Meetings

From UKRag Guides (wiki)

The original of this document was produced by Routy

Contents 1 Purpose 2 Recommendations 3 Attendance 3.1 Chairman 3.2 Secretary 3.3 Other Members 3.4 Quorum 4 Writing Things Down 4.1 Agenda 4.2 Minutes 4.3 Brief 5 Pitfalls 5.1 Indecision 5.2 Sloppy Practice 5.3 Confrontation

Purpose

Effective meetings within your Rag are for your benefit, so it's up to you what you want them to achieve. Typically meetings are there to:

• Make decisions on what events to run
• Tell new people what Rag or an event is all about
• Assign responsibilities or find people jobs/roles that they can and are willing to do.
• Talk about how well/badly an event has gone
• See the reaction of new ideas
• Decide which charities to support

Most meetings are a combination of these things, but it is never a good idea to try and feature all of these things in a single meeting. Essentially, meetings allow a flow of ideas through your Rag, at a time when everyone involved is invited. This should prevent accusations of back-stabbing, as any decision or comment made in a meeting can be heard by everyone there and will be recorded in the meeting Minutes.

Meetings also allow people to contribute and be included in the decision making process. This will help prevent your Rag turning into a clique or dictatorship, or stagnating through a lack of decisiveness. After a vote has been taken, an action can be made that says who is responsible for carrying out what the committee has agreed upon and under what conditions they can act.

Recommendations

Make sure meetings are held regularly in some pattern, ie every week, fortnight or month on day X at time Y and place Z, this means folk are more likely to attend. Make sure people are aware of this pattern.

No-one likes long meetings. Meetings should be planned for no longer than one hour maxiumum, unless the person chairing the meeting is brilliant enough to announce a break in the meeting and then have all the members return afterwards. Rag meetings work best away from distractions, so having a formal meeting in a pub makes things very difficult, with background noise and drinking ever present.

If possible, book a room in your union where you are not in danger of being booted out after an hour. The most important part of a meeting is frequently at the end.

Make sure the room is comfortable, where everyone can sit comfortably, see and hear each other, there's no point holding a meeting in a room if there is a soundcheck or band rehersal going on next door.

Make sure you are not going to be interupted, for example people should silence phones, and the door to the room should be shut preferably with a sign saying meeting in progress on the door.

If you can't get a room in the union try, the university, or chaplaincy.

Ensure that the meeting is scheduled with enough time to allow people to arrive and sort themselves out, conversely remind people that meeting starts at means you start at, not faff around gossiping, getting drinks or going to the loo.

The size of your meeting is important, if the groups is larger than about a dozen you run the risk of ineffective communication between the group members. Make sure that you have teams for large projects one of whom reports to or is on a executive committee.

Behaviour, everyone should be aware of their responsibliites for each meeting, how to act in the meeting, and should not just read the agenda before hand but research anything that gives them concern, talk to those running a specific project or go dig out some of your own info. That way the purpose of the meeting does not get sidetracked.

After the meeting everyone should go to the pub together, that way you can sort out informally any contextual issues that have arisen in the meeting, you can also discuss things less formally in an atmosphere that may create better understanding, cause less conflict and still throw up new ideas. This will also make your next meeting more effective and build understanding between members, it is also a great way to include newer members.

Attendance

There are several people you need at each and every meeting to make the most of your time together

Chairman

The Chair is the person in charge of the meeting and usually also the person in charge of your Rag. Without a Chair, your meeting will generally decend into babble and achieve very little. As Chairperson, you get to dictate who gets to speak, what the topic is and when the meeting begins and ends. the duties of the Chair are:

• Making sure only one person is speaking at a time
• Covering the topics put forward in the agenda
• Holding votes
• Announcing decisions
• Resolving disputes
• Keeping discussion relevant and on topic
• Declaring the beginning and end of the meeting, as well as the time of the next meeting</p>

Secretary

The Secretary is the person in charge of recording your meetings and keeping things organised. They will write down what is being said through the meeting and can alert the Chair to discussions that are going around in circles. It is their job to:

• Write the minutes of the meeting
• Distribute the minutes, agenda and brief
• Help with voting proceedures
• Make sure important members know where and when your meetings are
• Speak for members that cannot attend the meeting
• Book a suitable room for the meeting

Other Members

While it isn't neccessary to have everyone there for each meeting (especially if the minutes are any good), it can be helpful to have a few regulars there, such as your finance, collections and up coming events officer.

Be wary of having greater than 12 people at a weekly meeting because it can be very intimidating and usually results in only a handful of members contributing to the meeting.

Quorum

A meeting can only make decisions when quorate, which is the minimum number of people required by the group's constitution. Generally only official senior-level meetings and Annual General Meetings require quoracy (your Student Union will provide you with information on what meetings you have to have a quoracy for, if any) but it can be good practise to agree a set quorum for your committee meetings if not covered by your Union, to ensure you have enough members to reach a well thought-out decision.

Remember if you aren't quorate you can't make decisions, but you can still discuss things.

Writing Things Down

Having things written down is primairily the job of your secretary, though reading them is the job of everyone in attendance. Frequently very important things are said in meetings and then forgotten because they weren't written during the meeting, or time is wasted by telling people items they could have read beforehand. In decending order, these are the three items that are needed for each meeting:

1. Agenda
2. Minutes
3. Brief

Agenda

Your agenda should let members have an idea of what they will be talking about in the meeting, so that they can have a think about it before hand. This should be distributed to all members at least a 2 working days before the meeting, so that they can prepare for the meeting. An example would be finding out more about specific agenda points should they need to so that they are able to contribute to discussions more effectively.

If your agenda contains an event or project proposal to be discussed or decided on then you should distribute copies of the proposal with the agenda. It may take more time to do this beforehand but it will mean the meeting moves along quicker and doesn't get bogged down as often.

Minutes

Minutes are the recordings of what happens during the meeting, who was there, what was said, decisions made and votes cast. By reading the meeting minutes anyone should be able to gather what has happened at a meeting without being there themselves.

Disagreements of who volunteered to do what and how can be resolved by checking the meeting minutes. Since minutes are used for proof of what has been said, they should be validated by the committee at the next meeting. This simply involves the Chair asking if anyone has any problems with the previous minutes at the beginning of each new meeting.

Accuracy is vitally important, as if something bad happens in an event, the organiser can prove that they had the permission of the entire committee and won't be hauled over the coals by the Student's Union.

Some unions will require Rag committees to regularly submit meeting minutes for scrutiny.

Minutes should be distributed to committee members with the agenda for the next meeting, that way they can read them and raise any matters effectively at the meeting.

Brief

While being overlooked at most meetings, a brief can save a lot of time and result in your meetings being a lot more short and sweet. This gets distributed with the agenda and is a summary of where various projects are up to, written by the people who are leading the projects themselves. This allows people to have a better idea of what has been going on in the past weeks and months before the project is discussed in the meeting. Meetings are a time for ideas and feedback, not just for keeping people up-to-date on the latest news.

Pitfalls

There are stacks of reasons why Rag meetings can be amazingly dull, unproductive or just decend into anarchy. Here are ust a few things to look out for.

Indecision

Being careful about important decisions is a good idea, avoiding them is a very bad idea:

Meeting

A gathering where people talk about the same thing around in circles until someone gets too bored/ fustrated.

The best way to avoid this is:

1. The Chair controls the meeting effectively, making sure everyone can contribute and that decisions are made by all present.
2. Topics are only discussed for an alloted period of time after that you make a decision on what information you have in front of you.

If the alloted time expires or you reach an impasse then you:

1. Vote by show of hands or secret ballot based in the information you have in front of you.
2. Assign some one to find out more information on the matter and report back for the next meeting.

Sloppy Practice

Just because your union lets you be shoddy doesn't mean you should, many often operate on the "give someone enough rope" premise, which means when it does go pear-shaped and you have no proof of what you planned or how you agreed it then you'll just get shut down. You'll never get a good return on minimum effort, if as a group you set yourself good standards and meet them it will follow through into other activities that you do.

Confrontation

In many meetings, decisions can be taken by your local ""(wo)man with the loudest voice"". While this can be difficult to avoid, especially when most people in the meeting are freshers, it can mean that a lot of your members will be too timid to voice their opinions. In important matters, it can be useful to have a secret voting system, especially when voting for controversial committee appointments.

Try not to have meetings about someone or their project/event when they're not present at the meeting, because they will probably resent it. It is also hard to get the full story without them being there.