You will run a real meeting from agenda to notes and review the result a week later.
Reading about meetings changes very little on its own. The first time you send an outcome-based agenda, name the decider out loud and read back actions before people leave, you'll feel slightly awkward, and you'll also notice the meeting ends differently. This project is where you do it for real, once, from the agenda to a review a week later.
Plan on about 45 minutes of your own time spread across two weeks, plus the meeting itself.
Run one real meeting from start to finish using the tools from this module. Write the purpose and agenda, send it ahead, chair it, close it with read-back actions, send notes the same day, and check a week later how many actions got done. You finish with four documents: the agenda, the notes, a list of who you brought in by name, and a short review.
The meeting doesn't have to be important. A small one you control fully is a better first attempt than a big one where a director will take over. Good candidates are a weekly team check-in, a project kick-off, a planning session for a team event, or a meeting with two other teams to agree a handover. It should have at least three other people and at least one decision to make, otherwise there's nothing to close.
Step 1 is choosing the meeting and getting permission. Pick a meeting you already own, or one you can offer to run in the next two weeks. Not a chair yet? Ask your manager: "Could I run Thursday's planning meeting? I'm working on chairing skills and I'd like to try an agenda and notes format." Most managers say yes, because it saves them work.
Before going further, check whether the meeting is needed at all, using the questions from lesson 6.1, Decide if this needs to be a meeting at all. If it could be an email, that's a useful finding, but pick another meeting for this project.
Write a one-sentence purpose that describes a result. Then write each item as an outcome or a question, with a time and an owner, decisions first. Lesson 6.2, Write an agenda people can prepare for, has the format.
Send it with any reading at least one working day before. Note who replied, who asked questions and who opened the attachments if your tools show that. This is your baseline for whether people prepared.
Here's a worked example. Daryl, a 29-year-old engineer at a utilities company, chose his team's monthly safety review, which usually ran 90 minutes and ended with no clear changes. His purpose sentence: "Decide which two of last month's near-miss reports need a procedure change, and who writes each change." Three items, 45 minutes, sent on Tuesday for a Thursday meeting with the two reports attached.
Open with the purpose, the outcomes and who decides if people disagree. Bring in at least one quiet person or one remote attendee by name with a specific question. Keep a parking lot that the people online can see as well as the room. Lesson 6.3, Chair the room and the screen, covers each move.
Five minutes before the end, stop the discussion and read back each decision and action, with an owner and a date. Ask if anything is wrong.
Daryl opened with: "We're here to pick two near-miss reports for procedure changes and agree who writes them. Siva has the final call as safety lead." He asked Ming, who had never spoken at the review, about the loading bay report she had filed, and what she said settled the first decision within a few minutes. A side debate about new gloves went into the parking lot. The meeting ended at 42 minutes.
Straight after the meeting, while it's fresh, jot down for your review who you brought in, what got parked and where things drifted.
Send notes the same day, using the decisions, actions, parked items format from lesson 6.4, Close with actions, owners and dates. Keep them short enough to read on a phone.
Then put a reminder in your calendar for one week later. When it comes up, check each action. Was it done, started, or not touched? With a follow-up meeting booked, open it with this check. Without one, message each owner: "Checking in on the vendor quote from last Thursday, how's it going?"
Daryl's notes went out at 5pm the same day. A week later, three of his four actions were done. The fourth, a revised loading bay procedure, was waiting on a contractor's input, so he agreed a new date with its owner.
A finished project has four pieces, kept together in one document so you can reuse them in the course's final project:
The agenda you sent, with the purpose sentence and outcome-phrased items. The notes you sent, with decisions, actions, owners, dates and parked items. A line on who you brought in by name and how they responded. A review of about 150 words: how many actions were completed after a week, what went better than your usual meetings, and the one thing you'd change next time.
Daryl's review noted that the meeting was half as long as usual and produced two procedure changes, where the previous three reviews had produced none. His one change for next time was to send the reports two days ahead instead of one, because two people admitted reading them on the way in. All of Daryl's details are an example. Your numbers will be your own, and a meeting that went badly still makes a useful review, as long as you can say why.
Run the meeting, send the notes, and after a week write a short review of actions completed and what you would change.
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