Transform Your Community Association Board Meetings with these Simple, Effective Tips

When it comes to community association board meetings, you need to make sure you have a productive meeting with a group a people, and that's not always easy. Everyone has their own opinions, people want to be heard, people aren't prepared etc. The list of things that can hold up a meeting are endless, but to properly run your community, you need to make sure that you get what you need to get done during the limited time you have together. So how do you ensure that your meetings are productive?

Here are 6 tips for a productive meeting:

1. Create an agenda: Figure out the purpose of your meeting and get it on paper. You want to make sure that you address everything that needs to be addressed and in order to do this you need to allocate times to each subject and stick to them. If you run out of time for a specific topic, another meeting can always be planned between the whole group or just the members who are most directly involved with that particular subject. Having an agenda will help keep you on track and make sure that your meeting meets its purpose.
2. Send out the agenda beforehand: Once your agenda is set, send it out to everyone who is going to be in attendance at the meeting. You want to make sure that everyone is prepared, and the best way to do this is to make sure they know what is going to be covered during the meeting.
3. Enlist a note taker: It's good to have someone whose role it is to take notes to ensure that everything is being recorded. Instead of having everyone take their own notes, have a note taker record the entire meeting and send out the notes afterwards.
4. Ask everyone to save their questions: One of the biggest things that can hold up a meeting is questions. Questions are important and must be addressed, but it's best to save them until after everything the moderator needs to say has already been said. End each topic with a quick question period so that everyone can contribute without holding up the meeting.
5. End with a review: At the very end of the meeting, schedule a quick review of everything that was spoken about and what the next steps are. If you have a meeting where you discuss a lot of different topics, it can be difficult to remember what was resolved at the beginning of the meeting once it has ended. A recap will ensure that everything is fresh in everyone's mind as they leave.
6. Send out action item recaps: Once the meeting has ended, send out a recap of notes from the meeting along with action items and who is responsible. This is help you make sure that nothing falls through the cracks and that you stay on schedule and get key action items completed.

Meetings are not the time to just “wing it.” You need to go in with a set plan and these tips for a productive meeting can help. With preparation comes productivity, so get prepared and make sure that you effectively accomplish everything that needs to be accomplished. Have additional questions? Let us know.