Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: RE: committee effectiveness

[Sharon Villines (sharon]

On Sep 21, 2004, at 8:53 AM, Douglas G. Larson wrote:

> One key ingredient to running effective meetings is creating a useful
> agenda and then sticking to it. I have written a short article about
> running meetings and creating agendas.

A very nice summary of good things to do. I would add that meetings are 
also times when people like to sit and talk about whatever is on their 
minds. Unfortunately, this can divert the business of the meeting and 
not everyone wants to hear it. But is also a most important function of 
meetings.

One of our teams handles this very effectively by dividing their 
meetings into Business and None of your business. Any digressions or 
off-topic discussions are added to the Non of your business section. If 
people have to leave after the business, they do; otherwise they then 
have a good gab session on all the off topic issues that everyone 
really wants to talk about and no feels "cut off" or "stifled" during 
the meeting.

Sharon
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Sharon Villines
Takoma Village Cohousing, Washington DC
http://www.takomavillage.org