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Meetings & Workshops Patterns

Run meetings and workshops worth turning up to.

Methods for anyone who runs meetings or workshops, in person, remote or hybrid. The cards start by asking whether a meeting is needed at all, then cover designing the session, opening it, steering discussion, hearing quieter voices, workshop and large-group formats, reaching agreement and closing with clear actions. Final suits handle remote sessions and improving a team's whole meeting habit.

60 cards · 10 suits · 5 recipes · 3 missions

What's inside

• Question6Does this really need a meeting?
• Design6Is the outcome written down before you invite?
• Open6Does the room know why it's here?
• Steer6Can you keep the discussion on track?
• Balance6Are you hearing more than the loudest voices?
• Formats6Have you picked a structure that fits the group?
• Converge6Is it clear where everyone actually stands?
• Close6Will everyone leave knowing who does what?
• Remote & Hybrid6Can remote people take part as fully?
• Tune6Has your team audited its recurring meetings lately?

A few cards

Question

Meeting Or Message

Name the job first, then pick the channel that does it cheapest.

Open

Why We're Here

In the first minute, say what this is for, what we will leave with and how.

Formats

Troika Consulting

Two colleagues advise you while you sit with your back turned and simply listen.

One card in full

Close

Owner And Date

Every action gets one name, one verb and one date, read aloud before the room empties.

"We should look into that" is how good meetings die. Everyone assumes someone else will do it. An action with a single owner and a date is far harder to forget, and reading the list aloud is the cheapest check that it is right.

How to use it

1. As actions arise, write them in a visible list in the shape: owner, verb, object, date. "Priya drafts the rota proposal by Thursday 14th."
2. One owner per action. If two people share it, one of them is the owner and the other helps.
3. Start each action with a verb you can see done: send, draft, book, decide. Avoid "look into" and "consider".
4. Five minutes before the end, read the list aloud. Each owner says "yes" or adjusts the date.
5. Open the next meeting by checking it.

Example

A school staff meeting ends with seven actions read aloud. Two have no owner, and one is "think about exams". In two minutes the team assigns owners and rewrites the vague one as "Head of Year books an exams planning slot by Friday".

Watch out

• Assigning actions to people who aren't in the room. Ask them first, or make the owner someone present who will ask them.
• Too many actions. Ten undone actions teach the team that the list is decoration.

Send the list with Notes Within The Hour; record choices with a Decision Record.

Recipes

• An Hour With A Point: Decide whether it needs a meeting at all, then give it an outcome, questions, the right people and a short read, and send the notes before the hour is out.
• Half In, Half Out: Run a hybrid session so remote people are not second-class: open early, pair them with someone in the room, read the chat, prepare the board and write every breakout task down.
• Make The Call: Turn a wall of ideas into themes, a shortlist and one sentence the room has rated, then leave with a named person and a date.
• Meeting Detox: List every recurring meeting and its cost, let attendees decide what stays, pause the doubtful ones, shrink the defaults and give each survivor an owner.
• Quiet Voices First: Let everyone write before anyone talks, build ideas up in small groups, run the floor from a fair queue, redirect a dominant speaker kindly and check support with one show of hands.

Missions

• Earn the hour: from a calendar full of status calls nobody would defend to fewer, shorter meetings, each with a one-line outcome, the right people and actions with owners and dates.
• Hear the whole room: from the same three voices carrying every discussion to silent writing, structured rounds and agreement checks that show where everyone really stands.
• Close the loop on a group decision: from a discussion going round in circles to a named decider, an agreed rule, the real disagreement named, one choice with owners and a record everyone can point back to.

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