Quick Tips - Making Our Meetings and Workshops More Accessible, Productive, and Fun

By Jeremy Grandstaff

At the National Federation of the Blind of Virginia (NFBV) we have a number of meetings. At chapter meetings for example, we invite people to come to learn about NFBV, engage more effectively in our work, and to learn more about our own abilities to transform our lives to achieve what we want.

This month’s quick tip is about helping us be more intentional and successful with our meetings. Whether a chapter meeting, or committee meeting, or even a conference workshop (just another type of meeting), Here our five quick tips to help us achieve success with our meetings, which will then keep people engaged and coming back from more.

1. Plan the meeting: Identify the overall purpose, the agenda, who we need to target, and information we can send in advance for people to be most prepared. Using a small team to help us answer these questions makes it even better.

2. Have a strong and interactive agenda: Identify the logistics of our meeting, each agenda item, and for each agenda item, determine the purpose of that discussion and any ways that we can get people interacting with each other to achieve that purpose.

3. Send reports in advance and share with attendees: Ask committee chairs to give you brief reports that can be included in the agenda and preparation materials. This allows the meeting to stay focused on questions and dialog, making things more interactive and exciting.

4. Have at least one item each meeting that asks people to dialog with each other: by creating a space for small group discussion, all participants at our meeting or workshop will better process information, engage in the ask, and pay more attention. Having a speaker at an upcoming meeting? Ask them to talk for 10 minutes, break people apart to discuss what they heard, and then hold the Q&A of the speaker (we will notice a difference in the dialog and Q&A).

5. Have a great closing: Leave people with excitement about what’s happening after the meeting and make sure we have asked people to lead action items. Also, ask for some people to check out of the meeting by sharing one thing we are taking away from the discussion. Make it Fun and exciting that we came to your meeting.

At NFBV, it is critical that we bring confidence, excitement, and a collaborative spirit to our work and ensuring we are engaging new members at effective meetings will help us do just this. Here is an additional resource that might help: cheat sheet for effective meetings. We’re always hear to help our leaders succeed, so be sure to let us know how we can help.