Effective Meetings and Decision Making
Meetings
Good meetings bring people together, allow discussion and sharing of ideas, come up with plans for action, and commitments to specific tasks. A good meeting will end with a feeling of accomplishment. If your meetings tend to be frustrating or leave you with a feeling that nothing important happened, check out some of these links for some ideas to make your meetings more effective.
Decision making models
The two basic approaches to decision-making in organizations are Roberts Rules, (Parliamentary Procedure) or the Consensus Model. Both types of decision-making processes are meant to make sure that discussions are:
- carried out fairly
- that everyone's right to speak and be heard is upheld
- that everyone understands the proposed decision
- the decision is legitimate in the eyes of the group.
It is important to be clear about the decision-making approach that you adopt. Ad hoc decision-making works fine until there is a contentious decision, and in that case you can end up with a real mess if some people in the group don't think a certain decision was legitimate, and others believe it was.