Before booking a meeting, it’s important to be clear on your goals for the discussion. If you’re going to request someone’s time to meet with you, it’s important to be thoughtful about what you want to achieve.
Check here for how to set SMART goals, which are different from meeting goals. Your SMART goals for your advocacy guide your overall strategy. In one meeting, you can drive that overall goal forward a little bit, but you probably won’t reach your overall goals with this one conversation.
Once you have your goals for the meeting identified, you can sketch out a rough plan or agenda for the meeting. Having a meeting agenda, or meeting plan, means you can let the person you’re meeting with know what you expect to discuss in advance of the meeting. Giving them a summary of what to expect in the meeting is a good faith gesture which allows the person you are meeting with to prepare ahead of time.
Here is a general example of how effective advocacy meeting agendas work:
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Educate them on your perspective of the problem: If the decision-maker doesn’t already know about this issue, you may need to start with some education. This is your opportunity to tell your story, help them understand your perspective, and show that there is an issue that needs to be addressed.
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Agree on a common definition of the problem: The next step is to make sure that you and the decision-maker have a shared understanding of the problem. They might acknowledge there is an issue but have an entirely different perspective of what that issue is. Before you can move on to solutions, you need to work together to agree on what the problem is.
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Present potential solutions: Instead of just focusing on the problems, it’s important that you are also prepared with some different options for how the problem can be solved. Once you both agree on the problem, you can share your ideas for what actions can be taken to fix it.
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Work together to identify the best solution: After you’ve presented your ideas for solutions, the decision-maker might have some ideas to add as well. Together, try to come to an agreement on which solution you will work toward.
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Agree on next steps: Finally, you can work together on the next steps. Identify what action(s) will be taken and by who. Set a timeline for when you will follow up to check on progress and continue the conversation.
If it’s not a formal meeting, you don’t necessarily need to share an agenda with the other meeting participants, but you may want to keep a rough timeline in your head so that you stay on track during the conversation.
Here’s what a draft agenda for a 30-minute meeting could look like:
- 5 minutes: Introductions
- 5 minutes: Present my perspective on the issue
- 10 minutes: Discussion of the issue
- 10 minutes: Present my potential solutions
- 10 minutes: Discussion of solutions and agreement on next steps
Keep in mind that depending on your advocacy goal, one meeting may not be enough. You might need to have one conversation just to discuss the issue and come to agreement that there is a problem, and then a follow-up meeting (or meetings) to discuss solutions. This gives you a general starting point for any conversation with a decision-maker.
