Blog

For many people, meetings are a fact of life. Whether it’s a board or member meeting here in our association, a volunteer meeting at your child’s school or a department meeting at work, being adept at participating effectively and managing meetings is a useful skill.

 

Sometimes one or two participants will dominate the discussion, steer it off topic and interrupt others, causing long, uncomfortable or unproductive meetings. Whether you’re the meeting chair or a participant, there are techniques you can use to help engage others, limit intrusions and minimize distractions.

 

· Table the discussion. If a conversation is getting particularly heated, the chair or a participant can move to table the discussion for a later date. This helps clear the air and allows for a calmer and more meaningful conversation at the next meeting. It also sends the signal that debates will be conducted rationally and with respect.

 

· Take it offline. When a meeting attendee takes a topic off course, everyone’s time is wasted. A good tool for the chair to use—or for another attendee to suggest—to get the meeting back on track is to invite the member to continue the discussion privately. Saying, “Let’s take this offline so we can talk more,” is an easy way to get back on the subject without alienating the sidetracked speaker.

 

· Use the agenda. The agenda is a useful tool for keeping a meeting moving efficiently. When a chair begins a meeting by saying, “We have a full agenda today,” he or she sets the stage for productivity. Periodically referring to the agenda during the course of the meeting keeps all attendees focused on the discussion. If the chair doesn’t have an agenda, ask the group pause a minute to create an informal agenda that simply lists the topics to be covered or goals to be accomplished.

 

· Call on members. To engage more reticent members of the group, and to balance the impact of more vocal participants, it’s helpful to call on members by name to ask for their opinions. “What do you think, Mary?” or “Do you have some input here, Steve?” ensures that all members are valued. And you don’t have be the chair to ask for others’ opinions.

As we contemplate our nations upcoming presidential elections it comes to mind how our community association has so much in common.  Community associations like ours have a lot in common with municipal governments. As members of a governing body, our board members meet regularly to discuss and vote on important community issues, like paying the association’s bills, funding our reserves and contracting with vendors to keep our community amenities in good repair. The board makes decisions about these and other important topics using a democratic process.

 

Also like a government, our association board has the legal authority to enforce rules and regulations—somewhat like laws—and to collect assessments, like a government collects taxes, to pay to maintain shared amenities like parking lots, general landscaping and street lights, and to pay the association’s bills.

 

Our association also has the authority to take legal action, if necessary, if a homeowner fails to meet his or her obligations that we all agreed to when we purchased in this community. These obligations include paying regular assessments on time, abiding by architectural or design policies, and observing community rules.

As we transition to holding board elections online its normal to wonder about the integrity of the ballots and election software.  We researched many services and selected a service that provides a reliable voting platform with the highest level of integrity.  Below are some of the features that protect your vote. 

 

• A voter notice is delivered to each voter, which contains the voter's unique voter link (a website address that contains an access key and takes the voters straight to the ballot).
• An access key (a unique, random combination of 16 individual alpha-numeric characters) is required to access the ballot.
• The access key can be used only once; therefore, voters can only vote once.
• Ballots are encrypted using SSL encryption.
• Administrators can see who voted but are restricted from seeing a voter's individual voting choices. Votes are summarized to show the winner and how many votes were received for each choice on each position or question.
• Voter information is tracked (IP address and voter details) to allow for voting audits.