Tag Archives: Committee Meetings

Abolish “death by meeting”!

A while back I posted a series of articles on making your committee meetings more effective. These were aimed at the committee chair or meeting facilitator to help improve the meeting experience for everyone concerned.

Harvard Business Review had a short “management tip” article recently on ways for participants to, as they put it, save the meeting that’s going nowhere. It’s a very short article but it can get you to thinking, especially if you’re stuck in such a meeting.

My solution to these issues  is prevention, and that lies in the hands of the committee chair: Continue reading

Committee meetings: Staying organized

Organization is essential to running a successful committee meeting. Nothing says that you are unprepared like not having the agenda, reports, documents of past actions, troop or pack policies, and other essential items.

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The People Issues: Problem characters

Have you ever been in a committee meeting and had the experience where two participants are like oil and water? They absolutely refuse to agree on common ground or see the other’s point. Other times it’s like you are Sisyphus, and instead of things rolling along, it’s like rolling a boulder uphill. What’s worse is when you are one of them, and you are supposed to be in charge of the meeting,

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The People Issues: Relationship guidelines

Have you ever studied the characteristics of high-performance teams? In Wood Badge, and in many corporate teambuilding programs, you’ve learned about how groups of people interact. Most likely you remember the terms Forming, Storming, Norming and Performing, and when you hear those words you probably even visualize the four-square diagram sometimes used to illustrate the process. Well, in order to become a performing team, you need to get past the forming and storming to reach a phase of norming.

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Parliamentary procedures

In this article we’ll touch on the mechanics of meetings. Known as parliamentary procedure, it’s a set of rules by which business is conducted. Any large assembly, such as Parliament (where the name originates), Congress, or a corporate board meeting, follows a set process. A standard parliamentary procedure has been codified in Robert’s Rules of Order, first published by US Army General Henry Robert in the 1800s, revised many times since, and in nearly universal use in deliberative bodies around the world. Continue reading