Meeting Management
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Meetings may not always be fun, but they are the main avenue of communication between members of your organization. Meetings are an opportunity to meet new people, learn more about the organization, contribute ideas and get involved in making things happen.

There are several ways to make meetings not only efficient, but fun! As your organization plans for meetings, discuss not only what you want to accomplish, but what you want members to gain from having attended the meeting.

Facilitating a Meeting

When conducting a meeting, the facilitator should guide group interactions so that the group members will:

• Accept and maintain various points of view
• Clearly communicate their own ideas so that others can understand them
• Disagree agreeably
• Listen intently and ask questions to ensure understanding
• Refrain from criticism, critique and defensiveness
• Accept feedback from meeting participants
• Discuss disagreements with others outside of the meeting if a solution cannot be found in the meeting.
  
  

Basics of Effective Meetings

In order to have effective meetings for your organization, please keep in mind the following:

• Personally involve members in the meeting
• Keep meetings to the point and on task
• Keep consistent meeting outlines
• Ask for feedback from members regarding the meetings so that they can remain effective
• Encourage others to listen
• Have fun!
  
  

Meeting Incentives

Truly dedicated and involved students come to the meetings for much more than the occasional free pizza. Other opportunities are much more important, so accentuate those!

• Dvelop a social opportunity before and after the meeting so that members can get to know each other better outside of the meeting time
• All members will feel like they are truly a part of something big when they take an active role in implementing ideas to benefit fellow students

Keeping People Involved

• Create committees to encourage individuals to get more involved with the direction of the organization.
• Implement ideas from committees and involve committee members in making them happen.
• Allow committees to generate ideas, not just implement ideas from the executive board