Top Tips
- Pay attention to how your meetings work - they’re really important;
- Use your meetings for different things - not always planning;
- Facilitation is a really key skill for effective and inclusive meetings - consider having a workshop on it for your group.
Hilary Benn listening to P&P students in Leeds
Meetings are a forum for like-minded people to come together, share ideas and plan for change. Since they are by far the most effective medium for planning and delegation, it’s worth trying to get them right!
Good meetings
Good events and actions are rarely spontaneous; they are thought up and planned in meetings. But it’s important that meetings don’t take over your lives! They need to be balanced with socialising and with taking action.
Good meetings should be:
- Open - accessible to everyone, no matter what their experience, background, or beliefs. Remember that social change is brought about by active minorities and that everyone in your group should feel like they belong.
- Effective - a meeting needs to produce results. Social change is not for navel gazers. You should stand out because you get the job done!
- Informed - intelligent debate and discussion makes sure that the most effective and relevant method or solution is agreed upon.
- Democratic - try to avoid alienating anyone with the discussion and decision making structure of your group - spend time early on finding group procedures that everyone is happy with to avoid conflict later! Review them regularly.
- Organised - it’s easy to equate organisation with hierarchy, and some groups don’t like hierarchy. But organisation and hierarchy are not the same thing. Meetings need to be structured in order to ensure they are democratic and effective. Active facilitation, agenda setting and using delegation are all positive methods for achieving non-hierarchical oragnisation.
- Enjoyable - Yep, meetings can (and should) be fun and dynamic, especially when they take into account the rest of this list!
- Empowering - we want people to walk away from meetings feeling better for having been there, believing they can make change happen, and looking forward to taking action and being involved.
Top Tips
Some groups benefit from holding their planning meetings separately from their main meetings, so new or occasional members don’t have to sit through the admin. Find out about different structures for your meetings.
Varying your meetings
Of course, not all meetings need to be planning meetings. There are many different things you can do with your meetings. Try to vary the structure and content of your meetings on a regular basis:
- You might want more information, or inspiration - so invite in a speaker to talk to you about a campaign or their experience of creating change.
- You could also invite a member of the P&P staff to deliver one of our world-renowned workshops for your group, which are both useful and fun!
- You might want to learn or share skills with other groups on your campus, or other P&P groups in our network, so organise training days (the P&P support office and your Regional Rep can help!).
- You might want action - so don’t just talk about it - get together and do it!
- Join with other groups on actions and events where you share a common interest.
- You might just want to socialise after a hard term’s activity - so have some fun. Go out and play together! Maybe once or twice in the year, take a longer break as a group, and do something you will all enjoy!
- You could work on a variety of issues - some long-term, some short-term, some local, some global, so there’s something for everyone.