How to Make Association Meetings More Effective
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Running an effective meeting is more than sending out a notice that Association or RWA is to meet at a particular time and place. Actions that make meetings successful require management before, during, and after the meeting. If you neglect any one of these opportunities, your meetings will not bear the fruit as you desire. A well-run meeting can get the right people together to make decisions or to discuss some item of common interest. So, before you schedule a meeting and ask people to make the time commitment, do everything you can to make the meeting as effective as possible.
Tips for making association meetings more effective
An important aspect of running effective meetings is insisting that everyone respects the time allotted. To schedule and hold a meeting is expensive when you account for the time of the people attending. So, make efforts to determine that a meeting is the best opportunity to solve the problem, improve the process, or make an ongoing plan. Following are some useful tips to make your apartment owners association meeting more effective.
- Set goal for meeting: Set goal or objective for your meeting before you fix time and date for the meeting. One benefit of setting objectives for the meeting is to help you plan the meeting. The more concrete your meeting objectives, the more focused your agenda will be. These objectives or goals are the results you want to obtain by the end of the meeting. Also, make sure they can be achieved with available people, resources, and time.
- Agenda for Meeting: Everyone knows an agenda leads to an effective meeting. The creation of the agenda takes a little extra work, but they are a way to give structure to the meeting to make sure that the time is well spent and that your meeting objectives are met. Develop the agenda together with key participants in the meeting. Think of what overall outcome you want from the meeting and what activities need to occur to reach that outcome. Your agenda needs to include a brief description of the meeting objectives, a list of the topics to be covered and a list stating who will address each topic and for how long.
- Distribute Agenda: Provide all participants or association members with an agenda before the meeting starts. When you send the agenda, you should include the time, date and location of the meeting and any background information participants will need to know to hold an informed discussion on the meeting topic. Whatever the reason, it is important you get feedback from the meeting participants about your proposed agenda.
- Manage Time: The meeting should start on time, with some allowance for those that may be coming from another meeting. If the planned time on the agenda is getting out of hand, present it to the group and ask for their input as to a resolution. Avoid stories, jokes, and unrelated issues. This waste time, distract focus, and mislead others.
- Participation: Ask each group member to think of one possible solution to the problem to get everyone thinking about the meeting topic. Assigning a particular topic of discussion to various people is another great way to increase involvement and interest. Give all participants something to prepare for the meeting, and that meeting will take on a new significance.
- Take meeting minutes: Since the minutes will serve as an official record of what took place during the meeting, you must be very accurate. Any person who attends a meeting may be asked to do this. Get a list of committee members and make sure you know who is who. At the end of each agenda item, quickly summarize what was said, and ask people to confirm that that’s a fair summary. Then make notes regarding follow-up.
- Get feedback: Be sure to solicit feedback from meeting attendees on how the meeting went right for them — and how it went wrong. You can use a simple form to solicit feedback, or you can simply informally speak with attendees after the meeting to get their input. Always end meetings on time and attempt to end on a positive note. Clarify that meeting minutes and/or actions will be reported back to members in at most a week (this helps to keep momentum going).
