Transforming meetings and briefings into drivers of continuous learning

This resource provides guidance around how effective time management can support engagement and continuous learning.

Meetings and briefings as drivers of continuous learning

To build a learning culture and strengthen capability, it helps to see broad aspects of our work as chances to learn. Teams regularly learn, connect and communicate through team briefings and meetings. This resource explains how running meetings effectively can improve engagement and support continuous learning.

Why learning through meetings is important 

Using meetings as a deliberate way to learn: 

• boosts team capability
• makes learning part of daily work
• encourages collaboration
• provides better outcomes over time.

Benefits

• Encourages knowledge sharing and collective problem-solving within teams.
• Reinforces continuous learning as part of everyday work, not a separate activity.
• Improves engagement by making meetings more interactive and purposeful.
• Supports reflection and learning from successes and challenges in real time.
• Builds team capability and alignment by regularly sharing insights and updates

Deliver key messages with clarity

Supervisors and managers are often given summary points of key messages and asked to share them with employees. Some preparation is necessary to effectively deliver these messages. Here are guidelines to follow: 

• Familiarise yourself with each message so you can deliver these in your own words, keeping the original intent.
• To help employees retain the information, give only 3 to 5 key messages.
• Add context by discussing why the information is relevant, what value it adds to the team and by sharing narratives from your own experience.
• Avoid vague and unclear language. Find a way to state the messages simply. 
• Allow 2-way discussion to ensure employees understand. Address employee concerns and interests.

Leading a team briefing 

When you are leading a team briefing, your role is to encourage dialogue, create understanding and gain commitment. Here are some tips to achieve this:

1. Encourage discussion

 

2. Build understanding

 

3. Gain responsibility and commitment

 

What to discuss at the next team briefing

Team briefings can become repetitive and lack value, here are some topics employees are nearly always interested in hearing about: 

• What are the top priorities? 
• What has gone well, what has challenged us and where do we need support?
• What’s being done to promote career and professional development? 
• What’s the reason for a recent change and how will it impact on us? 
• How is the current work we’re undertaking align to other parts of the agency? 
• What new roles are being added or filled? 
• What feedback have we received since the last briefing?

You may also consider asking your team what they are interested in learning more about.

Leading a team meeting

You can aim to enhance team meetings, uplifting them into a repeatable learn–work–learn loop by adding clear learning objectives, simple rituals, and lightweight artefacts that improve over time. This builds on existing guidance for leading briefings (discussion → understanding → commitment). Key features of a learning focused meeting include:

1. Start with a clear learning objective

 

2. Design for before, during and after

 

3. Psychological Safety

 

4. Provide roles that support continuous learning

 

5. Simple learning rituals to include

 

6. Accessibility and inclusion

 

7. Capture and reuse learning

 

8. Real-time feedback loops

 

9. Indicators of continuous learning

Meetings consistently conclude with clear next steps, ensuring shared understanding and accountability. Learning artefacts are created and reused to capture and reinforce knowledge, and team members report regularly learning from their peers, strengthening collective capability and continuous improvement.

Meeting tools and techniques

Start-Stop-Continue

Quick retrospective to decide what to start, what to stop and what to continue doing

1-2-3-4-All (progressive group thinking)

Think alone then discuss in pairs, then discuss in groups of 4. Follow this by sharing with everyone to surface the best ideas

The ‘1-2-4-All model’ by Liberating Structure (developed by Henri Lipmanowicz and Keith McCandless), available under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike Licence 4.0 at 1-2-4-All — Liberating Structures.

Anonymous feedback tools

Use digital boards or forms to collect input on sensitive topics without attribution.

Visual collaboration platforms

Use shared whiteboards to sketch, cluster, and prioritise ideas asynchronously

Journey mapping

Map the steps of a service or workflow from the user’s perspective to located pain points and opportunities

Case study reviews

Examine a real case or incident to capture lessons, patterns, and next actions.

Common meeting and briefing pitfalls

Several practices can undermine meaningful learning and improvement if not addressed. These include:

• Blame is placed on individuals instead of improving systems. 
• Learning conversations are mixed with performance management.
• Reflection is skipped due to time pressures. 
• Valuable feedback is ignored.
• Teams are overloaded with too many action items and poor follow through.
• Compliance is prioritised over genuine improvement, limiting learning impact.

Meeting and briefing success indications

The following are indicators on successfully learning meetings: 

• Increased participation and engagement, with attendees actively contributing rather than passively listening.
• Stronger involvement leading to more innovative ideas and faster adaptation to emerging challenges. 
• Improved team performance over time. 
• High completion rates of meeting action items, indicating effective information retention. 
• Tangible improvements in operational and performance metrics, such as reduced customer service errors.
• Greater staff confidence and increased ability to solve problems independently without needing further support.

Sample meeting agenda