4 Tactics to Run More Effective Officer and Guild Leadership Meetings

I spend a large portion of my work day sitting in meetings. Some of them are face-to-face, in conference rooms, but many of them are virtual meetings of some stripe. The one thing both types of meetings have in common, when they are successful, is they are purpose-driven, and you leave them feeling as though you've gotten something accomplished and spent your time well. What's the dividing line between the productive meetings and the ones that feel like a time suck? Typically it boils down to having a consistent leader, and a solid agenda. Guild officer meetings can benefit from some of the same meeting tactics:

1. Elect a meeting leader. This doesn't have to be the Guild Leader, and in fact, it may be best if it's not since they typically already have a lot on their plate. You can have a rotating responsibility for leading the meetings or have one person take this on for a few months at a time. They key is that at the end of each meeting, it's clear who will be driving the next meeting. This person is tasked with keeping the team moving through the agenda in a timely manner, while also ensuring that everyone with a POV on a topic is given the floor to speak on it.
2. Have an agenda, and stick to it. No one wants to spend a few hours talking in circles or meeting when there isn't anything to discuss. Having a set agenda of topics, and reviewing it the day of your meeting, can ensure you don't burn out your leadership team with meeting more than you need to. It also keeps a lid on the time commitment. 
3. Post meeting notes with assigned To Dos. Things come up — and not everyone can attend each meeting. Having a designated note taker (often the person driving the meeting) post the key issues discussed, plus noting the decisions made or deferred, keeps all your officers on the same page.
4. Hold yourselves accountable. Kick off each meeting by reviewing the notes from the previous meeting, and obtain updates on the to do items, and reopen deferred items for discussion.

Drafting Your Standing Agenda

The most daunting piece of all this for many people is coming up with a standing agenda that is both structured enough to keep things moving along, while additionally providing enough flexibility to address the unexpected. Mostly it boils down to time — the last thing most of us want to do at the end of the day is to draft an agenda. But that's OK — steal some (or all) of these items for your own agenda:

Old Business

• Re-cap prior meeting's to do's
• Updates on progress or lack thereof
• Identify next steps if any

Review applications

• Decide if they are accepted or not
• Identify an officer to notify the applicant of the decision

Discuss guild promotions

• Officer promotions
• Class or specialty designation promotions (i.e. guild crafters, PvP ranks, etc.)

Raiding updates

• New content cleared
• Any hurdles to progression
• Evaluations of new raiders/trial raiders
• Raid leader feedback (2-way from the raid leader about their interactions with the raiding team and about the raid leader)

New business

• Issues that have been raised in the guild forums
• Issues or incidents that have happened in game
• Issues or incidents brought up privately to officers

Planning for the future

• Adapting to announced Blizzard changes
• Preparing for new content or changes as a result of patches/expansions
• Recognition of active guild members who might have potential for being promoted in the future to a leadership role

Clearly, every guild has its own personality and focus, so you'll likely have other items to add to your standing agenda, but this should give you and your officer team a good starting point for crafting your own guild leadership team meeting road map.