Running a team meeting in your clan is a very important step in promoting good communication with your team members. There are many different ways to operate a meeting, and some ideas work best for smaller teams and some concepts work best for larger teams. We are going to explore some methods as well as some general tips that can make the meeting successful.

Methods.

The basic idea with a meeting is to provide information and get some feedback, perhaps explore some ideas or get suggestions. Sometimes meetings are needed if something important has come up and the team needs to discuss it, other times they are a method of making sure your members are still active. But HOW you run the meeting is just as important as WHERE you run the meeting.

The top three methods or WHERE is as follows:

- Voice

Use your voice server at a predetermined time and date to have voice to voice communication with your meeting.

- Instant Messaging

Use the teams preferred IM service again at a certain date and time to communicate via text to your members.

- Forum

Create a new post on your forums and allow responses and feedback for a certain period of time.

Each option has its benefits as well as drawbacks, and as I am sure you can imagine the number of people in attendance also greatly affects your success. A voice meeting would be somewhat chaotic if you had 250 people trying to talk at once, and a forum meeting does not have an instant completion, it also could draw out for some time if you are waiting for certain members to respond. Text meetings can slow things down because it takes some longer to type than others.

These are the basic methods I see clans use to run a meeting, I will cover some other ideas at the bottom of the article…

It is YOUR Meeting.

If you are in charge of the meeting here are some tips to make sure that you actually accomplish what you set out to do:

- Know ahead of time what you want to cover and have your notes handy

- Have a pre-determined time frame and make time for questions

- DON’T get sidetracked. Additional items brought up can be closer examined afterward

- Make some kind of speaking order, and ensure that each person or group keeps it brief

- Post the meeting “minutes” (text version of what was said and covered) for everyone to see

Mandatory Attendance.

I fully agree with the need to make meetings a mandatory event for all members, the point here is to provide information and get feedback. I however completely understand if members cannot make meetings, specifically if they are generally active members. The times and dates of meetings can be a difficult thing to set,and in the end not everyone will be able to attend.

The best way to solve the problem of missing meetings is to post your minutes and communicate with those who were unable to attend. Most likely it is nothing more than a time conflict and those members won’t feel left out if you take the meeting to them and get personal feedback.

Population.

As I pointed out before, the actual number of members attending the meeting will have a huge impact on how well the meeting will work in terms of where you hold the meeting, but it only becomes troublesome with a large population. If you only have a few members then spur-of-the-moment  meetings can work or any form that gets the handful of members together to talk.

With a large member count, it may be best to hold a meeting with the top officers or section heads, then let those section heads inform their select group of members. Let the information trickle down and let the ideas trickle up. It may also help to provide a “Suggestion Box”, an e-mail or web form that lets members provide private feedback.

Final Thoughts:

There are other ways to promote a meeting style information outlet, some of which may actually be better than the traditional meeting methods.

- Meeting Video:

If your team produces video then consider creating monthly or bi-weekly video address to the clan. The video can show relative images or perhaps action on the server, maybe a look at the forum or site as you point out topics. The voice over should provide the topics and possible questions or concerns as well to help answer questions before they are raised.

- Meeting E-mail

Another method of communicating in meeting style is via e-mail and CC, you can send the messages back and forth to each other and include all who need to see the communication as each person replies. The biggest drawback to this is it will fill everyone’s e-mail box with several responses that may not be needed.

Meetings are a great way to put out needed information, but they also serve as a suggestion and idea outlet. This promotes your team’s unity and when members see there ideas become a reality it becomes an object of pride and an example of your teams willingness to listen.

- Hedge

© 2009 tribehaven