How to Encourage Meeting Preparation
By: Debi Peverill
Tags: Governance, Board Attendance, Meetings, Productivity, Preparation

Meetings can be annoying, and we are all spending too much time in meetings these days, so annoyance is rampant. Attending a meeting where you are the only one who has prepared can make a normal annoyance into such aggravation that you might want to hurt people.

To start with, every meeting has an agenda. The agenda might also come with some information that is to be reviewed prior to a meeting such as a “board package” if it is a board meeting or maybe some homework has been assigned. An example would be if one is to read over a policy in order to discuss the policy.

In order for a meeting to proceed in a productive manner and not take an inordinate amount of time to deal with, the participants in a meeting should be well prepared. Sitting in a meeting while someone else reads over the information which was provided ahead of time is truly annoying and a waste of everyone else’s time. This is an area where the board chair should make it clear that no time will be provided in a meeting for people to read over the information that they were supposed to read over before the meeting even started. If this activity is permitted, you would be a fool to prepare ahead of time, as you will be given the time to prepare during the meeting.

When the agenda and briefing materials are provided it should be made clear that this information is to be reviewed before the meeting. Communication is key to getting people to comply with the rules.

1. Send out the agenda and briefing materials well ahead of the meeting.

2. Let participants know that they are expected to review the materials before the meeting.

3. Do not provide time during the meeting for participants to read the prior provided material.

4. Determine if there is going to be consequences for participants who fail to prepare. Some suggestions for punishments include assigned the next tasks that come up at the meeting to a participant who was not prepared. Another option is to assign policy reviews to people who fail to prepare.

If the majority of people who attend the meeting are prepared, then with a little effort you should be able to convince the others to prepare as well. Peer pressure works on most age groups, not just kids. If the participant notices that they are the only ones who are unprepared, they will change their behaviour.

However, what if you do have a participant who fails to prepare for a meeting and even after you employ these strategies they continue to be non-compliant? Then you have to look to your policies. Does your group have any rules about meeting behaviour? Do the rules include lack of preparation as an offence that can be disciplined? A new policy might have to be created. If lack of preparation for meetings is causing problems with your meetings, then you should consider a policy. The best time for a policy is before you need one, but the next best time is now.

A typical policy about meeting preparation would suggest that meeting preparation is required, and that a warning would be given if the policy is not being followed. Then if the warning does not change behaviour, the person should be removed from the board, committee or whatever else you are calling it. You can adopt whatever policy you like, obviously. I would recommend that some policy is in place. If participants do not follow the rules and nothing happens then eventually no one will be following the rules.

If you are able to follow these recommendations then you will find that you have better prepared participants which will lead to shorter, more effective meetings, and wouldn’t that be nice!