It will be primarily at meetings that you will exercise your leadership, letting the group know of your expectations.
Meetings serve important maintenance functions.
Meetings allow for commitment to be made to the group’s decision.
Meetings Tasks
Prepare for the Meeting (consider the time and the setting (size of the room, length of the meeting, the order of the agenda, and the seating arrangement)).
Agenda may be the most useful tool in affecting the outcome of the meeting. A written agenda helps to speed up a meeting and to facilitate the discussion. Agenda should be distributed prior to the meeting but not so early that people will lose it. Label the agenda items – for information, for discussion, for decision. Next to each item, list the person who submitted it and put the expected amount of time each item should take.
Facilitate the Meeting (Two activities are going on simultaneously during meetings – one activity centers around the content, the other activity centers around the process. Most experts believe that your time is best spent on process issues. (If there’s a healthy discussion that people are readily contributing to, the meeting can be deemed a success from the process point of view. If there is an overall mood of silence or reluctance to talk, be wary! But don’t be afraid of group silence, sometimes there is no immediate reaction after you pose a question).
Lead the discussion using a SOAP format:
Define the problem (Chief complaint)
Review the background information (Subjective)
Decide where the group is now with the problem (Objective)
Restate the problem (Assessment)
Come up with a plan of action (Treatment plan)
Remember that group members play different roles: Task roles, Process roles, and Nonfunctional roles. Task roles: giving information, seeking information, summarizing, proposing solutions. Process roles: encouraging, starting group feeling, following, humor. Nonfunctional roles: withdrawal, playing, being aggressive, obstructing.
Be aware of correct parliamentary procedure (e.g. Robert’s rule of order).
End the Meeting (Try to end each meeting with a unifying topic. Ensure that the meeting ends on a positive note by summarizing the decisions and discussions of the meeting).
