Being involved as a student leader in BASIC and now helping to start new BASIC groups in the Rochester area, I’ve sat through quite a few leadership meetings. Some of those meetings have been incredibly productive and others have been very frustrating. So, here are a few tips on how to make leadership meetings as productive as possible.
Have a written out agenda – Before the meeting figure out the 3 or 4 most important things to discuss. Write them out and bring copies for everyone so they can follow along and take notes. Sometimes it can be best to send an email out to student leaders ahead of time to tell them the 3 or 4 things so they can be thinking about them before the meeting.
Start on time – This goes for leadership meetings as well as your regular weekly meetings. People take advantage of meetings that always start late and consequently show up later and later each time. I know a pastor who took over a church that started half an hour late because over time people had started coming later and later each week.
Stay on topic – It’s very easy to get sidetracked and begin talking about other topics, especially if a side topic is related to the original thing you planned to discuss. I once attended a group’s leadership meeting in which extra topics came up so frequently that my head was spinning by the end. The worst thing was at the end they had made few decisions regarding the original things they brought up to discuss!
Decide what is worth doing (and what’s not) – Most times you can figure this out before it even makes it onto a meeting agenda. However, sometimes this will need to be determined after being thoroughly discussed by the whole group. This is when you can best utilize The Strategic Process that I talked about last week.
Be clear in delegating tasks – As soon as you have decided on a course of action figure out what tasks need to be done in order to execute everything. Next, make sure it is very clear who is going to be responsible for carrying out each of those tasks, give them a deadline, and make sure you answer any questions they may have about how to go about getting it done in a way that the group would be satisfied with. This is when the secretary of the group should be taking detailed notes.
As I’ve said before, it is really important to be holding frequent leadership meetings, especially at the beginning of semesters. I like to hold these meetings biweekly at first. It’s good to announce them during the regular meeting and make sure people know they are open to anyone interested in coming, not just the current student leaders. One of the major benefits to this is it is a great way to get people more involved in the group and as they begin to take ownership they may eventually step into leadership positions in the following years. Hopefully as you begin implementing these simple steps it will help you run more effective and productive leadership meetings.
One other thing to note is that there will be times when you should brainstorm as a group instead of having a set agenda for your meeting. The Propel: Leadership Summit that we hold in May is a great place to do brainstorming as a group together for the next school year and we give you time specifically for planning together with your group.