I had the pleasure of having a few meetings this week, with current members of a couple of local fire departments. I learned so much!
A few things came up that made me think of my own board experience on the Nederland Downtown Development Authority (NDDA), and the half dozen other boards I’ve been on. I am currently working on my decision to run again, or jump off the board. I’m lucky we own our music store and I work for a commercial land owners in Nederland (which keeps me eligible). A lot of thought goes into this process. I have met with several other board members (individually, because Sunshine Law). The members I have met with have asked me to stay on the Board, to continue working on the projects we currently have in hand. There is so much going on, but the end is in sight for several projects. Next week, I’ll decide about that, after talking to my family and weighing my work obligations. Balance is key and when on a board I want to make sure I can give the time commitment needed.
Something that stood out in the conversations I have had is that people are not always nice. The people I met with are nice. But some are really not nice. For all of the split decisions on our board, I think we are primarily “nice” to each other. We agree to respectfully disagree. We vote our conscience. We read the meeting packets, so we are prepared. We listen. We don’t interrupt and we definitely don’t call each other names. On some of the meetings I listen to, people call names.
It bothers me that some boards are seeing an upheaval of people that are not nice. That people are not respectful. That people seem to try to be contentious. So I thought I’d share a little bit of my own knowledge about what I like to call “Meeting Etiquette.” This is taken from the Town of Nederland Code of Conduct, Appendix A.
On April 22,1997, the Nederland Board of Trustees adopted the Working Agreements listed below, which are a basis for running all of the meetings and workshops held by the Nederland Board of Trustees and all of the Town’s Advisory Boards, Commissions and Task Forces.
The adopted Working Agreements are:
• We start and end on time.
• We listen for understanding.
• We are open to all ideas.
• We don’t interrupt the speaker.
• We are hard on issues, not the person.
• We disagree respectfully.
• We use mediation to resolve conflict.
• We do our homework and are brief and concise.
Anyways, it’s simply something that is on my mind about how to run an effective meeting and how to participate in local government. I think the rest of the information in the Code of Conduct could be used to run other meetings and I’d be happy to send it to you, if you want a copy. Just shoot me an email. I’d like to have more of these discussions in the future.
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