5 Strategies for Leading Better Team Meetings
How to make the most of your team’s time—and strengthen team culture while you're at it.
The average professional spends nearly 37% of their workday in meetings. Unfortunately, many people report that those meetings don’t use their time well.
In university advancement, where teams juggle donor visits, campaign planning, and cross-departmental collaboration, ineffective meetings can derail fundraising momentum and drain team energy when time could be better spent cultivating relationships.
Here’s the bright side: If you're leading a development or advancement team, you have a meaningful opportunity to design meetings that strengthen outcomes, build culture, and actually energize your team. With thoughtful planning and a little creativity, your meetings can become something people look forward to.
Here are five strategies to lead more purposeful and productive meetings:
1. Create a Clearly Designed Agenda
Start by clarifying the purpose of your meeting—for yourself and your attendees. Then design your agenda to reflect that intention. Make a list of all potential topics, and then ruthlessly prioritize based on relevance, time, and value to the group.
For each topic, include not just what you’ll discuss, but how: Are you brainstorming? Making a decision? Reviewing information? Aligning on next steps?
Adding one or two reflective questions under each topic to signal that the meeting is a space for dialogue, not reporting. For example, if you’re strategizing on next steps for a board of trustees meeting, include:
“What follow-ups are needed from our last board meeting?”
“What do we want trustees to feel, think, and do in our upcoming meeting?”
This approach helps participants prepare meaningfully and increases engagement in the room.
2. Manage Time Well
Block out time for each agenda item—and be realistic. Many leaders underestimate how long a meaningful conversation takes. For example, a discussion on budget allocations might deserve an hour, but you may only have 25 minutes. In that case, define what portion of the topic you can move forward today and what might require follow-up.
During the meeting, it’s a leader’s responsibility to curate discussion and intentionally guide the flow of conversation, but you don’t need to speak on every topic. This is a key leadership skill in higher ed advancement, where you want to encourage participation and ideas from your internal team members and you’re also navigating multiple stakeholders who often need airtime.
Most importantly: end the meeting on time. In the back-to-back meeting culture of higher education advancement, stewarding time well builds credibility and trust.
3. Invite Everyone to Contribute
Want to build a more inclusive workplace culture? Start with building more inclusive meetings.
Create space for participation in ways that suit different work styles. Some ideas:
Send the agenda in advance
Start a topic with 30 seconds of silent reflection
Use polls or chat tools to gather input
Ask questions like:
“What’s missing from this approach?”
“What else should we consider before moving forward?”
As a leader, your role is to lower the barrier to contribution. These small changes in facilitation can dramatically increase engagement, especially among introverts, newer team members, or people from historically marginalized backgrounds.
4. Build in Learning, Connection, and Collaboration
Many leaders wish they had more time for learning and celebration—but overlook the best opportunity: the time you’re already spending together.
Add space in your meeting agenda to:
Share a recent professional or team win
Discuss an article, podcast, or TED Talk
Reflect on progress toward shared goals
This signals that growth and recognition are shared values in your advancement team culture—not nice-to-haves. In fundraising teams where burnout can be high, these moments can renew your team’s sense of purpose and connection.
5. Clarify and Follow Through on Next Steps
A meeting without clear follow-up is a missed opportunity. Close meetings by:
Summarizing key takeaways
Naming what happens next (and who’s responsible)
Following through on anything you personally committed to
As a leader, how you close a meeting is as important as how you open it. Consider blocking 15 minutes after major meetings to send follow-ups or share resources while they’re still fresh. Small touches like this reinforce reliability—and help sustain your team’s momentum.
Better Meetings Build Better Advancement Cultures
When you ask people to commit their time, you’re asking for trust. Use that time to move work forward and foster the relationships that make the work possible.
Whether you’re leading a fundraising team, a cross-functional advancement team project, or a dean’s advisory board, well-run meetings are a form of leadership in action. Plan with intention, guide with care, and always keep the people at the heart of the process.
Ready to transform your advancement team culture? Discover how our leadership advisory services help development teams build stronger collaboration, improve communication, and accelerate fundraising success.
A version of this article was originally published on Fast Company: https://www.fastcompany.com/91210286/5-strategies-for-leading-better-meetings
Shanna A. Hocking is a nationally recognized expert in higher education fundraising and nonprofit leadership. She is the founder and CEO of Hocking Leadership, a strategic advisory firm that transforms university advancement teams and accelerates fundraising results, and author of One Bold Move a Day: Meaningful Actions to Fulfill Your Leadership and Career Potential.
