The Glossary of Meeting Terms describes terminology and acronyms related to meetings and all the activities we do in those meetings. We've gathered this information from far and wide, so enjoy! And hey — if you have corrections or additions, please don't hesitate to contact us!
Showing 19 matches (clear all filters)
A
Accessible software is designed to work for people who experience disabilities, such as visual, hearing, motor, or cognitive impairments, and who may access software using an assistive device. Lucid Meetings strives to deliver accessible software for meeting management and productivity.
Accountability is the acknowledgment of responsibility for getting things done and then reporting back to the group about results. Leaders encourage accountability in meetings by:
Ensuring participants actively engage and contribute to meeting results, creating joint ownership for meeting outcomes. Assigning clear action items with a named owner and due date. Sending out meeting notes so everyone can see and remember the commitments made during the meeting. Following up after the... read moreAction items describe a discrete task that must be accomplished, usually by a single individual. Action items have a limited scope that can typically be accomplished in one to two weeks. The standard format for action items assigned during meetings documents Who, What, and When.
Who: ideally one person who takes responsibility for making sure the task gets done. What: a short description of the task. Descriptions that start with a verb work best. For example, "Review the project plan... read moreAn Action Review Meeting is used by teams to learn from experience and use what they've learned to improve future work.
You can find an introduction to Action Review Meetings in Chapter 20 of our book, Where the Action Is. You may also want to visit the Learn More link, below, for resources to help you plan, run, and troubleshoot the specific meetings your team needs.
Examples Project and Agile Retrospectives... read moreActivity modeling is a method used to illustrate how a system works. In an activity modeling workshop, the group works together to outline a sequence of steps and the component pieces involved in creating a behavior or result. Groups use activity models to visually represent the sequence of events that trigger a behavior. There are many types of activity models known by names specific to the type of process or system that they describe, such as Value Stream Maps, Architecture System Maps (...
read moreAn affinity diagram organizes a large number of ideas into related sets. Groups often create an affinity diagram as the second step in a brainstorming session. After everyone adds their ideas, the team looks at the ideas and organizes them, either into pre-determined categories or, more commonly, into clusters of like items which the team then labels.
An After-Action Review lays out a structured de-briefing process for analyzing an event. Participants discuss what happened, why it happened, and what can be done better in the future. After-Action Reviews were originally popularized by the military as a technique used to quickly learn from encounters and adapt to emerging situations. After-Action Reviews are now common in both the public and private sector as a way for teams to learn from the results of recently completed projects and...
read moreThe agenda is the version of the meeting plan shared with meeting attendees. Sharing a meeting's agenda in advance helps attendees come prepared. During the meeting, an agenda can be used to help keep the conversation moving forward and on time.
The simplest agendas are formatted as a short bulleted list. More complicated agendas may include detailed descriptions, including the expected outcomes for each item, and reference material such as reports and proposals for review prior to...
read moreAgile is a time boxed, iterative approach to work designed to deliver results incrementally from the start of the project, instead of trying to deliver everything all at once at the end. The agile methodology relies on a series of related meetings—called "ceremonies"—to keep the work coordinated and encourage continuous improvement.
AGM stands for Annual General Meeting: A meeting of the general membership of an organization. AGMs are held by membership associations and large companies with shareholders according to the rules spelled out in the organization's bylaws or charter.
Offering appreciations, or acknowledgments, is a popular and positive addition to the opening or close of a meeting. Leaders who introduce appreciations into their regular team meetings find these benefits.
Team members feel better about each other.Increased trust, an increased sense of personal value and worth, mutual caring: all the benefits you might expect when we remember to acknowledge and thank each other for the good we do. Fewer "meetings after the meeting".
Some... read more
Appreciative Inquiry techniques seek to build on the positive outcomes, successes, and highlights in a situation instead of focusing on how to counteract negative forces. Practitioners recognize that people are naturally predisposed to focus on things which are broken or inadequate, and they seek to combat this bias by intentionally pursuing possibilities that build on strengths. Appreciate Inquiry techniques are often used in problem solving and strategy meetings.
Argument Mapping is a technique for graphically breaking down and showing the reasoning (or argument) behind a statement. In a meeting, groups can use Argument Mapping to explore the underlying assumptions behind a request and uncover other possible explanations for why they face the challenge before them.
Asynchronous communication happens when someone sends a message and then the recipients choose when to reply. There is usually (but not always) a time delay between the original message and any responses.
With synchronous (aka "real-time") communication, the expectations regarding turn-taking are shared across cultures and languages. One person asks a question, and then the next person answers it right away.
For asynchronous communication, there are no fixed...
read moreAsynchronous meetings are discussions about a specific topic that are held over a defined period of time, just like other meetings, but where the participants do not necessarily communicate in real-time.
Instead, people participate in the meeting by sharing ideas via recorded voice, video, text, and other methods of asynchronous communication. Participants add their contributions any time before the defined deadline.
Thanks to Charles Kergaravat at...
read moreAttendance is the act of being present (at a meeting or event, etc.). Attendance is often tracked and reported in meeting records. For some meetings, a predetermined percentage of participants (called a quorum) must be in attendance before the meeting can start. In some organizations, meeting attendance is required to qualify for additional privileges such as voting rights or the right to participate in special events.
Automated review is a feature in Lucid Meetings that allows meeting participants to view a compilation of action items or notes together in a meeting. For example, a facilitator could set up the last agenda item to include a Smart List—which would automatically collect and display all action items from that meeting—for participants to review together and reach agreement before the meeting is adjourned.
