Your club rules or constitution often provides a lot of guidance on how your club should conduct their committee meetings. Few committees take the time to review their club rules or constitution at the start of the therefore don’t follow the procedures often defined, many times to their detriment.
One area clubs often find challenging is the process of considering and voting on a recommendation or motion before a committee.
The ideal position for committees is for any vote to be unanimous. This means that each committee member agrees on the same outcome and are therefore much more likely to unite behind the recommendation or motion.
Clubs often struggle which the process of considering a motion or recommendation, especially when there are divided opinions within the committee on the topic. Without some structure these types of discussions can often get heated and out of control, lasting much longer than required.
Again these discussions can be made a lot more productive and usually a lot shorter by following a few simple rules:
- The person making the recommendation or proposing a motion should speak to the meeting as to the reasons supporting it.
- The meeting Chairperson should then invite anybody to speak against the recommendation or motion.
- After the person speaking against the motion has finished the meeting chair will then ask for anybody else wanting to speak for the motion.
- People would then alternate between those for and those against the motion until everybody who wishes to table their position has done so. Ideally each additional person only raising new information or perspectives and not repeating information or opinions already presented. The purpose of the discussion is to ensure the meeting is properly informed about all aspects and perspectives of the issue at hand. Constantly having the same point repeated creates no value and uses valuable time. An effective chairperson will reduce this type of discussion.
- Each person will generally only get the opportunity to speak once with the exception of the person who made the original recommendation or motion who gets the final opportunity to respond to any issues raised by those speaking against the recommendation or motion.
- At this point the meeting chair will call for a vote in a manner which is defined in the club rules.
Of course it is not always realistic or practical that people will only speak once and then not speak again throughout the debate, especially if additional information is raised but again an effective meeting Chairperson has to control the discussion strongly.
They must not allow the discussions to go around in circles or become a personal debate between a small number of committee members. The purpose of the debate is to ensure that all information is tabled so that committee members when voting can vote from an informed and considered position. The Chairperson should allow the discussions to continue in a constructive manner until they believe that all the information has been presented and everybody attending the meeting has had a fair opportunity to present their perspective.
It is important to recognise that not everybody needs to contribute to the discussion, especially if they agree with what has been said previously. Nothing creates more frustration that a meeting where the same information is repeated over and over again before a vote. (See it is annoying – we have raised this point FOUR times on this page alone).
Conversely nothing is more destructive than people not being given every opportunity to raise their point, especially the less vocal committee members.
The meeting Chairperson plays a vital role in ensuring the correct balance of discussion is undertaken prior to a vote being called.
