Getting started with meetings

Leapsome allows you to run structured meetings between team members and managers (or any other colleague). This feature integrates neatly with other modules of the Leapsome platform but can also be used stand-alone (here's an article on how to disable other modules). You can use Leapsome's meeting modules for in-person meetings or digital meetings.

If you have an in-person meeting, we recommend having at least one person have an open computer with an internet connection to track conversations, any open tasks, and action items that might come up. 

If you have a digital meeting, we recommend one participant (typically meeting owner) to share their screen so that the screen-sharer can take notes, make any updates or add comments and assign owners to action items. (If you're using private talking points, and presenting, you may not want to show the private content to all participants. In 'Actions', you can tick off 'Show private content', and no private talking points will be shown during screen sharing. Please note: This setting does not hide the 'Private Notes' on the right side of your meeting.)

This article points you to all relevant resources if you want to set up 1:1, team or OKR check-in meetings for the first time:

• Meetings (also known as 'check-ins', 'jour fixe' or '1:1s') are a powerful management tool to create alignment on priorities, strengthen communication ties in teams and enable better coaching. They are widely used by top managers in many successful companies and are an essential part of the toolkit of modern management.
• Meetings are obviously not limited to manager-report relationships: As it makes a lot of sense to align across hierarchies and teams, you could and should also have these meetings in other settings. Since we believe they are really important, we've built a simple yet powerful feature to make them more effective.
• Simply click on the 'Actions' button, 'Create a new meeting' on the 'Meetings' tab. In the window that opens, you can decide on the title of your meeting, the participants as well as the timing. 

• It is important to keep in mind that the meeting frequency is translated to a fixed number of days per period (e.g week, month, year) and then just added to the current date. A month is always mapped to 28 days = 4 weeks. Example: If you decide to meet every two months and your first meeting takes place on Monday, March 28, your next meeting will be scheduled on Monday, May 23.

• Start adding talking points: Talking points are things that you want to talk about during your meeting. For example, you could add things like 'Discuss the budget', 'Plan a team event' or 'Review marketing material'. You can define whether you want a talking point to be private (visible only to you) or shared (visible to you and the person you're meeting with) - sharing talking points allows you to create alignment even before the meeting. Obviously, you can edit, delete or re-arrange these at any time.   

• Adding files to talking points: Access relevant documents needed during a meeting by uploading files (screenshots, PDFs, etc.) to your talking points. You can also easily access text editor options in the comment area of each talking point. 
  
• Tagging meeting participants: You can also tag meeting participants in relevant talking points, comments on talking points, as well as in the shared notes section of the meeting. This will send a notification to the participant/s visible in the 'Notifications' section of their home dashboard, which will direct them to the relevant point in the meeting. Additionally, we have implemented a rich-text editor when double-clicking on notes taken in meetings, allowing you to customize the text, and embed any URLs.

• Customize your meeting structure: Sometimes you want extra structure for your meetings - you can therefore add sections or questions (such as "What are current roadblocks?") to guide your meetings. This can either be done for each meeting individually under 'Settings', or - if you are an admin - in the Meetings module via 'Meeting templates' for the entire company. Admins can define one or more meeting templates that can be shared with all employees. Also, managers (or anyone else) can define their own templates, but these cannot be shared.
  To change the structure within a meeting, click the 'Settings' button, scroll down to 'Sections of your meeting' and add your sections / questions. Your changes will be auto-saved.

• Move points around via drag and drop: To reorder talking points or move them between different sections, you can drag them around with your mouse. 
• You can search talking points and notes in the meeting module. Hidden (private) talking points are not shown as a result.
• Schedule (optional) reminders: Similarly, you can let us know when and how often you meet that colleague. Enabling this option will trigger email reminders including the meeting agenda (based on your talking points) to you and your colleague. We highly recommend to enable this to have more structured meetings.
• Activate the calendar integration for Outlook, Google or Apple calendar to be able to see your current meetings and related talking points directly in your calendar. This will also allow you to join connected Zoom links for a meeting in the Leapsome platform.
• During the meeting, you can mark talking points as complete while you discuss them by ticking off the corresponding checkboxes. This will help you keep track of the agenda during the meeting.
• Recurring meetings will be automatically archived two days after the meeting. You can already add new talking points before the meeting will be archived. Simply enable the 'carry unchecked talking points to the next meeting' setting and have them ready for your next meeting.

Continue by watching our User Tutorial on how to set up meetings.