Chairing meetings: your complete guide

Read our top tips on how to chair a full board meeting – including how to prepare in advance, stick to time and keep things on track. Use our audit to evaluate how effective your meetings are.

Last reviewed on 31 July 2024
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Contents
  1. Top 3 dos and don'ts
  2. Before your meeting
  3. During the meeting 
  4. Evaluate your meetings 

Read our detailed guide below on how you can get the most out of meetings, and share our audit at the bottom with your board to find out where you can improve further. 

Get the agenda structure right A clear agenda sets the foundations for a successful meeting.  Your governance professional will put together the draft agenda and send it to you, usually a couple of weeks before the meeting. It'll normally be in the same format and you'll know exactly what to expect – but you need to make sure you're confident that it's the most efficient way of operating. A good agenda: Starts with the actions arising from the last meeting, or any committee meetings. You'll likely need an update on these actions before you can move forward, so it's good to tick these off first Then goes on to the most important items that require discussion. This makes it more likely that