6 Sample Meeting Agenda Examples [+Free Templates]

Are you looking for the best examples and templates of well-organized, effective meeting agendas? Good.

The more prepared you are for your next meeting, the better the meeting is going to go. Meetings with agendas tend to finish earlier than meetings without them.

Plus, good meeting agendas promote engagement and participation in the meeting.

Our research found that agenda usage was a meeting practice that correlates with being happier and more productive overall.

We'll start with some general tips for better agendas, but you can also skip immediately to the templates below.

Meeting Agenda Templates (Contents):

1. Simple Meeting
2. Team Meeting
3. Business Meeting
4. Weekly Leadership Meeting
5. Formal Meeting Minutes
6. Board Meeting

Meetings without agendas are a significant expense

Meetings are one of your larger expenses, ranging from hundreds to thousands of dollars of people's time and focus. Taking up so much time and energy, it makes sense to take a couple of minutes to make sure that everyone’s time is well spent.

When you multiply the hours and salaries of every employee at every meeting, you will find that meetings are one of your biggest expenses.

Hour-long meetings typically cost between $300 and $3,000."
—From the book: Vital Meetings

A thoughtful agenda helps everyone show up to the meeting knowing:

1. ‍What the goal of the meeting is
2. What will be discussed
3. What decision-making needs to take place

With a solid meeting agenda, everyone can stay focused.

No matter how you organize your meeting agendas and notes, you can use these examples. It doesn’t matter whether you put your meeting agenda in your calendar invite, in a Google doc, in Word, or you use a meeting notes hub like Fellow — although every approach to organizing meeting agendas and notes has pros and cons.

What matters most, though, is that you have a meeting agenda at all. As many as two-thirds of all meetings don’t have one.

Plan the agenda for your next meeting, and you’re already doing better than the majority of meeting organizers.

Tips for writing your agenda

Across many different types of meetings — whether they are weekly staff meetings, committee meetings, project check-ins, board meetings, or sales calls — there are common items you will see listed on agendas over and over. 

You might think of these as the building blocks for your agenda. Depending on what type of meeting you’re having, choose what agenda items are appropriate. 

What types of agenda items are there?

Agenda topics usually fall into one of three categories:

1. Informational. An update or presentation.
2. Discussion Topics. A conversation to understand an issue and reach a decision.
3. Action Items. And update and discussion on the status of a task.
   

⭐ PRO TIP: Be careful with how much time you spend on informational agenda items. Too many updates and long presentations may not only be boring, but they’re also not always necessary. 

Instead, try sharing information beforehand, like in a Google Doc, slide deck, or even a Loom video. Save your precious meeting time for activities that involve everyone, like discussions.

What should an agenda include?

Here are some of the key components of an agenda:

• Welcome & introductions
• Agenda overview
• Presentation
• Status Updates
• Discussion
• Decision
• Question & Answer (Q&A)
• Action Items (initially left blank)

None of these basic agenda items are helpful without being applied specifically to your meeting. That is where seeing meeting agenda examples across a variety of topics will help you write your own agendas. 

Below are sample meeting agendas. We’ve filled them in to give you a sense of how the meeting agenda should look. Downloading the template will give you a blank version.

If you’re just looking for templates to copy, skip this part and head straight to our gallery of 80+ meeting agenda templates that are free to download as Google Docs and Word Docs. (These agenda templates also come standard in your free Fellow account.)

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Just remember, however you decide to download these meeting agenda templates, put them to use. A meeting agenda is only going to lead to a better meeting if you use it.

How do you create a simple agenda?

The best agenda for a meeting is often a simple one. A simple agenda answers two questions for all attendees:

1. Why am I at this meeting?
2. What do I need to do in the meeting?

Here are three tips to that end.

1. State the meeting’s purpose.

‍If the meeting’s goal isn’t already made clear by the meeting’s title, put it at the top of the agenda.

Don't write: Pricing roll-out.
Instead write: Coordinate pricing roll-out

2. Use verbs.

List out generally what needs to happen, but as actions, not nouns.

Don't write: 2021 hiring
Instead write: Determine budget and timeframe for 2021 hiring

3. Add bullet points.

Instead of including paragraphs of information in your meeting agenda, use bullet points to list out any areas of discussion or updates that need to be taken separately.

Don't write: Sales, Marketing, Engineering, and Product
Instead write:

• Sales
• Marketing
• Engineering
• Product

Simple meeting agenda template

Following the tips above, you can use this example of a simple meeting agenda for various meetings, especially short, casual meetings that don’t have many items up for discussion or decision.

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Tips for team meeting agendas

You meet with your team regularly. Outside of meetings, you also have healthy team communication habits.

Because you meet more with your team than anyone, small improvements in your meetings can result in big gains. One of the best ways to introduce those improvements is via the meeting agenda.

Always state the meeting's purpose or goal

We talked about this above, but a common mistake on meeting agendas is not explaining why the meeting exists. We might have good meeting habits with customers and partners, but we can get lax when with our own team meetings.

It’s time to show your team members some respect. Every meeting should have a clear goal so that everyone who shows up knows why they showed up. (Turns out, people appreciate knowing why somebody invited them to a meeting!)

Here's a short video covering the dos and don'ts of stating your meeting's purpose.

Team meeting agenda example

The sample agenda is for a general team meeting. Often these kinds of team meetings are recurring meetings that happen once a week.

⭐ PRO TIP: If you have a huge decision to make, don’t put it first on your agenda.

Logic might tell you to start with the biggest, most-important discussion at every meeting...But, as with a good workout, it’s good to warm up.

If you have some smaller decisions to make, it can be helpful to start with them. This gets everyone engaged in the discussion while decisions are easy and the stakes are lower."
—From the book: Vital Meetings

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Business meeting agenda sample

Here’s a sample meeting agenda that could cover topics from various people and departments. This flexible agenda template leaves room for team members to add their own agenda items to the list.

Notice something about the same agenda here though: Updates are limited to two minutes per person. Keep the updates short. If someone at the meeting needs more detail, they can ask when the meeting is over.

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Weekly leadership meeting sample agenda

Leadership teams should meet on a regular basis in a meeting where the biggest issues impacting a team or company are brought to the surface. This is less formal than a board meeting, but still highly strategic. Here’s an example agenda for this kind of executive meeting.

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Agenda templates for formal meetings

Formal meeting agenda template

For more formal meetings that follow the traditional structure, make sure to use a more formal template. 

Types of formal meetings include:

• Formal business meetings 
• Committee meetings
• Non-profit organization meetings

(By the way, the formal meeting structure usually follows a framework called Robert’s Rules of Order.)

This agenda template helps you organize the meeting, run it according to the proper procedures, as well as prepare meeting minutes in the process. 

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If you need additional guidance, see the best way to take meeting minutes.

Board meeting agenda template

Before you skip down to the board meeting template below, take heed to some important advice.

‍Tomasz Tunguz, managing director at Redpoint Ventures, says the key to a successful board meeting isn’t the meeting itself—it’s the preparation.

The most important aspect of [a board meeting] is the meeting memo. This way you don't spend half the meeting briefing one another.”
—Tomasz Tunguz, Redpoint Ventures

Here is his advice on how to create and circulate your board memo:

1. Each team leader writes their own section, no more than 1-2 pages summarizing the state of the business. Introduction, things going well, challenges, plans for the future, update on items from last time. These sections can contain graphs and charts
2. The CEO summarizes and provides a narrative at the beginning of the document
3. The VP Finance attaches the financial statements and key reports
4. The team circulates the narrative with the board ahead of time. Board members comment and ask questions as they read. The team clarifies points and provides analysis where necessary

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How to set and share a meeting agenda using Fellow

If this article has inspired you to set a solid agenda for your next meeting, you can use Fellow to send and share your agenda, and auto-organize your meeting notes afterward.

All you need to do is set up a free Fellow account by connecting your work calendar.

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Setting your meeting agenda in Fellow

To auto-add a template from this article, you’ll want to scroll back to that template and click “Get this free template in Fellow"

After a super-quick account setup, Fellow pulls in your meetings into a calendar-like view. Find the meeting you want to set an agenda for.

Click the meeting, and then in the notes area, click on the sample agenda template of your choice. The template content will appear in your agenda. Fill in the text with more information.

Sharing your meeting agenda using Fellow

Fellow offers multiple ways to share an agenda including:

• Send via email
• Send via Slack or Microsoft Teams
• Send via Zapier
• Export as a Google Doc, Notion page, or Confluence doc
• Copy as a view only public link.

Additionally, links to your Fellow notes will be automatically included in your calendar event descriptions. You can easily edit this setting in "User Settings" and selecting "Calendars".

Conclusion: Putting your sample meeting agenda to use

To recap, for a productive meeting agenda:

1. State the meeting’s purpose. Make sure everyone knows why they’re invited.
2. Use verbs in your agenda. What are you trying to accomplish?‍
3. Add bullet points. They encourage you to keep things brief and organized.

Now that you have seen various sample meeting agendas, it’s time to go out and create your own. Be sure to get a head start.

Grab whatever templates you might need from our free agenda template library. You can use each sample agenda as a Google Doc, Word Doc, or add them to a free Fellow account.

This template library has all sorts of meeting agenda samples including templates for product team meetings, marketing, sales conversations, one-on-ones, and customer meetings too.

And if you want to learn how to run your meeting effectively, read this article on the ingredients of an effective meeting strategy.

FAQs about our sample meeting agenda templates

Are all these meeting agenda templates free to use in Fellow?

Yes, every single one of the sample meeting agendas on this page, as well as the 80+ in our template library are free to use and download.

While we highly recommend using these templates in Fellow, these templates can also be copy/pasted into a Google Doc or Word document.

How to save your finished meeting agenda as a PDF

Once you have customized your sample agenda to your liking, you may want to share the document. While a link is the most pragmatic way to share an agenda—it allows you to edit your meeting agenda after the fact—sometimes you need a PDF because you either want to print the agenda or attach it as a file in some way.

Save a meeting agenda as a PDF in Fellow

1. Click the three dots in the upper right hand corner of your stream. (This button is. next to the royal blue "Share button"
2. Select Print
3. In the Print Dialogue that opens, choose the Destination dropdown
4. Select “Save as PDF”
   

Save a meeting agenda as a PDF in Google Docs

1. Open the File menu
2. Click Download
3. Click PDF Document (.pdf) from the list of file formats
4. Locate your PDF file in the default folder for downloads on your device. Google Chrome users will also see the download appear in the download strip on the bottom of their screen
5. If you don't see your meeting agenda file right away, don't worry. It takes Google Docs a couple of seconds to turn the Google Doc into aPDF.
   

Save a meeting agenda as a PDF in Word

1. Click File.
2. Click Save As.
3. Click File Format near the bottom of the window.
4. Select PDF from the list of file formats.
5. Name your meeting agenda file, then click Export.

How to turn a meeting agenda template into meeting minutes

To take your meeting minutes, fill in the meeting agenda document with more information. 

Usually, this takes two to five bullet points under each agenda topic that summarizes key points and decisions.

Remember, meeting minutes should not be a verbatim accounting of everything that happened. They should highlight key information, decisions, and next steps. 

Usually, you’ll want to take these notes in real-time during the meeting but you can also complete them from memory after.

How do I create a meeting agenda in Excel?

Excel isn’t ideal software for meeting agenda templates. It’s difficult to format text in Excel so that it’s easy to read. You can’t even make bullet points in Excel!

Plus, all of Excel’s great features—sorting, functions, math—aren’t particularly helpful for agendas.

I strongly discourage you from using Excel to organize your meetings. If you need a chart or table in your meeting agenda, paste it into a regular doc or link to it.

Example - How do you start a meeting?

Use small talk to grab attention. I used to work with a sales leader who would start every meeting with a couple of minutes of small talk. His favorite topic was sports. One day he told me this wasn’t because he was such a huge fan.

Sales meetings can be tedious, but by discussing something more interesting, he could command the group’s attention, he would transition to the business at hand.

Jump straight into the agenda. Because you’ve set an agenda and shared it with all attendees, assume everyone knows what the meeting is about. You don’t need to repeat what is already there. When it's time for the meeting to start, go for it.

You might say something like, "Okay everyone. Thanks for coming. First in today's agenda is..."

What is the order of an agenda?

The order of an agenda is a prioritized list of what will be discussed and decided. Usually, the order should flow from the most important, largest topics, down to smaller issues.

What is an action item in a meeting?

An action item is a task that someone needs to complete outside of the meeting.

In your meeting notes or meeting minutes, note each action item:

1. State the action item using an action verb
2. Include the name or initials for who is responsible
3. Include a due date if you know one. For recurring meetings, the due date is often assumed to be the next meeting.