Chairing a committee that’s going places is about agreeing actions that build momentum between meetings. As a Chair this involves the following three steps:
- Learn about your group
- Use learning to shape your asking and
- Firm up commitment at the end.
Learn about your group
What motivates the people in your group to be in the group? Look for signs in the meeting:
- What are they interested in?
- When do they contribute?
- What sparks their involvement?
- Ask for onboarding notes: Why did they get involved in the group?
- Take a look at their social channels:
- What do they reveal about interests and strengths?
Use learning to shape your asking
Invite contributions in a qualified way.
This might sound like:
“Billy with your sustainability head on, would this be something you could take on?”
When they say yes, name it clearly by saying:
“Great, thank you! so that’s billy doing the research. Who would like to do the number crunching?”
Once you’ve got momentum, the next person is far more likely to step forward.
Firm up commitment at the end
Use what I call an ‘Action Amnesty’. Here’s how it works. As you end the meeting, check in on commitments made by asking:
“Would anyone like to change what they’ve committed to?”
Discuss and then adjust any agreements as necessary. If you want to offer yourself as a check-in point between meetings to support people, make that clear too.
Committee meetings aren’t where the action happens. But they are where the actions are created.
Gather your insights, put them to work, and firm up commitments and you’ll have a more engaged group and real momentum to get things done.
Are you keen to support your contributors to add value to your Association’s activities? I can help. Take a look of my in-house training workshops to see how.
Or if you’d like to watch a video on this topic, I’ve made one and you’ll find it here on my YouTube Channel
In the meantime, thanks for reading. And happy committee chairing.