Effective meetings skills for VCSE board members

A two-hour ‘masterclass’

Meetings are a traditional and essential component of VCSE governance. For both trustees/directors and senior staff, meetings serve as a forum for discussion and agreement, planning and monitoring, communication and leadership, and decision-making. Used appropriately, meetings can challenge, inspire, illuminate and inform. They are an essential part of the trustee/director role, a mainstay of the VCSE management process and central to quality governance.

Holding effective meetings is important because they provide clear leadership and direction, ensure that debates are focused and balanced, enable decisions to be reached and ensure that resources are used to best effect.

This two-hour ‘masterclass’-style workshop helps trustees and board directors to understand their role, offers some approaches and ideas that help to tackle typical challenges, and helps to generally improve their compliance as well as their effectiveness.

Objectives

Learning objectives

To understand the skills and qualities of a good chair
To learn ideas and approaches for chairing a successful meeting that is on time and achieves its outcomes
To understand the protocols and boundaries for appropriate meeting etiquette and the chair’s role in managing this effectively
To appreciate how to manage yourself and others appropriately
To take away personal actions to apply to your role

Audience

Who should attend?

Trustees and board directors. The session works best when the entire board can attend.

Format

This is very much a facilitated session, so a successful outcome requires the active participation of all those involved.

Special features
Meet the trainer

Special features

This workshop can be tailored to meet your specific requirements. You can choose to follow the agenda set out below or you can talk it through with the trainer and set a new one. The choice is yours.

Meet the trainer

Amanda is a consultant, coach and facilitator specialising in working with VCSE organisations. She has personal experience of being a trustee and board member, and of chairing public and community association meetings as well as committee work. She weaves some of the ‘highlights’ and lessons learned from her own chairing into the session as well as encouraging those present to build on their own practice. Amanda also provides one-to-one coaching for CEOs and senior VCSE managers and regularly facilitates board away-days and masterclasses, alongside providing specialist organisation development advice and support.

Agenda

This is an indicative agenda – a starting point for a conversation with you. We would be happy to tailor it to your precise requirements.

1 Welcome and introductions

Objectives
Good meeting, bad meeting – what’s your experience?

2 We can’t go on meeting like this

Common meeting challenges and why they succeed or fail
Consequences and impact for the organisation
What’s the context?

3 Roles and responsibilities of an effective VCSE chair

Activities and input that explore the role, skills and qualities needed
Role of the chair: what it is and how to do it well

4 Meeting for success – ideas and approaches to meet governance challenges

Managing time and boundaries
Preparation and planning
Creating the right environment
Self-management
Challenging personalities and good meeting behaviour

5 Final plenary session

What’s your plan? Take-away actions

For a no-obligation discussion about running this programme for your organisation on an in-house basis, just give us a call on 01582 463465.