Leads meetings help teams stay in the loop and ensure silos don’t form, but is the meeting you’re running today really the best use of your time?

If you’re spending lots of time tracking down updates from your team to prepare for it, or if the meeting itself tends to revolve around status reports instead of discussion,it may be time to rethink your team leads meeting. The Range meeting tool and Check-ins can take some of the work off your plate.

Check-ins help managers keep track of what’s happening, which means you can cut the frequency or length of your meeting and feel more prepared when you get there.

When you facilitate a meeting in Range, it’s easy to follow practices that keep the meeting on track, like setting recurring agenda topics and assigning action items. You’ll never forget to send out meeting notes because the meeting tool does it for you. (Over email, Slack, and Range so everyone has visibility.) Plus, those action items from your meeting? They’ll automatically get added to your Check-in.

In this article, we’ll cover how to:

1. Evaluate your current leads meeting
2. Move status updates to Check-ins
3. Set up your agenda and facilitate your discussion
4. Connect Slack to see notes and #tags in your channel

1. Evaluate your current leads meeting

Start by taking a look at the agenda of your current leads meeting, breaking it apart into status updates versus discussion topics.

Meetings that get bogged down by rote status updates aren’t a good use of anyone’s time. Using Range Check-ins, you’ll be able to move those updates out of your meetings to free up more time for valuable group discussion.

2. Move status updates to Check-ins

Check-ins allow you to move status updates out of meetings so you can focus on what matters. They help busy managers stay in the know without micromanaging and keep everyone informed, so that leads meetings can happen less frequently and, when they do, the time spent in them can be used more effectively.

The following practices can help your team get the most out of Check-ins and make them more informative for your leads meeting:

• Use custom prompts to collect all the right information: You can tailor the information you collect from your team using custom Check-in prompts so you’ll have exactly what you need to stay informed and shape meaningful discussion when you meet with other leads and managers.
• Set a schedule to stay on top of updates: Setting a Check-in schedule encourages teammates to share regular updates in a timely manner. To prep for your leads meeting, try setting a schedule that ensures you’ll have everything you need from your team well before it’s time to meet.
• Use #tags to track projects, workstreams, and goals: When you have a lot in flight, #tags make it easy to follow along with specific projects, find related work, and keep track of progress.
• Set up teams to keep track of work across the org: Teams in Range help you keep track of who’s working on what. You can see progress towards OKRs, review everyone’s updates in one place, and track team trends over time. If other teams use Check-ins too, it’s easy to see what’s going on across whole departments.

3. Set up your agenda and facilitate discussion using the meeting tool

When you facilitate your meeting through Range, it’s easier for everyone to contribute to and follow along with a recurring agenda, assign action items, and share notes immediately after.

You’ll want to start by adding the meeting in Range and creating an agenda. Go to Meetings and select “New Meeting” in the upper right. After you click “Create Meeting” you’ll see a screen where you can add attendees, link to calendar, and build your agenda.

You can set recurring topics, which will automatically be copied to every leads meeting going forward, and one-time topics for things you only plan to cover that week.

When it’s time to hold the meeting, just go to the leads meeting you created in Range and click “Start meeting” at the bottom of the screen.

The main part of the screen will show whatever topic you’re currently on, and the side panel will show the full agenda. You can click “Next topic” to move through items and add notes and action items in Range as you go.

When you finish the meeting, click “End meeting”. You’ll see your meeting notes organized for you on the next screen — click “Share notes” to share them over email and Slack to keep team members informed.

4. Connect Slack to see notes and #tags in your channel

You can connect Range to your leads team Slack channel to read meeting notes and seamlessly follow along with relevant updates.

First, make sure you’ve got the Range app for Slack set up. Then, go to your leads team channel in Slack to subscribe to receive updates from teams and tags you’d like to follow.

Just type: /range subscriptions and select a team or: /range subscribe #[tag] to subscribe to a tag.

Try it out

Getting a group of busy managers together in one room (or Zoom) can be challenging enough — without having to worry about the meeting running smoothly.

Range can help you make the most out of your time together, facilitate with ease, and give you back more time to support your teams.

To get started, try adding your leads meeting to Range and building your agenda for the next meeting.