Making good meetings: Follow-up for success
Par Family Councils Ontario
In this week’s post, the last in our Making Good Meetings series, we’re going to wrap up the series by discussing meeting follow-up. Meeting follow-up is an important consideration as the best planned, executed, and facilitated meetings can still fall short of goals and expectations if you don’t follow-up appropriately. These ideas are our tips for appropriate and effective meeting follow-up.
Say thank you!
At the end of the meeting and in your meeting follow-up communications (minutes, email etc…) make sure to thank your members for attending the meeting, guests and guest speakers for their time and contribution, and anyone who needs a special thank-you. Showing appreciation to members and guests will go a long way towards building a strong Council and positive relationships with Council partners (e.g. LTC home staff, community groups).
Write useful meeting minutes
Meeting minutes are an essential part of your meeting follow-up communication (the email or other notice that you send to meeting attendees and absent Council members after the Council meeting).
Writing meeting minutes does not need to be an onerous task. Minutes are not a record of who said what. Rather, they should provide a guide for future meetings and fill in members who missed the meeting.
Minutes should answer the questions:
- When was the meeting?
- Who attended? Who did not attend?
- What topics/issues were discussed?
- What was decided?
- What actions were agreed upon?
- Who is to complete the actions, by when?
- Were materials distributed at the meeting? If so, are copies or a link available?
- What items need to be carried over to future meetings?
Consider creating and using a meeting minute template to make writing minutes easier. You can also consider rotating among members the task of writing and preparing minutes so that no one person is always responsible for the task.
Send your draft meeting minutes to members in advance of the following meeting so they can review them and they can be approved at the subsequent meeting. This will allow for members to have time to review the meeting minutes for errors and revisions before they are moved for approval at the meeting.
Minutes should be shared with the Council members before the next meeting. The best way to disseminate the minutes is to email them at least a week before the meeting (if not sooner) with a reminder of the upcoming meeting.
For more on meeting minutes, read Taking Minutes for Family Council Meetings: A Primer.
Take action
Clearly communicate action items in your meeting follow-up communications. This will help ensure that people responsible for actions are clear on what they need to do and by when.
Your follow-up communication should clearly state:
- What items need to be acted upon?
- When?
- By whom?
- How?
A well-thought out and properly distributed action plan helps to keep your Council on track in accomplishing its goals and objectives!
Disseminate widely
Carefully consider how and to whom you will disseminate your meeting materials. At the minimum, ensure that each meeting attendee and absent Council member who has requested to receive the meeting materials does so. The most efficient way is to maintain and use an email list or group email service (e.g. a group email through Gmail or a mail service like MailChimp). Consider these questions:
- Who needs to receive meeting minutes?
- How do we distribute materials? Do we send them out by email or other electronic means?
- Do we send meeting materials to the home’s administrator? Our staff assistant? The home’s Residents’ Council?
- Are they posted on a bulletin board or other space?
- How do people get updates on Council activities and accomplishments?
- Where are hard copies of the meeting minutes and materials stored? Who is responsible for maintaining the hard copy depository?
Having answers to these questions will go a long way towards an efficient dissemination strategy that ensures that everyone who needs to receive the information does so in a timely manner and in a way that is not an undue burden on Council members’ time and resources.
Effective meeting follow-up closes the meeting loop and helps to prepare your Council for the next meeting. As you can see, running effective Council meetings is a circular process, and one that requires careful planning and management. For more on ways to support effective and efficient Council meetings, join us for our Making Good Meetings webinar on Tuesday February 6th 2-3pm.