Too Many Meetings
Submitted by James Higginbotham on February 1, 2010 – 4:17 am2 Comments
Most volunteers have a limited time to give per week. Why is it that some leaders schedule too many meetings? I think there are a few reasons:
- Leaders are not sensitive to the busy schedules of their volunteers. Many have families, help out in their child’s classroom, and perhaps have more than one family member volunteering
- Leaders are too excited about what they want to do and think having multiple meetings close together will get others excited. This simply isn’t the case
- Leaders consider meetings activity toward their goal rather than their true purpose, communication
Before you call a meeting of your volunteers, take these three questions into consideration:
- Do I have information that I need to share?
- Is there an open discussion that we need to have?
- Is there a decision that we need to make together?
If your meeting doesn’t answer ‘yes’ to at least one of these questions, then you may be creating a meeting for meeting’s sake.
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My problem is that I hold too few meetings, almost none at all. I know I should have at least quarterly meetings with my volunteers, but some years I have none at all. In part this comes from my feeling of being stretched too thin, as we touched on a couple weeks ago at http://www.volunteercentered.com/2010/01/20/the-economy-and-the-church-too-few-leaders/. I have too much concern over my volunteers’ time. And I’m otherwise lacking either the desire or dedication to prepare for and call the meeting. I’d appreciate any additional encouragement and advice that you have in that regard in future posts.
Andrew,
Agreed – it can be a tough balance. Too many meetings and your volunteers will bail because you demand too much time. Too few and they will bail because they think to don’t care.
I’ll post a follow-up to this topic tomorrow with tips on how to manage quarterly meetings.