Planning & Facilitating Meetings

Society executive teams typically meet every 1-2 weeks during the semester. Due to the fact that you are often in various years of your academic program, scheduling between different course schedules can become a challenge. These resources can help you find a common meeting time:

• Create a Doodle Poll – This website allows you to put in several time options on different days and have everyone select which times they are available. You can then choose a meeting time based on the most number of people who are available on a specific date & time.
• Check course schedules for your program – By comparing when students are in class, there are often “common time” gaps when students in all academic years are available. These open times may be ideal for scheduling a team meeting or society event. Here’s a sample from Psych Society that showcases how to integrate information taken from Course Schedules to identify common times.

Meeting Agendas

Creating an agenda prior to a meeting will help members stay on track with what needs to be discussed during that time frame. Some societies have their VP of Communications compile the agenda before each meeting by asking members to email potential discussion topics in advance. This also allows you to prioritize what needs to be discussed first and what topics might need to be shifted until the next meeting due to time constraints.

Facilitating Meetings

It is the President’s duty to chair and facilitate the executive and/or society team meetings. This person should try to stay impartial and facilitate conversation between members of the group, help summarize what the group has discussed, and make sure to discuss all items on the meeting agenda.

Meeting Minutes

During each meeting, a written record should be created of what was discussed. These documents are called “meeting minutes”, which help build a historical record of what the society has done, as well as keep all members informed if they happen to miss a meeting. Usually, the VP of Communications is responsible for keeping meeting minutes. Here is a sample template for you to get started.

Meeting Minutes should include:

• Date, time, and location of meeting
• Names of those in attendance (“Attendees”) and those who were away (“Regrets” if they told you in advance they were unable to attend, or “Absents” if they just did not show up)
• Any corrections to previous meeting minutes – Everyone should review the meeting minutes from last week prior to the meeting. If anything was captured incorrectly, now is the time to amend it. 
• Discussion topics and conclusions – What options were discussed? What did the group decide upon?
• Voting outcomes – If the group cannot come to a consensus, sometimes a “majority rules” vote can be implemented. You can write in the meeting minutes who voted for which option, or just write down the total number of votes for each option.
• Action items – Who is responsible for what? When will it be completed by? This helps hold everyone accountable to their roles and responsibilities.
• New topics to be discussed – Make a plan for your next meeting!
• Next meeting – While you’re all in one room, this is a great time to look at your calendars and pick your next meeting date!

When typing/writing meeting minutes, it is important to:

• Be concise – You aren’t writing a thesis paper.
• Be specific – Make sure to accurately describe the specifics of the discussion. For example, writing “The guest speaker will be arriving at 4pm this Thursday. Jessica will meet them at the front door at 3:45pm. Louise will be waiting in the classroom for their arrival with the event supplies.” is much more specific than “The event will happen on Thursday.”
• Review before distributing – Check over what you typed during the meeting to ensure that everything was captured correctly and entirely. Then send out a copy of the minutes to all executive members, including those who were unable to attend.