can leave participants feeling dissatisfied with the meetings they attend, which research shows can negatively impact overall job satisfaction.

How, then, can you avoid these traps?

Preparing for Leadership Meetings

If you want to have productive leadership meetings, being well-prepared is half done. You are well-prepared if the participants understand the purpose of the meeting, why they are participating, and what is being asked of them. Clarifying these points beforehand will allow you to eliminate redundant introductions, such as context and objectives, and dive straight into the meat of the agenda.

Set Clear and Purposeful Objectives Over 65% of the leadership meetings in HBR ’s study were not called to make decisions. Instead, they featured updates and group discussions. Agendas were unfocused, loaded with individual submissions ahead of the meeting. 

Only 12% of executives believed that top management meetings yielded strategic decisions. In some cases where no decision was made, the responsibility was passed down to subordinates who didn’t fully understand the complexity of the issue or how their decisions would affect the organization.

Before you call your leaders for a meeting, ask if you need to meet in the first place. You don’t need your top executives in a room at the same time to give updates. Leadership meetings should be about making decisions that move the needle for the organization.

Create a High-Quality Meeting Agenda To create a quality agenda, you need to ruthlessly prioritize. Use the Pareto Principle to determine what’s important. According to the Pareto Principle , 20% of your efforts will drive 80% of your results.

In HBR ’s sample, 80% of top management’s time was being spent on issues that account for less than 20% of long-term value. Prioritize such that you’re driving progress instead of stalling it.

Send the Agenda to Participants in Advance At British confectionery Cadbury , members of the Chief Executive Committee receive reading materials at least five days before a CEC meeting. The materials are accompanied by a cover sheet, which explains why each item has been assigned for reading. The items are marked “ for decision-making ” or “ for discussion ”.

Sound decisions require sound input. Provide your senior leaders with plenty of context and information before you meet so they can come well-prepared and make meaningful contributions.

Circulating the agenda early can also help you identify where alignment is needed so you can steer your discussion straight toward those matters. Cadbury ’s executives seek input on items marked “for discussion” before coming to the meeting.

Conducting Leadership Meetings

The last thing you want after preparing diligently for a meeting is for it to end in disaster by conducting it badly. Just like an athlete needs to bring his A-game on match day in addition to training hard at the gym, you need to execute well on the day of the meeting to make it productive.

Start Positively You cannot have a constructive meeting without setting a constructive tone. Starting positively lifts the participants’ mood and makes them open to communicating and collaborating. Consequently, they are more engaged, less resistant to new ideas, and work together to find solutions.

According to Wharton Executive Education , neuroscientific research has found communication strategies that instill positivity to result in 31% higher productivity, 25% performance improvement, 37% increase in sales and 23% reduction in stress.

To implement positive communication, Wharton recommends “Power Lead” , a list of five leads to start your meetings: listing accomplishments, starting with positive topics ( ex: acts of kindness by a coworker, or a team win at an offsite), highlighting new resources (this could be a new hire or even something as minor as a new printer on the floor), inspiring hope (year-end bonuses, free pizza, etc.), and being thankful.

Facilitate Effective Discussions Leadership meetings typically cover topics spanning multiple business units and initiatives. Given the breadth of coverage, discussions can easily end up all over the place.

To organize the information, HBR suggests providing a preview in your opening remarks ( ex: “Today, we are going to cover x, y, and z), using transitions during your presentation ( ex: “My second concern is…”), and wrapping up the discussion with a conclusion ( ex: “A, b, and c are our main challenges”). Using previews, transitions and reviews structures the information, making it easy for participants to understand, extract key takeaways, and define follow-up actions.

Respect Participants’ Time According to Bain & Company , 15% of an organization’s collective time is spent in meetings . Senior executives spend over two days a week in meetings of three or more colleagues. The point? Executives are busy people, and their time is scarce.

Tedious meetings can cause irritation and suck out energy that could be spent on more important matters. Have one resource managing the agenda and enforce strict start and end times. Establish disciplined processes for crossing off agenda items, by stating clear timelines, setting deadlines to reach decisions, and streamlining approval workflows.

After the Leadership Meeting

Okay. So you prepared thoroughly and aced the meeting. That’s great. But don’t sit back just yet.

Your job doesn’t end with making sound decisions. You need to ensure the decisions are executed quickly and efficiently.

Summarize Each Agenda Item On the rare occasion that leadership meetings produced decisions, the HBR study discovered that most organizations were crippled by poor follow-through. Common issues included differences in interpretation, ambiguous and high-level communication down the ladder, and in the worst cases, no communication at all from unhappy members who silently opposed the decision.

To lose ambiguity and gain alignment, prepare a concise summary of every agenda item that was discussed. Memories are short, and without a ready resource to refer back to, disagreements will start to pile up. A one-pager that outlines key takeaways, commitments and actions is enough.

Speaking of actions…

Assign Action Items The most successful companies in HBR’ s study tied strategy approvals to resource allocation. ABN AMRO , Alcan , and Cadbury issued formal performance contracts when a strategy was approved. The contracts detailed requirements (financial, time and talent) and outcomes (financial) that management pledged to deliver.

Each business unit was given a clear mandate and progress was tracked. When a business unit failed to deliver against its targets, the strategy was sent back up for review and remedy.

Review and Improve Meeting Practices  Conduct periodic meeting audits to eliminate inefficiencies. Check if agendas are optimized to ensure executives are devoting their time to matters that influence the organization’s long-term health. 

Run shorter and more frequent check-ins to handle operational bottlenecks and delegate these check-ins whenever possible. Save the longer and more holistic reviews for strategic issues, establishing a monthly (or weekly, depending on the opportunity and urgency) cadence.

How to Improve Leadership Meeting Outcomes

Separate operations from strategy The best companies in HBR ’s study implemented one common meeting practice: holding independent reviews for operations and strategy.

Operational issues often demand short-term solutions that require you to zoom in. Strategic issues, on the other hand, have long-term solutions that require you to zoom out. They are different problems that require different approaches and must therefore be handled at different times. 

When ABN AMRO faced a resource crunch and stiff competition from JP Morgan Chase , ING , and Citigroup in 2000, Rijkman Groenink, the then chairman, changed the board into a decision-making body. The revamped board reduced biweekly operations meetings to a weekly cadence and used one all-day meeting a month to talk about strategy. Overall meeting times went down from 24 to 22 hours a month, while time spent on strategy went up from one hour a month to 10 hours a month.

Rank agenda items Remember the Pareto Principle ? According to the theory, 20% of your actions will drive 80% of your results. 

Roche implemented a variant of this principle, when Franz Humer, their former CEO, created a “decision agenda”. The “decision agenda” was made up of the 10 most important problems and opportunities in front of the company. Each item was assigned a value at stake. The chief executive committee would then spend over half of its year working on those 10 items.

Always have a Plan B Once you have finalized the agenda with your most important issues, identify two to three alternatives for each solution that you bring to the meeting. The alternatives must be distinct, as opposed to slightly modified variants of the original. Before leaving the meeting with your final decision, make sure you have thoroughly considered every alternative.

Brian Pitman, the former chairman and CEO of Lloyds TSB , would push his executives to present him with at least three alternatives before approving a strategy. Pitman didn’t believe in a “winning strategy” as strategies could always be imitated. Instead, he called for continuous reinvention. Under Pitman’s stewardship, Lloyds TSB ’s market value increased 40 times.

Slot participants into clear roles Two of the biggest issues that plague meetings are a lack of clarity and a lack of accountability. While the former can cause frustration and kill productivity, the latter can result in a loss of competitive advantage when decision-making speed is critical.

To avoid running into these problems, identify clear roles for every meeting participant. McKinsey recommends dividing up participants into decision-makers (participants with voting rights), advisers (to guide the decision-makers), recommenders (to conduct analyses and prescribe courses of action to advisers and decision-makers), and execution partners (to act on the decision once it is taken).

Final Thoughts

Meetings, when conducted the right way, can leave your leadership team feeling energized, reinvigorated, and inspired. When conducted poorly, however, they can create confusion, demotivate executives, and kill productivity.

Companies whose executives make quick and sound decisions have been shown to produce better financial performance and experience higher growth rates. The best companies identify the right issues, consider all solutions, and make the best decision in the shortest amount of time.

Once the decision is made, they rigorously follow up to secure alignment, identify resources to execute the decision, hold the executors accountable, and monitor progress and correct course when required.

Get a Free Copy of My Book

Eric Partaker

Eric has been named “CEO of the Year” at the 2019 Business Excellence Awards, one of the “Top 30 Entrepreneurs in the UK” by Startups Magazine, and among “Britain’s 27 Most Disruptive Entrepreneurs” by The Telegraph.

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25 Best Free Leadership PowerPoint PPT Presentation Templates to Download 2024

As a business leader, it's pretty certain you're going to have to do a leadership PowerPoint presentation. In fact, you'll probably have to present regularly. Presenting effectively is a must-have leadership skill. So, it's important to learn how to make your presentations compelling. 

One key aspect of that is the visual design of your slides. Of course, not everyone's a whiz at designing presentation slides from scratch, but luckily, you don't have to be. Using premium PowerPoint templates for a leadership presentation is a good way to make sure that your presentation is professional.

In this guide, I'll share some of the best leadership PowerPoint templates , paid and free, to help you get—and keep—your audience's attention.

Best Premium PowerPoint Templates for Leadership Presentations on Envato Elements (With Unlimited Use)

If you're looking for premium leadership PowerPoint presentation templates to help you impress your audience, Envato Elements has a great offer you won't want to miss. Download as many premium leadership presentation PPT slides as you want, all for one low price.   

Here are some of the benefits of using premium leadership PPT templates for your presentations. 

First, a professional design can give your presentations that wow factor that makes your audience sit up and take notice. That's precisely the effect you want to achieve when presenting. 

And don't underestimate the impact of the professional design you'll get. It'll help your presentation look coherent . Plus, using professional leadership PowerPoint templates can save you time. That's useful if you've got a lot of presentations to create, or if slide design isn't your favorite task. 

So, it's a good idea to check out the premium leadership PowerPoint presentation templates on Envato Elements. Here's how you find them. 

Visit Envato Elements and select Presentation Templates next to the search box. Type leadership into the search box. You'll have dozens of premium leadership PowerPoint templates to choose from. Check out the previews till you find the one you want. 

When you've found a template select it, click Download , and start customizing. I'll share some tips on customizing a leadership PowerPoint presentation later in this guide. 

Envato Elements is a great choice if you're creating leadership PPT presentations regularly. But if you want leadership presentation PPT slides for one-off use, check out the PowerPoint templates for leadership presentations available from GraphicRiver.

5 Great Premium Leadership PowerPoint Templates from Envato Elements and GraphicRiver

To help you get started, here are some attractive premium  leadership PowerPoint presentation templates from Envato Elements and GraphicRiver: 

1. MOUVE - Elegant PowerPoint Template

Mouve is a minimalist, professional leadership PPT template. It'll help you communicate your points clearly and effectively. It includes 50 different slides as well as icons for customization. Plus, it's easy to edit. 

2. Speaker Up - Google Slides Template

Sometimes simple PowerPoint templates for leadership presentations work the best. At other times you want variety. SpeakerUp has three color schemes, 12 variations and 360 different slides in total. This professional theme is easy to edit and can be used in both Google Slides and PowerPoint. 

3. Balance - PowerPoint Template

If you're looking for examples of PowerPoint presentations on leadership, Balance is a full-featured starting point. Fully editable, and including icons and mockups, this leadership PowerPoint theme included more than 145 slides. 

4. Leadership

This collection of leadership presentation PPT slides will get your presentation off to a great start. It's easy to change fonts, themes, and colors to customize your presentation just the way you like it. All elements are simple to edit via the drag and drop interface.

5. Dinamika – Creative Business PowerPoint Template

Dinamika is a colorful leadership PPT template set. It includes 36 slides with customizable and resizeable graphics. This is an excellent choice for a creative presentation with lots of images. 

25 Top Free Leadership PowerPoint PPT Templates to Download for 2024 Presentations

There's no doubt that premium leadership presentation PPT slides offer an advantage in terms of design and flexibility. Plus, they save you time because you don't have to worry about fiddly design details.

But before you look for free leadership PowerPoint templates on the web, check out Envato Elements' freebies first. You'll get to try out free PowerPoint presentations on leadership while benefiting from premium design. 

Here's how it works:

• Every month Envato Elements offers 12 different hand-selected files, (fonts, presentations, videos, and more). Create a free account to download this month's free premium files now. 
• Or try Envato Market for free. They offer seven handpicked monthly freebies. Log in with your Envato Market account to get this month's handpicked premium freebies . 

But if your budget is tight, sometimes free leadership templates for presentations are what you can manage. To help you out, we've found some great leadership PowerPoint templates free to download on the web:

1. Bright Business Presentation

This is one of many free leadership PowerPoint templates on the Microsoft Office site. It's got a simple and businesslike design. 

2. Academic Presentation

This is another free leadership PowerPoint template from Microsoft. Though it's got an academic theme, the elegant design will work well in leadership settings.

3. Green Pitch Deck

If you need to make a pitch, this useful theme is another of the leadership PowerPoint templates free to download. It's an attractive way to showcase company information. Change the color scheme if necessary.

4. Training Presentation

This leadership PowerPoint template has a simple design and includes 14 slides. This is a good starting point for a leadership training presentation. 

5. Employee Training Presentation

This free leadership PowerPoint theme is suitable if you want to keep your presentation short and sweet. It's got just nine slides and is set up for delivering training courses.

6. Marshmallow

Looking for some inspiration for free? Presentations on leadership using templates are also an option. Marshmallow has a cool color scheme that's sure to appeal to your audience. 

7. Business Plan Presentation Template

This leadership PPT template is available in an attractive, muted color scheme. It'll give your presentations a professional look. 

8. Corporate Free PowerPoint

Here are templates for free PowerPoint presentations on leadership. This modern design is easy to edit, includes vector graphics, and has 10 slides. 

9. Business Consulting

Business Consulting is a free leadership PowerPoint theme. It uses a businesslike blue, white and black color scheme to create attractive slides. 

10. Business Company

This is one of several leadership PowerPoint templates free to download. It includes 16 easy to edit slides and has an understated color scheme. 

11. Investor Pro

When choosing PowerPoint templates for leadership presentation sometimes it can help to match it to your intended use. This theme is intended for investor presentations. It includes 16 relevant slide designs. 

12. Free Annual Report PowerPoint Template

If you're looking to create an annual report quickly (we've got annual report tips, too), then check out this free leadership PPT template. It includes 16 attractive slides. 

13. ProjectX Free Business PowerPoint Template

Here's another of many leadership PowerPoint templates that are free to download. ProjectX has a simple, attractive design suitable for many uses. It includes 16 slides.  

14. Free Corporate PowerPoint Template

Looking for more free PowerPoint presentations on leadership? This one has a muted color scheme and includes slides relating to common business topics. 

15. Free Corporate Company Presentation Template

Here's another of the free leadership templates. The slide set includes templates for quotes, financials and more.

16. Free Business Presentation Template

This blue-grey presentation template is suitable for a wide range of presentations. It's preset with the basic slides you need and will also work in Google Slides. 

17. Free Go-To-Market Strategy PowerPoint Template

For examples of PowerPoint presentations on leadership, check out this go-to-market template. It gives you an outline of what you need for this kind of presentation. It's also free.

18. Start Up Corporation PowerPoint Template

Launching a startup? Then this is a great template to use for a leadership presentation. It's minimalist yet colorful and will get attention.

19. Business Pitch Deck PowerPoint Template

This pitch deck template has an attractive and unusual design. It's a great example of a PowerPoint presentation on leadership for you to follow.

20. Investor Business PowerPoint Template

This leadership presentation PPT template uses serif fonts to achieve a crisp and formal look. At the same time, the minimalist design keeps it looking modern and attractive.

21. Cute Confetti

If fun is one of your leadership qualities, this PPT download is the way to go. The mixture of confetti and pastel keeps it cheerful.

22. Concentric Blue

This PowerPoint theme has a modern design and blue color scheme. It includes 25 slides, as well as icons and a world map.

23. Medical Illustrated

Here's a different kind of free leadership PPT presentation theme. This one is intended for medical presentations and the slides include relevant illustrations. 

24. Bassett

This is a well-designed theme for your next leadership PowerPoint presentation. It includes a variety of slide designs. Edit it using either PowerPoint or Google Slides. 

This is a professional theme, perfect for your next leadership presentation. It includes a range of slide designs. Edit it in either PowerPoint or Google Slides.

How to Quickly Make Great Leadership PowerPoint Presentations

Once you've downloaded your free leadership templates, the next step is to customize them to meet your needs. Here are some tips to get you started. I'll be using the premium  Hexagon PowerPoint template . 

Let's get started:

1. Edit Your Slide Title and Subtitles

I'm going to use the title slide for this. Open the presentation and go to the title slide. Double-click to select the slide title and replace it with your chosen text. Follow the same procedure to edit subtitles.

2. Add Text to Slides

Use a similar procedure to edit body text. Double-click within a text box to select all the text, then replace it by typing your own. You can also paste in pre-prepared text. 

3. Add or Resize Images

Click the onscreen image placeholder to import an image from your computer. You can also resize any image by grabbing the handles of the image placeholder and dragging them till you get the size you want.

4. Remove Unwanted Elements

On any slide, click to select an image or text box you want to remove. Then use the Delete key on your keyboard to remove it. 

5. Remove Extra Slides

At the end of the customization process, there may be a few slides you don't need. Select these in PowerPoint's slide navigator and use the Cut command to remove them.

5 Tips for a More Effective Leadership Presentation

You need your leadership PPT to engage your audience. Here are some tips to help you create a great leadership presentation:

1. Use Minimal Design

When making your leadership PPT presentation it's important to keep the information on slide minimal. You want your audience to focus on you and not be reading the slide. Having a minimal design also works because the design doesn’t make the slide overcrowded. An overcrowded slide can cause the audience to be distracted.

2. Choose the Right Font

Using the right font in your leadership PPT is important. You want the font to match the theme of your leadership PPT. You also need your font to be easily read by everyone who may see your presentation. Some fancy fonts can be hard to read.

To learn more about which fonts work well in presentations, study this tutorial:

3. Use Infographics and Graphs

Infographics are a great tool to use in your leadership presentation. Infographics use graphics to show data and other information. Infographics are also a great way to engage your audience and help them to retain information. 

4. Align Your Objects

Whether you’re creating your own leadership presentation or customizing a template, make sure objects and text are aligned. If text and objects aren’t aligned, it can look unprofessional and sloppy.

This tutorial will show you how to align objects:

5. Use High Quality Visuals

There are many types of visuals such as:

• infographics

If you've got these elements in your leadership PPT it's important that that they're high quality. If your visuals are low quality, it can look unprofessional or like you don't care.

Envato Elements is a good source for high quality images and infographics . They also have video templates that you can customize and add to your presentation. 

5 Leadership Presentation Design Trends for 2024

If you're giving a leadership PPT presentation, you want it to be up to date. A boring and dated look could make a bad impression.

Here are some popular leadership presentation design trends:

1. Muted Colors

Previously bright vibrant colors were on trend, but now muted colors are taking over. Muted colors are more calming and give an authentic and natural feel. Muted colors work well with both light and dark font making it easier to design your slides.

2. Geometric Shapes

Geometric shapes in the design of leadership presentations is the newest trend. Geometric shapes give a nostalgic and retro feel to your presentation. Geometric shapes also make fun and unique backgrounds.

 3. Animated Slides

Animated slides keeps your audience’s attention on your leadership presentation. Adding animation to a slide can make information and that slide more exciting. Animated slides are impressive and will impress your audience.

4. Alternate Between Color Slides and White Slides

Alternating colors on the slides keeps them visually interesting for the audience. You could use your company brand colors and alternate between them to reenforce your brand recognition. The color change between slides could also signal a topic change in your presentation.

5. Gradient Colors

A gradient color pattern is where one color gradually fades into another color. Gradient colors are a great way to add interest to your slides without going over the top. Gradient colors can be used as the background of your slides or for  objects on the slide.

Discover More Awesome Microsoft PowerPoint Template Designs

We've shared some attractive templates with you, paid and free. To see even more, check out the articles below:

Learn More About Making Great PowerPoint Presentations in 2024

To learn more about creating leadership PowerPoint presentations, read our in-depth PowerPoint tutorial guide. Or check out the tutorials below:

Common Microsoft PowerPoint Questions Answered (FAQs)

Whether you're just starting with Microsoft PowerPoint or have been using it a while, it's normal to have some questions. Here are common questions answered about Microsoft PowerPoint:

1. What's the Difference Between Object Animations and Animated Transitions?

Object animations are objects such as text or shapes going in motion on a slide. Animated transitions are animations that play when you move from one side to the next. To learn how to add animation to your leadership slides in PowerPoint, study this tutorial: 

2. Can I Reduce My PowerPoint File Size?

Do you need to send your leadership PPT presentation to your coworkers but are worried that it won’t fit in an email? Don’t worry. You can reduce the file size. For information about how to reduce your PowerPoint file size down check out this tutorial: 

3. How Do I Share a Leadership PPT Presentation in a Zoom meeting?

Figuring out a new software or learning how to use the software in a new way can be tricky. These days, learning how to give a presentation over Zoom is really useful knowledge to have. Here's a tutorial to help you out: 

4. How Do I Make a Chart or Graph for My Leadership PPT?

Charts and graphs can be great tools to show data in your presentation. Seeing charts and graphs engages your audience more than a list of numbers. Here's a tutorial on how to make charts and graphs in PowerPoint: 

5. How Do I Make the Leadership Slides in my PowerPoint More Interesting?

Having a boring leadership PPT presentation can mean that your presentation is forgettable. Interesting slides keep your audience engaged throughout your presentation. And they make it more memorable. Here are some tips on how to make your presentation design more interesting: 

Create Your Next Leadership PowerPoint Presentation Today

You've seen some appealing PowerPoint templates for leadership presentations, including some free leadership PowerPoint templates. As you decide which templates to use, remember that premium templates offer some advantages over free templates on the web. 

Check out the leadership PowerPoint templates available from Envato Elements. You can also try leadership PowerPoint templates on GraphicRiver. It offers dozens of leadership presentation PPT slides for you to try. 

Why not create your leadership PowerPoint presentation today? Download your favorite leadership PPT template and get started.

Editorial Note : This post has been updated with contributions from Sarah Joy . Sarah is a freelance instructor for Envato Tuts+.

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Leadership Conference

It seems that you like this template, leadership conference presentation, premium google slides theme, powerpoint template, and canva presentation template.

How do you know if you are a good leader? That’s the subject of your next leadership conference, and this template is here to help you find all the right questions that attendees should ask themselves. Help them figure out what kind of leaders they are and what they can improve about their leadership. Pointers are already given in these 35 slides, just add your own content and you’re ready to go! Editing the graphs and diagrams is super easy and you’ll be done in no time. Download the template for Google Slides or PowerPoint and help others become the best leaders they can be!

Features of this template

• 100% editable and easy to modify
• 35 different slides to impress your audience
• Contains easy-to-edit graphics such as graphs, maps, tables, timelines and mockups
• Includes 500+ icons and Flaticon’s extension for customizing your slides
• Designed to be used in Google Slides, Canva, and Microsoft PowerPoint
• 16:9 widescreen format suitable for all types of screens
• Includes information about fonts, colors, and credits of the resources used

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Leadership Team Meeting Template

This meeting agenda helps leaders make decisions.

• Or download as:

Walkthrough

What is the goal of this meeting.

This is one of the most important meetings of any senior leader’s weeks. It’s a dedicated time to bring together the leaders of every major function of your business. With all of these individuals in the room, the goal of this meeting should be to make decisions, solve problems, align cross-functionally, and build empathy across the organization.

Why have it weekly?

With 52 weeks in a year, weekly meetings offer senior leaders 52 chances to correct the ship. Doing these meetings on a weekly cadence also ensures that your leadership team can get into a productive rhythm where you can discuss and solve any issues before they become major problems that can derail the entire organization.

Leadership team meeting template walk-through:

1. personal update (5 min).

This is a time to discuss something personal and non-business related. Doing this helps build better relationships within your senior leadership team by finding commonalities between your leaders. Building great relationships amongst senior leaders goes a long way when it comes to addressing any misunderstandings or friction between teams, especially those which have a history of being pitted against one-another (i.e. sales and marketing).

Although it may seem like a waste of time, discussing personal updates makes it easier to build empathy amongst the team. Whether it’s talking about hobbies like gardening, or bonding over family activities to do with kids, this is an important item to have on the agenda.

2. Metrics (20 min)

This is where you’ll learn more about whether or not the ship needs to be corrected. With a lot of metrics to cover, it’s important that you narrow down your metrics and focus on the 3-7 most important metrics and discuss them every single week. This will allow you to get a better sense of progress (or lack thereof). The number of metrics you pick will ultimately depend on how you’ve structured your organization and how many leaders are in the meeting. So, if you have one leader representing the sales arm of your company, decide on one metric that they will share every week (i.e. opportunities won), and have them explain why it went up or down. Also have them discuss any quick highlights or major projects coming up that they expect will move this number (up or down). Do this with every leader who’s part of the meeting.

3. Wins and insights (5 min)

Alternate each week between customer wins and insights and employee ones.

Customer wins and insights

• What are customers saying about your product or service?
• How can you use those insights in your marketing collateral or sales pitches?
• Are there areas of the product that need improving?
• Are customers requesting the same feature or reporting the same bug through your support channels?

Use this time to pinpoint any major wins to celebrate or insights to action on as a team.

Employee wins and insights

Take the time to recognize the achievements of the people within the organization. Did someone on the support team turn a really upset customer into a brand advocate? Highlight that. When you're able to recognize employee wins across the organization it will help promote more cross-functional recognition to occur. This acts as a great engagement tool for your company.

It's an incredible feeling for any employee to know that their manager not only recognizes their achievements but that they're sharing it with others in the company who also recognize great work.

4. Messages to share (5 min)

For many senior leaders, there are a lot of disagreements that tend to occur within the room and that’s normal. Use this time to determine what important information you’d like to communicate to the entire company, that way you’re able to put up a unified front. When sharing these messages with the entire team, think about things like:

• What’s the most important goal for the company and how are you tracking against that goal?
• How the SLT feel about the current state of the business
• Important information about your upcoming retreat

There’s a lot you can share with the team, but make sure that you’re being as transparent as possible so that you continue to build trust with the entire organization.

5. Hot seat (15 min)

Every week, select a new leader to be put in the hot seat for the meeting. For example, one week you can have your CMO on the hot seat and the following week, it will be your VP, Engineering. Whoever is on the hot seat will prepare a presentation about their function, this can be structured in many ways, including presenting:

• What work has been done between this presentation and the last time they presented
• What work has been done in the last 30 days. (Did they hit goals? Why or why not?)
• A test run of their board meeting presentation

Spend about 10 minutes on the presentation and 5 on sharing feedback. Are there any major roadblocks that were presented that another team can step in and help unblock? Having the hot seat means that every department will have better visibility into what others are working towards, any major blockers and get good visibility into each department. It also offers up a great opportunity for leaders to critique one another’s strategy to make sure the entire team is always aligned and working towards the same collective goals.

6. Issues (10 min)

This item is an easy segway from the hot seat. If any issues have been identified, whether through the hot seat or other things that have come up during the week, this time should be used to address the issues and the best ways to solve them. Every meeting, aim to solve the most important and pressing issue and, if there’s time, move onto the next one.

For example, if there is a common complaint that support is receiving but not enough engineering resources to solve that problem immediately, decide as a team what the best way forward is for that week. Should engineering push back other feature release dates to fix this issue or should the support team continue to do their thing for another week? This is your dedicated time to discuss these things.

About this template

The goal of this cross-functional agenda is to share the necessary information so that leaders in their respective areas can make decisions.

Leadership Team Meeting FAQs

How long should a leadership team meeting be.

You should initially set your leadership team meetings for 1 hour with your team. If you prepare and share an agenda in advance you're likely to get through more faster.

How often should you have leadership team meetings?

Most leadership team meetings tend to occur weekly. As you go through a few iterations of them you may need to increase or decrease the frequency.

What should you discuss during a leadership team meeting?

6 great things to discuss in your Leadership Team Meeting:

• Personal update (5 min)
• Metrics (20 min)
• Wins and insights (5 min)
• Messages to share (5 min)
• Hot seat (15 min)
• Issues (10 min)

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Designing High-Value Leadership Meeting Agendas and Topics

A company's success depends heavily on the quality of its leadership’s decisions, and arriving at the best decisions often requires careful deliberation. These decisions, pivotal in steering the company towards the progress of the company’s goals or developing new objectives , are often the product of well-structured and thoughtfully conducted meetings. Leadership meetings, therefore, are not just gatherings but crucial platforms for strategic planning, leadership development , collaboration, and communication. The absence of such meetings or poorly conducted ones can lead to suboptimal outcomes, making the art of crafting impactful agendas and selecting relevant topics is important.

This guide aims to navigate you through the process of designing leadership meeting agendas that are not only productive but also result-oriented. From structuring a leadership meeting agenda to leveraging technology for better engagement and outcomes, we will explore various facets to ensure your leadership meetings contribute significantly to your organisation's success.

Structuring Leadership Meeting Agendas

A well-structured leadership meeting agenda is central to success. It serves as a roadmap, guiding the flow of the discussion and ensuring that the leadership team's collective efforts align with the executive team's vision for the company. The agenda is not merely a list of topics to be covered; it is a strategic tool that maximises the value of the time spent together.

The main components of a leadership meeting agenda are the meeting objectives, topics, and the timeframe allocated for each topic. Clearly defining the objectives at the outset sets the tone for the meeting and provides a clear sense of purpose. The topics should be carefully selected based on their relevance to the objectives and potential impact on the organisation. 

Assigning a specific time frame to each topic helps maintain focus, prevents unnecessary digressions, and ensures that all important matters receive adequate attention. Involving other meeting participants in creating an agenda is essential. Soliciting their thoughts and input before finalising the agenda promotes a sense of ownership and engagement. It also provides an opportunity to address any concerns or potential roadblocks in advance, allowing the actual meeting to focus on what is necessary to discuss.

Organising topics into distinct categories, such as updates for awareness, areas of improvement , decisions for action, and brainstorming for innovation, can significantly enhance the structure and flow of the meeting. This approach sets clear expectations for the type of engagement required from participants and helps maintain a dynamic and productive atmosphere throughout the session.

In addition to the main agenda items, it is wise to schedule brief intermissions, particularly after intensive discussions. These breaks serve as moments of respite, allowing ideas to settle and encouraging reflection. They are akin to the pauses between sentences, vital for maintaining energy and focus throughout the meeting.

Crafting a well-structured leadership meeting agenda requires careful consideration and planning. It involves a balance to address critical issues and allow sufficient time for meaningful discussion and decision-making.

Your personal 1:1 meetings hub

Create personalised meeting agendas and share notes with participants for deeper connections. Beam is your one-stop shop for organising and managing your 1:1s meetings.

Example of Leadership Meeting Agenda

An agenda structure should have a clear layout of the meeting objectives, topics of discussion, and the time allotted for each item. Here is a sample of a leadership meeting agenda:

9:00 - 9:10

Introduction and Welcome

9:10 - 9:30

Review of Last Meeting's Action Items

9:30 - 10:00

Departmental Updates

10:00 - 10:30

Strategic Planning Discussion

10:30 - 11:00

Open Forum for Q&A

11:00 - 11:10

Conclusion and Next Steps

This structure ensures a productive flow to the meeting and that all topics are discussed within an allotted time. ‍

Incorporating Technology in Leadership Meetings for Better Outcomes

Undoubtedly, technology for meetings has increased in recent years and helps facilitate leadership meetings, particularly in remote or hybrid work environments. For example, Beam's meeting tool can streamline meeting processes, from scheduling and agenda creation to note-taking and next steps. Other tools include:

• Real-time collaboration platforms: Use shared documents or virtual whiteboards to facilitate seamless teamwork—for example, Miro. 
• Interactive presentation software: Engage participants with polls, Q&A sessions, and other interactive elements.
• Video conferencing: Enable remote team members to actively participate in meetings, regardless of location. For Example, Google Meet, Zoom and Microsoft Teams.  ‍

Leveraging these tools effectively can enhance communication, improve accessibility, and ensure that meetings run smoothly, regardless of participants' locations.

Leadership meetings are the catalyst for transformative decision-making and organisational growth. By thoughtfully designing your meeting agendas, fostering a culture of collaboration, and leveraging the right tools and technologies, you can unlock the full potential of these gatherings.

The key to successful leadership meetings lies in preparation, engagement, and a relentless focus on outcomes. Embracing these best practices propels teams towards achieving their goals.

What is the optimal frequency of leadership meetings?

The optimal frequency of leadership meetings can vary depending on the organisation's size, industry, and specific needs. However, it is essential to balance meeting too frequently, which can lead to inefficiency and meeting fatigue, and not meeting often enough, resulting in communication gaps and delayed decision-making. Leadership meetings on a weekly or bi-weekly basis can be effective for most organisations. This allows for regular updates, timely decision-making, and the ability to address any pressing issues or opportunities. Ultimately, the frequency should be determined based on the team's workload, goals, and the complexity of the matters that need to be discussed.

How can leaders handle sensitive topics or conflicts effectively in meetings?

Fostering an environment of open communication and active listening, leaders should encourage constructive dialogue, empathise with all perspectives, and facilitate a collaborative problem-solving approach. Additionally, leaders should address issues promptly, provide clear expectations, and offer support and resources to resolve conflicts. Maintaining professionalism, confidentiality, and respect for all parties involved is crucial while navigating discussions on underperformance or departmental disputes.

How can leaders encourage participation from reserved team members?

To ensure active engagement from all team members during leadership meetings, especially when some may be reserved, leaders can employ strategies such as setting clear expectations, actively soliciting input from quieter members, fostering a supportive environment, encouraging diverse perspectives, and using inclusive communication techniques. These approaches help create an atmosphere where all team members feel valued and comfortable contributing to discussions.

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How to Make the Most of Executive Team Meetings

Well-structured C-suite meetings help executives better manage day-to-day operations, and also innovate and grow.

By Joost Spits and Marcia Blenko

• March 03, 2021

At a Glance

• Improving executive meetings starts with thinking through their purpose and intent.
• Executive priorities fall into two categories— running the business (operations) and changing the business (innovation)—and each calls for a distinct type of meeting.
• Using this framework, executives can design meetings that encourage the right conversations and support good decision making.

The first law of thermodynamics states that energy can’t be destroyed, yet most executives can point to meetings on their calendars that would seem to refute that rule. Meetings might look and feel a bit different these days—“you’re on mute!”—but they are still the primary forum for executives, live or virtually, to share important information, collaborate, gather input, monitor results, and make decisions.

When working well, meetings can be a highly efficient and effective forum for robust discussion and debate, an opportunity for executives to align on future action, commit to it, and hold one another accountable. Taken together they build an integrated operating rhythm that becomes the heartbeat of the organization.

Executives spend a lot of time in meetings, and far more goes into planning and preparing for them. On average, senior executives devote more than two days every week to meetings of three or more colleagues, and 15% of an organization’s collective time is spent in meetings, Bain research has found. When our colleagues looked into the ripple effect of a single regular senior review meeting, they found that something on the order of 300,000 additional hours were put into its planning and preparation over the course of the year, the equivalent of roughly 150 full-time employees. Research has found a connection between meeting behavior and market share, and between innovation and employment stability. It has also found that workers’ feelings about meetings correlate with general job satisfaction.

When executives talk about “fixing meetings,” they often mean meeting hygiene—things like the agenda, who participates, their roles, meeting norms, and materials. All should fit the focus and goals of the meeting, and simple changes can make a big difference. One company instituted a policy that everyone must complete the background-reading package ahead of executive meetings, and started halting meetings if the reading hadn’t been done to have the group read together. Other changes included instituting a strict “start on time, finish on time” rule, clarifying who has the final authority on specific decisions, and always leaving 15 minutes at the close of a meeting to cover any new topics. Altogether, executives reported the changes had made meetings much more productive.

Getting the most out of executive forums goes beyond improving hygiene, however. It requires distinguishing between two critical parts of the executive portfolio: operations (or running the business) and innovation (or changing the business) (see Figure 1).

“Run” and “change” the business efforts differ

Run-the-business meetings and change-the-business meetings.

Distinguishing between run and change the business efforts helps the executive team think through and align around their purpose and intent as a group. Often this leads to a realization that they need to focus more of their team time on changing the business. Yes, they still need to monitor operations and remove roadblocks, but they also need to delegate run-the-business issues whenever possible. With this distinction in mind, executives can then begin to tailor their meetings’ structure and cadence to fit their focus, whether run the business or change the business.

Recognizing this, one technology company has begun to differentiate between change-the-business and run-the-business discussions, in the process establishing a different operating rhythm and making its leadership team more effective. They made these changes following a period of C-suite executive turnover. Starting fresh, the team was open to change.

They set the foundation by understanding their most critical decisions and who would be accountable for making them. There were almost 60 decisions identified as needing rigorous engagement by the executive leadership and 15 specific strategic priorities set—including diversity and succession planning, product strategy, and marketing.

The cornerstone of the new executive calendar became a weekly meeting of the CEO and the CEO’s direct reports. A brief business pulse check offered the opportunity to surface urgent run-the-business issues followed by the meeting’s primary focus: strategic, change-the-business issues. This included everything from product launches to acquisition decisions and entering new markets. Longer quarterly business reviews offered the opportunity to delve deeper on operational performance issues and their root causes, and determine the right corrective actions.

Executives liked the separation of run-the-business and change-the-business topics. The structure helped them spend more time on the right things and cultivate higher-quality discussions. They felt they made better decisions and made them faster.

Clearly, run-the-business and change-the-business meetings benefit from different designs. Run-the-business meetings focus on the best ways to execute everyday operations effectively and efficiently. This is where executives monitor performance, highlight warning signs, and correct course as needed. They focus on establishing repeatable procedures that create predictable outcomes.

A brief pulse check offered the opportunity to surface urgent run-the-business issues followed by the meeting’s primary focus: strategic, change-the-business issues.

A business performance review of the operational running of the business:

• Should focus on key outcomes and concentrate on those that are deviating meaningfully and materially from the original plan. (There is no greater waste of scarce leadership time than discussing things that are unfolding exactly as expected, or that have a minimal impact on the business, yet this is what many monthly and quarterly reviews are all about.)
• Should aim to surface the root causes of the issue and then decide how to correct course. 
• May warrant shorter, more frequent “pulse checks” rather than lengthy, holistic reviews.

Change-the-business meetings, on the other hand, focus on innovation, capturing business opportunities, and creating competitive advantage. They concentrate on determining future direction and how to pivot as priorities shift, and they differ from operational meetings in focus and approach: 

• They focus on sharing lessons learned and removing impediments to progress. 
• Leaders provide input and feedback, but support innovation by empowering their teams to test and learn, embracing an Agile leadership approach. (For more on this, read “ The Agile C-Suite ” in Harvard Business Review.)
• They often need to take place frequently—monthly, or even weekly—to keep pace with innovation and provide teams with timely coaching and guidance.

Each CEO and C-suite will take their own approach. Some companies separate operating and innovation meetings entirely. Others cover both in one gathering but separate the operational discussions from those focused on strategy and innovation. Keeping them distinct helps participants adopt the mindset and behavior suited to the issue at hand. Consider the example of the executive committee at a consumer products company. The group has long met two days out of the month to cover essential topics, but recently began splitting that time. One day they focus on current “run the business” topics. The other they spend working on the future of business, thinking about new opportunities, the capabilities they need to build, and the right strategy to pursue. They regularly invite outside speakers to their growth day. When they launched a transformation program, this model ensured that executives kept abreast of the more than 15 strategic growth, cost, and culture initiatives they were tackling, but they also continued to spend at least a day a month as a team steeped in the details of how the business was performing day in, day out.

Moving forward

Whatever its industry, maturity, and current health, any executive team wants to ensure they are working on the right topics in the right ways. Are they spending enough of their time together on changing the business? How can they keep a finger on the pulse of operations in the most efficient manner? Do their meetings match the different needs of running and changing the business?

A good place to start is with a periodic review of each meeting on the calendar. Do their agendas match the executive team’s proper focus? Where are run- and change-the-business topics converging, and should they be separated? Additional questions flow from that, including whether the right people are attending, and if the cadence is right. Ongoing attention to good meeting hygiene is important, too.

It’s worth the effort. Well-designed meetings encourage the conversations and mindset that lead to better decisions. Rather than destroying energy, these meetings focus and feed it. 

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