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Help Make Your Forums Meetings More Effective
These pages contain practical ideas to help you make the most of your meetings, and make the best use of your time, experience and skills!The ideas complement the comprehensive and vital reading contained in the Local Access Forums: A Guide to Good Practice, often called ‘The Blue Book’. The Guide sets out what LAFs should aspire to. These notes aim to help you get there.
As 90% of the work of LAFs is carried out in meetings, it is important that they are running as well as they can. A ‘good’ meeting can be defined as one where everyone aims to:
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be purposeful
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participate fully
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share responsibility for how the group functions
All meetings can run into difficulties but even if your meetings go well, there is always room for improvement. Every one of us has the potential to contribute to difficulties - but the good news is that we can also make things better. Even small changes can make a big difference. By reviewing the work of your forum and making some changes:
- Your Forum could make better, more sustainable decisions
- Best use will be made of everyone’s valuable time and resources
- You will build mutual understanding and reduce destructive conflicts
- Your Forum can be more independent of/ less reliant on your Local Authority
- You will meet your statutory obligations. The vision for Local Access Forums (LAFs) is enshrined in The Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003. They were to herald a new, more sophisticated approach to meetings based on consensus
- Meetings will be more enjoyable, productive and satisfying
By taking a bit of time for reflection, and using some of the ideas outlined here, your meetings may become (even) more effective.
Start by running through a simple checklist that will help you to think about your own meetings and to work out where things are working well and where there is room for improvement.
You can then use the tried and tested tools and techniques shown below to help make some positive changes:
- Have clear, agreed roles for your LAF
- Review how your group functions
- Agenda & Minutes management
- Working Agreements: the bedrock of good meetings
- Facilitation responsibilities
- Develop as a group
- In hard times, focus on ‘process’
- Group size
- Top 10 useful questions to ask in meetings
- Building consensus into your meetings
