Starting The Meeting

By admin

It would seem that starting the meeting should occur automatically, but the truth of the matter is that some meetings have a kind of negative inertia to them. We have this mass of people milling around a room—some seated, some standing, some walking around—and the whole thing acts just like a big bowl of jelly—wiggling around a lot yet not wanting to settle down. A competent chairperson will usually preclude this by calling everyone to their chairs, but often the chairperson seems content to just wait around while the transients recede.

At this point, if we want to get started and the group seems to be in chaos, there are a few tactics that work pretty well. One is simply to remind the chairperson that it’s time to get the show on the road, so to speak. This may or may not work. A similar but stronger approach is to say to the chairperson something like, “Well, if we aren’t going to start for a while, I think I will go make a few telephone calls.” This can have the effect of worrying the chairperson that the crowd is going to drift away, thus motivating a call to order. Another approach is to blink the lights on and off a couple of times to indicate that something is getting ready to happen. This also may or may not work, because some in the crowd may simply perceive this as an electrical problem. The best way is to put one of our charts on the viewer or start passing out some of our handouts, and begin discussing the material with someone. This usually works extremely well. Typically, it will draw a crowd because it looks like the meeting is getting started, but not under the chairperson’s control. This usually motivates the chairperson to take over, lest control of the meeting be taken away. If not, we just continue with our material until we get the whole room involved, and make it our meeting. It usually will not come to this, however, because most people do not like having their meetings taken over, and the chairperson invariably will negotiate a transition from whatever we are doing into the actual meeting. At that point, we are finally getting someplace.