Robert's Rules and Effective Meetings

all right robert&#39;s rules by show of chat how many of you have sat in a three and a half hour meeting that probably could have been an email give me a show a chat we&#39;re gonna we&#39;re gonna have some interaction today i see hands raising all right beautiful yeah all right well if you&#39;re a member of jci that might have happened at least once uh if you&#39;re not a member of jci well you know these are pretty common factors and i&#39;ll tell you right now i do a lot of work with non-profits boards of directors government boards of directors and it&#39;s not necessarily just jci that experiences this it is all over and part of that is is because people don&#39;t necessarily look at what the importance of a meeting is or what the value of a meeting is and oftentimes we get a little lacks and we don&#39;t necessarily use the tools that we&#39;ve been given so today is going to be a primer on this i want to encourage you to ask questions i do have it structured logically so hopefully we can get through it and i do have one question just so i can get to know my audience a little bit better how many of you are marvel universe superhero fans or at least aware of them okay good good good good if you&#39;re not it&#39;s not gonna hurt you but uh you know i like to have a little fun with these types of things so you&#39;ll get to see what that means in just a little bit if you didn&#39;t know this already about me i am a gigantic nerd i love robert&#39;s rules of order plus marvel plus behavioral science and all that fun stuff but let&#39;s kick this off right and start with why why is something like a rule structure why do you think a rule structure or a system like robert&#39;s rules is important for a meeting let&#39;s fire that off in the chat let&#39;s see what you got and let&#39;s find out what you think why do we use something like robert&#39;s rules or a meeting structure exactly for structure to prevent chaos yes jonathan absolutely organization consistency i love that kiki for all parties to be heard absolutely yes efficiency protocol to avoid long tangents democracy saving time love it nailed the answers right so we need to get a firm understanding of why are we using this before we start trying to really understand how to use them and and the reason for that is is because when you have a new member or if you&#39;re on a new board of directors and they don&#39;t understand the purpose that&#39;s what allows us to get informal and then all of a sudden all of the bad habits of meetings start to come out so helping your boards your teams to understand the purpose of robert&#39;s rules is one of the best things you can do here are the five main reasons that i&#39;ll start with number one order and maintaining focus because none of us want to be there for five hour meetings and yes i have sat through a five hour meeting where i literally wanted to bang my head against the wall just to see if something interesting would come out of it professionalism and decorum if you&#39;ve been in a meeting where people are arguing or fighting or going back and forth or even a meeting where two people completely take over the meeting and just argue back and forth with each other while everyone else sits completely bored robert&#39;s rules is for you fairness if you&#39;ve ever felt like your voice has been taken away if you ever feel like you have something to say but you&#39;re not exactly sure how to get in there or if you see that some people in your organization have something to say but they&#39;re being kind of silenced or pushed to the side that&#39;s why robert&#39;s rules is critical for democracy and making sure that those voices are heard for civility this is really important we live in a a in a world at this point in time where communication has gotten progressively less and less civil people argue they fight they uh they sometimes you know use language that they probably shouldn&#39;t inside of meetings and we see this whether it&#39;s at the highest forms of government or even inside of a business meeting or a non-profit meeting non-governmental meeting so those are our reasons now i&#39;m going to give you one more and this is a tool that you can use whether it&#39;s in jci or in business this is called the hidden costs of meetings this is a calculator okay so i&#39;m going to give you a quick for instance let me click on this so we have it up everybody can see the calculator give me a quick nod if you do all right perfect use this tool it will literally nauseate you so let me just go down and say all right the tool is jci congress oh i&#39;ll try not to misspell it we&#39;re gonna say that our congress we&#39;re gonna be really nice our congress meeting lasts three hours we know there&#39;s at least 50 participants from around the world we&#39;re gonna just say an average salary of forty thousand dollars so some people have more some people have less look at that cost go up oh my gosh this is getting disgusting getting disgusting oh 4 200 for 50 people to sit in a room for three hours if that doesn&#39;t make you want to have more efficient meetings i literally do not know what else could this is a cool tool whether you&#39;re in business or anything else i have calculated the cost of every one of our team meetings to understand do we need to figure out a way to shorten this do we need to figure out a way to reduce the number of people that are in that meeting space so i encourage you to go ahead and take a look at this tool it&#39;s going to be shared along with the slides to each and every one of you so you&#39;ll have these links to be able to use afterwards all right the second aspect that i want to cover today and we&#39;re going to go back to our slide presentation is the behaviors of meeting so most of you know that i&#39;m into behavioral science we have an entire behavior program how many of you have taken the behavioral elements program if you have throw your primary element into the chat right now let&#39;s see how many people have done this and i&#39;m going to give you the opportunity to do this afterwards all right so we have waters and ooh a couple of fires yeah i know you annika and train it&#39;s good to see you friends nora there&#39;s my water yan hello sir gisele yes yes yes all right so we&#39;ve got a lot of people that have taken it but if you haven&#39;t that&#39;s perfectly okay so for the purposes of today&#39;s training let&#39;s just take a look at what each of those individual areas are our fire elements are the competitors they want to be fast they want to make the decision they want to get done and quickly and if you are chit chatting we ain&#39;t got time for that so we just push forward incidentally i might be a fire element as my primary element the air element is in service to learning and they like to brainstorm they like to talk they like to have conversations they like to explore new ideas our earth element is our defense drive that is much more focused on structure procedure logic analytics they&#39;re the ones that&#39;s going to say bylaw 8.49613 indicates that you will uh not have this speaking turn and then our water elements which is much more of our people our drive to bond they are focused on consensus and understanding and empathy and conversations with each other so you see the link at the bottom you can take a quick assessment it&#39;s absolutely free that&#39;ll tell you what your primary element is we&#39;re not going to spend too much time here what are those elements relate to four core biological drives as discovered by paul lawrence and nitin noria to management scientists we determined how to measure those things and that&#39;s where our elements come from but what does that mean in the context of a meeting all right so in a meeting if we look at our element wheel our fire elements can be very assertive this is the one that&#39;s demanding maybe requires or requests or pushes can be very focused on the task at hand they also might get bored very very quickly don&#39;t sit there and be labor the point oh god why didn&#39;t we just make this decision already we&#39;ve been talking about this for 38 seconds that&#39;s something you&#39;d hear come out of the fire&#39;s mouth they also will utilize things like robert&#39;s rules to win so you might think that the fire who uh doesn&#39;t necessarily you know follow all the rules all the time they will follow the rules and use the rules when it&#39;s to their advantage it&#39;s in service to that competition our air elements and meetings much more explorative so brainstorming they&#39;re gonna like debate they&#39;re gonna look for multiple ideas and options they&#39;re going to be open to discussions and discussions can go and go and go and before you know it you might have been talking about bylaw changes and all of a sudden you&#39;re talking about polar bear migratory patterns in the arctic so that would be very common inside of an air element meeting i tease a little bit on these but these are common behavioral traits of each our water elements are going to be much more focused on consensus they&#39;re going to be slow to vote because they&#39;re going to want to make sure that everybody has had the chance to be heard and hurt again and hurt again and hurt again until literally there might be exhaustion coming from everybody but they&#39;re very considerate of the impact on all of the people in the organization so it&#39;s not just going to be about them it&#39;s going to be about everyone they may bring up different ideas or concepts to make sure that all voices are not only heard but represented and then last but not least our earth elements going to be much more methodical in its reactions they&#39;re likely to more follow the rules and the procedures this means that if you have times on your agenda and you are behind the times the earth elements internal mechanisms are going to start tightening up and they&#39;re going to say you&#39;re off of your timing and be pushing you to stay on track but it&#39;s going to be in service to that defense that logic that structure so one of the things that i would encourage you to do and use this as a tool is to assess your board learn which element your board is that&#39;s going to give you an idea of how to manage them as a chairperson for a meeting if i know i&#39;m sitting in a room full of fires i&#39;m going to have to be a little quicker if i&#39;m in a room full of waters i&#39;m going to need to make sure that i&#39;m intentionally being more inclusive to reach out and ask their opinions because they may be reluctant to give their opinion because they don&#39;t want to rock a boat this is something that can be very helpful in understanding your board dynamics so that way you can be more effective in engaging your entire group most groups are going to have a mixture of each of the different elements that&#39;s going to be something where you can learn okay i need to give jay a job or he&#39;s gonna get bored very very quickly uh i need to make sure that neil uh neil you&#39;re an heir right were you an air i&#39;m force a fair amount of all but actually earth winds okay so if i know that neil is my earth i need to make sure that neil is going to be uh following the orders and the agenda i need to make sure that we&#39;re not stepping out of line if i know that yeah nadia right if i know my friend nadia is a water well then i&#39;m gonna need to make sure that she is making sure that everybody&#39;s taken care of inside of that meeting and that nobody&#39;s being left behind and so on and so forth so use this as a tool to understand who you&#39;re working with and that will give you a much better meeting all right so let&#39;s move forward to the principles of procedure oh the exciting stuff well i&#39;m hoping it&#39;s exciting safa that&#39;s a great question can we be be a bit of each depending on circumstances and the nature of meetings yes so the quick assessment will tell you what your primary element is our full assessment actually measures all of the different elements inside of you so we as humans have all four elements and it&#39;s just varying levels of which one drives us more or which one produces more of our behavior we all need to actually work to fill all of our different elements otherwise we might not feel fulfilled as well so great question yes absolutely understanding that primary one should give you some good insight but you can always go deeper with that all right the principles behind parley pro there&#39;s three main principles that i want you to be aware of one majority rules right we take a vote the majority wins all right we move on to the next item the second is minority rights minority meaning whoever is on the side of a debate whoever&#39;s on the side of the discussion that they still have the opportunity to engage and to participate and to have their voices heard they also have tools to make sure that they&#39;re not just being overrun by a majority so if myself christina arthur and kyle are all on one team and rachel and richard are on the minority side of things rachel and richard still have a lot of ability to be able to make influence inside of a meeting when utilizing something like robert&#39;s rules the last but not least and this is where i&#39;m going to really hammer on things silence is compliance what does that mean if you don&#39;t speak up you are leaving your rights on the table you are leaving your ability to make influence on the table you are leaving your leadership on the table silence means that you are not engaging one of the things that i really try to do especially in jci boards but also even in some of the other boards that i serve on is encourage that everyone speaks at different points and times to make sure that they&#39;re that they are at least engaged in the meeting but have the opportunity to share their ideas okay that is called in intentional inclusion making sure because sometimes people don&#39;t want to necessarily get out there now you do that in a soft way you don&#39;t say all of a sudden mariette you&#39;re up go ahead speak because if marriott&#39;s not ready to speak that&#39;s going to be very uncomfortable but i might start the meeting by saying i&#39;m going to be looking to hear from everyone sitting at this table i&#39;ll take volunteers to start and then i&#39;ll go around to all of the other people in the meeting to make sure that uh to make sure that every voice is represented i&#39;m giving them a heads up in advance you&#39;re gonna get called on if you don&#39;t volunteer all right so that&#39;s a good practice silence is compliance sometimes we might want to be more formal with the rules sometimes we can be a little less formal with the rules that&#39;s going to depend on the environment the group that you&#39;re with and who you&#39;re serving and there&#39;s value to both of those some of this today that we&#39;re going to talk about is the more formalized version and i&#39;m going to give you scripts and examples so that way you can literally cut names out paste your name in and you&#39;ve got tools to run your meetings effectively but also to empower the people in your meetings to do this effectively all right so before we get into this i want to ask you and we&#39;re going to crowdsource this thing what are some of the big challenges that you&#39;ve had inside of meetings so an example of that might be somebody who talks too much that&#39;s an example of a challenge that you might have inside of a meeting using the chat let&#39;s fire off what do you got what are your challenges people not reading the agenda or the preliminary materials absolutely what else do we have off topic good time time management nobody talking the leader of the meeting doesn&#39;t do the job to steer the meeting good people not being on time ouch yes people cutting others not listening people not having prepared for the meeting a lot of time spent on neglecting yes good these are all all major challenges and they&#39;re not just unique to us sitting here they are unique to the world my friends they are unique to business they are unique to uh government it is everywhere derailing conversations i love that somebody said poor chairmanship we&#39;re gonna talk about how to lead meetings because that&#39;s one of the most critical things as a leader and a chairperson of the meeting you have a lot of authority that oftentimes especially in the world of jci i see completely not utilized if a meeting gets out of control i often times very first will look to the chair as the reason that that meeting got out of control and that&#39;s that can suck if you&#39;re the chair you&#39;re like uh how did this happen well we&#39;re gonna give you the tools today to make sure that you&#39;re on point all right and i start with that the chairperson the chairperson does not own the meeting if i was to ask you who owns the meeting tell me who do you think owns the meeting yes the membership the participants now that doesn&#39;t mean that the chairperson&#39;s absolved of responsibility on this right the chairperson is responsible for keeping the meeting on track for running the meeting efficiently and effectively and they have a lot of tools to do so you&#39;re going to see the language and the opportunities of how they&#39;re going to be able to do that during a meeting but with that being said you as a member even the membership has a lot of opportunity and power to also support the chair in keeping the meeting on track and that&#39;s something really important to keep into the back of your mind all right so let&#39;s start with the first things first the agenda setting how many of you have an agenda that is the exact same structure that you have seen for the better part of a decade and you haven&#39;t made any changes or done anything with your agenda it&#39;s just always exactly the same thing okay treasurer&#39;s report secretary&#39;s report old business new business uh blah blah blah blah blah i&#39;m already bored as a fire i&#39;m already bored literally your meeting agenda has bored me to death all right when we think about an agenda we obviously have specific business that needs to be conducted for our organizations we understand that we do have to file reports that we do have to make votes and etc but one of the things that i would encourage you to do is to really take a look at your agenda and ask why is this meeting necessary what are we accomplishing with this meeting and when you start to think about that you might end up finding that there&#39;s places that you can add things like consent agendas and if you don&#39;t know what that is we&#39;ll cover that you might find some places where instead of actually having reports that those reports are sent out in advance as a meeting packet that you don&#39;t have to have discussions around all of it nothing bugs me more than when i see a treasurer&#39;s report saying we have money or when i see a treasurer&#39;s report that says here&#39;s the balances in all of the accounts that i&#39;m reading directly from the agenda that i could personally read myself thank you that is not a report that is reading off of a piece of paper when we think about an agenda or what goes on to an agenda we really need to be considering what is the purpose of each of those individual items when you are looking at when you&#39;re looking at different aspects of your meeting agenda thinking about that purpose is going to be critical once you establish your agenda though that is your roadmap for order that is something that you are going to take with you and follow meticulously how many of you by show of chat have time signatures or time stamps on your agenda so you have each item that is specifically timed does anybody use time signatures on their agenda you know as soon as i saw that i was like i knew who was going to be my first to say yes on there that&#39;s pretty funny time signatures on agenda okay that can help to keep a meeting on track some people who don&#39;t use that give that a shot if you do use that that can be a great way now we start our conversation and all of a sudden the conversation derails whose job primarily primarily if we&#39;re going to bring the meeting back and we know the chairperson can say okay we&#39;re going to stick to the agenda we&#39;re going to follow the order who else what else can be done in order to make sure that we&#39;re following the agenda anybody got any ideas because i know that there&#39;s a lot of the levels of parliamentary procedure here i know that i have a couple of parliamentarians on here i know that i have some people that robert&#39;s rules what&#39;s that who&#39;s robert is that robert downey jr you did say avengers and marvel right so there&#39;s a you know a wide variety i love a time keeper or a sergeant-at-arms you can appoint one of these in a meeting and say we are going to have uh we are going to have yup she&#39;s going to be the sergeant there we go so we are going to have somebody become the sergeant-at-arms or the timekeeper for the meeting that will be giving us five minute notices three minute notices two minute notices one minute notices and even stopping somebody from talking now again we don&#39;t want to necessarily violate rights but we establish the procedures and the expectations preceding the meeting other things that you can do is calling an objection uh we&#39;ll see how that looks in the language we&#39;re going to give you some structured language for that or calling for the orders of the day calling for the orders of the day is essentially a motion that will encourage the chair to get back on track so that would be to the chair i move for the orders of the day that is the indication for the chair to say you&#39;re correct jay i appreciate what you&#39;re saying we have gotten off track from the agenda we will move back to the points that are being discussed at hand okay again a little bit formal an objection i&#39;ll give you an example of a specific example of that coming up who here has ever used something called in a consent agenda let&#39;s see what the crowd has anybody know what a consent agenda is or used to consent agenda is this a familiar term okay good all right when i was when i was serving in government i was an elected official in my local municipality consent agenda was my favorite thing in the entire world and let me tell you why because when we were presented with our board packets that we were to prepare and read in advance we would be given roughly about a 342 page line item document of all of the warrant list of bills everything that the township had spent in the last two weeks can you imagine if you had to individually approve each of those specific items now that could be rolled into a consent agenda we already spent the money the money was spent by the treasurer it followed those specific rules so now at this point in time the unanimous consent of the entirety of the board could push that through if i didn&#39;t want something to be pushed through if i had a specific thing that i didn&#39;t necessarily want to have consent i could request that that piece of uh legislation or that item be pulled out and we could then put that onto the regular agenda and have discussion about it so the consent agenda is designed to say these are things that virtually everyone will just agree with things like potentially setting up your approval of the minutes approval of the agenda those could be consent items if you have them on a consent agenda you can vote on the entire package all is one vote now if you need to make addendums to the agenda or if you need to make amendments or changes that would be pulled out of the consent and put onto the first item of business okay so if you have questions yeah if you do have questions glc neil is capturing them so if i don&#39;t cover it before the end of this we will go back to that i did leave time to make sure that we can cover some specific questions okay uh i do i&#39;m gonna address your online timekeeper question in about two slides i think all right so so bear with me on that one leticia great question all right one of the ways that i watch us as jci members and a lot of boards of directors make a mistake is that there&#39;s not acknowledgement okay what does acknowledgement mean if you have a meeting where people are arguing back and forth that means that you&#39;re probably not using the acknowledgement function of effective meetings acknowledgement function is is if i want to speak i address the chairperson at the meeting and i might do that by saying to the chair or mr chairperson or madam chairwoman or something of that nature me as a member am not allowed to speak until i am given the floor and that is an acknowledgement from the chair that it is now my turn to speak in order or logical order by enforcing acknowledgement as an expectation in your meetings it will stop people from just randomly rachel and i can&#39;t just start arguing with each other because back and forth back and forth back and forth doesn&#39;t occur without the chair&#39;s permission to give you the floor of the meeting so that is something that i really want to hone in on because that will help reduce the amount of tensions the other reason that we ask to the chair is that we&#39;re not actually arguing with our colleague it&#39;s not a question of rachel and i arguing with each other it is a question of the two of us to the chair my esteemed colleague from uh my esteemed colleague from malta has indicated x y and z i would like to counter that with this i&#39;m not arguing with rachel i&#39;m more arguing to the chair so that&#39;s that acknowledgement function and the direction of those questions all right making emotion i move i move to do something move being a verb so in some cases the chair might say i will entertain a motion to do x in which case so moved otherwise if there is a piece of item an item for business on the agenda i would say something along the lines of i move to adopt the new bylaw changes as presented and then of course that requires a second that&#39;s like that&#39;s like 101 that is the 101 10101 what does that look like okay so we&#39;re gonna test here not so much test your avengers knowledge here but chairman fury might open up by saying we are on to new business item one it&#39;s the adoption of the sokovia accords i open the floor to which president iron man says to the chair looking for the acknowledgement before a motion is made the chair acknowledges president iron man at that point in time president iron man says thank you mr chairman i move to adopt the sokovia accords as presented the vice president black widow says mr chairman i second the motion the chairman then repeats the motion there&#39;s a motion on the floor to adopt the sokovia accords as presented is there debate or discussion that would be a very formal way of us introducing new business or items that would require a vote why do we do it in this structure because we can repeat it over and over and over again get acknowledgement motion is made motion is seconded the chair repeats the motion and then following the repeating of the motion debate begins let me be very clear debate does not occur until a motion is made debate does not occur until a motion is made if there is overlying discussion and a lot of discussion on an item or it&#39;s a brainstorming session that should be done in committee if it is a we don&#39;t know what we want to do and we&#39;re just going to have it out with this that can be done in a committee of the whole should not be a line item for business the line item for business is am i going to adopt these sokovia accords or not and we&#39;re going to talk about how to amend and all of the other pieces that go with us if it is a large discussion you you should be looking to use some of the tools of pushing it to committee if there is no debate do you have to ask three times no you do not that is a meeting expectation i would say look towards uh i would look towards best practices for me is their debate is their debate hearing none will move to vote quick it is the responsibility of the membership to not be silent if they have something to say it is the responsibility of the membership to speak up if they have something to say i&#39;m not going to sit there is there debate bueller bueller bueller no absolutely not that is gonna take your time away all right i have some real avengers fans out there i know i know i know all right so if a debate had to be done how much time is ideal to spend on it great question stevenson i think that&#39;s really going to depend on a number of things if you&#39;re following formal robert&#39;s rules of order you&#39;re going to follow a speaking order who speaks first the person who made the motion generally would have the right to speak first let me give you an example of how this goes off the rails so we added we had a motion and debate president iron man has come in and says i believe that due to recent events the accords must be signed captain america asks to the chair to get the acknowledgement of the chair which fury acknowledges the esteemed gentleman from brooklyn captain america says i must respectfully disagree with my dear colleague the accords would be a violation of liberty so far so good but how many times has the following happened in your meetings obs fu language order and then all of a sudden yeah welcome to a jay johnson training you knew that was gonna happen at some point in time uh with that being said captain america and iron man are now completely bogarting your meeting and that is not the purpose of the robert&#39;s rules of order what we would be looking for is following speaking turns iron man speaks captain america speaks and then everyone else in your membership speaks before iron man or captain america get to speak again it doesn&#39;t matter if they&#39;ve got a really good argument it doesn&#39;t matter if they feel like they need to say all of these things or respond or react that is not the tools that they are given inside of a meeting from the point that they&#39;ve spoken if i&#39;m the chairperson and that starts to occur i would say order mr iron man mr america i&#39;m sorry you&#39;ve spoken allow the rest of the membership to please speak we will come back to you if there is time in this debate to hear your rebuttals and i would move forward okay now to the question of how much debate is appropriate when all voices have been heard or had the opportunity to speak it is your prerogative as the chair of whether you let them speak a second time or a third time or a fourth time if you&#39;re allowing captain america and iron man to speak four times each and they&#39;re just going back and forth you have allowed your meeting to get out of control say your peace and then we vote say your peace and then we vote speaking time and limitations you can use tools such as uh the esteemed gentleman from brooklyn will have three minutes to present his case the timer starts now could we please start the timer you may also say we will only allow for 15 minutes of debate to occur on this topic area as many people can speak in that 15 minute time frame now when you make a ruling such as that what if you need more time yes you can extend debate what if you need less time yes you can call the vote what if somebody wants to speak six times yes you can stop them from speaking six times you&#39;re the chairperson you own them own the rules of the meeting and there are opportunities to overrule the chair we&#39;ll get to some of those okay in google meet there&#39;s a function to send two people to another meeting room same with zoom you can say all right iron man uh uh iron man captain america go go argue this out now if you&#39;re sitting there and you go three rounds of debate and you still don&#39;t have a good clear picture maybe that&#39;s something that needs to be moved to committee and to let that debate occur inside of committee not in your formal meeting here is something that you can use in that digital space i said i would get back to this this is a digital timer you can very easily set up times and you can set up limitations and use this as an online tool to be able to keep track of things all right so let&#39;s move forward with that limiting and ending debate this drives me nuts because i see it used incorrectly literally constantly if i call the question which some people have maybe heard i move the question or i move the previous question or i move to call the question what i&#39;m literally doing is saying i would like to end debate and vote on this question in a three-hour meeting usually you hear somebody at some point in time get super frustrated it&#39;s probably a fire that says i move the question why do we do that okay well this can make sure now the chairperson this is important there&#39;s two things that happen with a call to question the chairperson has the ability to recognize that motion if that motion is something now the chairperson can be overruled on this okay but the chairperson can say we have not heard from the esteemed kyle as well as melissa i would entertain that motion to call the question once they have spoken you can push it you can&#39;t debate it the chairperson can make that ruling if the membership says no we don&#39;t want to hear from kyle and melissa they can appeal the chair&#39;s decision on that question okay so this is getting a little bit complicated but we&#39;ll we&#39;ll work through this together ending debate or limiting debate these are rules that essentially reduce the membership&#39;s ability to have their voices heard in which case calling the question requires a two-thirds majority not a simple majority we&#39;ll get into what&#39;s simple and two-thirds and everything else which means two-thirds of all of the votes would have to agree to end debate it might look a little something like this chairman fury acknowledges the red witch the red witch says thank you mr chairman i moved the previous question i call the question drax the destroyer says support and jumps right in chairman fury says it has been moved and seconded that we stop debate and vote on the pending question which is and states the motion that&#39;s on the floor at that person point in time a vote is taken all those in favor of stopping debate and voting now raise your right hand members raise hands all those opposed raise your hand members raise hands if the eyes have it it means there are two thirds in favor and we will vote immediately and then you vote on the motion voting on to call the question is not voting on the motion that&#39;s why this language is very important all those in favor of stopping debate and voting now rather than all those in favor because what you&#39;re doing is you&#39;re telling your membership exactly what they&#39;re voting on if the eyes don&#39;t have it there are not two-thirds in favor and debate will continue next speaker please okay now this is an example again this is one of those examples of how these things can go and i&#39;m looking through how does a chairperson decide to push to a committee for more brainstorm versus voting and let&#39;s see it&#39;s a good question and i think it&#39;s going to be context dependent if i am a chairperson and i&#39;m looking for a and there&#39;s a item on the agenda for amended bylaws and as that discussion starts to go it&#39;s very very evident to me that there were some things that were not thought about that there were some major issues or challenges with the amendments at that point in time i might entertain emotion to send this back to committee if it&#39;s just that people disagree yes no yes no i don&#39;t like it i do like it i don&#39;t like it i do like it take the vote let it sort itself out that way but if i&#39;m in the middle of that discussion and i hear major gaps major misrepresentations or misinterpretations i might at that point in time say it appears that this item may not be ready for consideration by the membership i would entertain a motion to move this back to the bylaws committee for further consideration i hope that makes sense is there a problem with it back to committee is it that two people don&#39;t like it take the vote that would be my best interpretation for you on that and again it&#39;s going to be somewhat context dependent all right interruptions what&#39;s the point what are the points these are different points that can be made at any point in time points of order points of information and points of privilege you can interrupt a speaker in order to make these points so i could be delivering my best arguments for why i we should adopt the sokovia accords and in the middle of me speaking somebody can say point of order so it is an interruptible uh i think so you should be looking at interruptions point of order information and privilege are we all okay good deal so at that point in time they could interrupt me for one of these points of orders each of these serves a little bit of a different function i&#39;ll give you just a quick example of each one of them a point of order for example might look something like this captain marvel gets the approval and acknowledgement from the chairpoint of order the chair acknowledges captain marvel the motion on the floor is about the sokovia accords and the conversation has drifted into infinitive stones in which case the chairperson would make a ruling thank you captain marvel we will limit debate to the question at hand which is the sokovia accords so a point of order is to bring us back onto what it is it&#39;s to say uh point of order we are now discussing the original motion but an amendment has been made the discussion should be limited to the amendment the chairperson would say duly noted we will limit the discussion to the amendment now if the chair does not take that point of order we&#39;ll get into what that looks like in just a little bit okay that would be where the chair says i believe that the infinity stones discussion is pertinent to the sokovia accords we will allow this debate to continue the chair can make that ruling again this is where the chair gets to decide is it on track is it not on track if it&#39;s not on track let&#39;s bring it back to track if it is on track or we feel like it is on track the chairperson essentially acts as your adjudicator to make that decision and allow it to go forward if the chair doesn&#39;t make a decision that the membership likes again there is a process for fixing that point of information thor odinson says point of information gets acknowledgement from the chair did the sokovia accords assume jurisdiction in asgard to which the chairperson is now going to answer if the chairperson doesn&#39;t have the answer the chairperson might look to whoever made the motion or the committee that made the motion in order to answer that question chairman fury says thank you mr odinson the accords are limited to the laws of midgard in which case now that has been answered and the speaking and the debate can be continued okay so point of information is asking a question that is related to what the business is on the floor can a person take several motions in a debate yes a person can make motions all over the place if you are a member and you are a member that is a part of the voting body then you have the right to do point of informations point of orders points of privilege motions amended motions and so on and so forth okay let&#39;s get to a point of privilege this is one that&#39;s sometimes used sometimes not used particularly well a point of privilege is where somebody has something now there is a general point of privilege and a personal point of privilege again that&#39;s getting maybe a little technical but a general point of privilege and this was literally done in a meeting i think it&#39;s one of the best examples to the chair point of privilege uh what&#39;s that uh there is a the boiler is about to explode okay that is a general point of privilege that is going to affect everybody that is in the room it is time for us to recess and get the hell out of this room versus a personal point of privilege which might be to the chair clint clint barton says chairman fury i rise to a point of personal privilege chairman fury please state your point i&#39;m finding it difficult to hear the speakers clearly would everyone be good enough to lean into their microphone speak up and enunciate so that i i will know what is being said chairman fury thank you for bringing this up members are requested to speak up loudly and clearly during discussion alexis absolutely you nailed it uh point of privilege it is an ice box in this room and i can&#39;t take notes because my hands are shaking so badly i have heard that and that is a very very valid point of privilege okay from the chairperson they might respond thank you for bringing that up uh we will look to try to get the heating and cooling taken care of inside of this room now if it&#39;s going to take more than a few seconds to do so if i&#39;m the chairperson i may entertain a motion for a short recess to get the temperature under control i may take a i may take a point of you know a request for a recess in order to have the technology fixed so we&#39;re not sitting there in the middle of the meeting where everyone&#39;s wasting their time uh i would entertain a motion for a short recess so we can handle the technological issues that have been presented we take that recess people get to go they get their break and so on and so forth and now we work on those pieces if it&#39;s going to be a short fix or a super quick thing that&#39;s not necessarily something that you need a recess but again use that as a tool if necessary all right thank you jonathan amendments we are terrible at making amendments and i&#39;m going to give you three rules your amendment should be striking something your amendment should be inserting something or your amendment should be striking and inserting something so if i make the motion to adopt the sokovia accords and you don&#39;t like that you vote no if i make the amen if i make the motion to adopt the sokovia accords and you want to adopt a different set of accords you want to adopt the uh jci accords i move to strike the sokovia accords and insert the jci accords in its place that would be an amendment if you&#39;re not striking language or inserting language odds are your amendment is probably not on point what does that look like madame gamora i move to amend the motion to adopting the sokovia chords with the inserted language of to take effect only on the planet earth to which the response i am groot which you know of course we all know means second and chairman fury there is an amendment to insert the language to take effect only on the planet earth debate on this amendment may commence at this point in time the only debate is not whether you&#39;re going to adopt the sokovia accords it is only going to be about whether or not the sokovia accords will only be on the planet earth okay does that make sense we&#39;re not we&#39;re not talking about adoption it&#39;s strictly about whether or not it should be earth or across the entire universe i&#39;m going to go back to uh kevin&#39;s question must all points of order privilege information be recognized by the chair essentially what you&#39;re doing by making a point is getting the chair&#39;s attention to make a ruling on something or to take action on something you&#39;re essentially using your points in order to get the chair to do something or to provide something for you so yes i would encourage point of orders directly to the chair the chair will acknowledge it if the chair does not acknowledge your point of order you can always do something differently and you&#39;re about to see what that looks like does anybody know and let&#39;s all right so now i&#39;m going to test you what is one issue with this amendment that just got made what is one thing that could be wrong with this amendment anybody want to take a gander shoot in a chat what do you think so if it&#39;s illegal or if it&#39;s completely incorrect yeah the chair does not have to acknowledge that oh interesting what do you mean debate should be on to allow the amendment you could have a debate on that question where it should happen what did we learn from thor odinson&#39;s point of information earlier is that the sokovia accords are only for midgard which is earth for those of you not keeping square at home on the avengers alternatively in this case the chairman might say or a member could object to the amendment on the grounds that the motion the original motion only pertains to earth and that this would be redundant an interesting little fix here okay now if you have a motion that has been made and an amendment is made to it and that amendment is redundant it&#39;s not on point it&#39;s not necessary it&#39;s not useful or it&#39;s illegal or it&#39;s against your constitution or whatever the reason is you can object to that amendment and ask for a ruling from the chair i object to this amendment this amendment is redundant it was identified already that there was uh that this only applies to earth in which case there&#39;s no need for this amendment chairperson fury at that point in time might say the objection is noted and i agree this is a redundant amendment we will continue with discussion and debate on the original motion made and share that information or they may say i disagree the language that has been presented is a necessary condition to ensure that the sokovia accords are very clearly on the earth i will allow this amendment to continue forward so an ejection can be raised and it can be approved or it could be disapproved again we&#39;re getting into some higher level robert&#39;s rules here now what if you don&#39;t like the chairperson&#39;s ruling what if he says all right this amendment is out of order we&#39;re not going to listen to it well at that point in time if you don&#39;t like the chairs ruling on something as a member you have the ability to challenge the chairperson&#39;s ruling this would be making an appeal okay so we appeal the decision of the chair we&#39;re now getting into a little bit higher levels so bear with me if it is something that you have questions on this is an under utilized tool often times because the chairperson doesn&#39;t necessarily make the rulings in the formal settings or in the informal settings of some of the jcis but this is one of the rules that you have the ability to challenge a chair&#39;s decision if the body votes and it&#39;s a majority you don&#39;t get to challenge that decision there&#39;s other tools for that that we&#39;ll talk about if the body if it&#39;s the chair&#39;s decision only so in this last scenario fury said this amendment doesn&#39;t fly what would an appeal look like spider-man says i rise to a point of order state your point my colleague has proposed moving our headquarters to planet titan this motion does not fall within the scope of our constitution chairman fury the point is well taken and this motion will not be taken up thanos disagrees i appeal the chair&#39;s decision i believe that this motion does fall within our scope nebula seconds that and chairman fury says very well since the decision of the chair has been appealed the group will decide at that point in time the members would debate it the chairperson speaks first all members get to speak once and the chair may speak again at the end of the debate to sum up the discussion and a vote is made this is how the members are in control of the meeting not the chairperson the chairperson&#39;s job is to run it is to adjudicate it is to manage it but it is the members who own it that&#39;s really really critical and again this is something that&#39;s not often used but it is an option in order to make sure that the minority voices are heard so if the chair says i&#39;m not going to hear any more debate anymore on this topic move to appeal the decision of the chair seconded by eugenio and at that point in time the chairperson says i think we&#39;ve heard enough of this debate we don&#39;t need to hear any more but then teresita gets to speak and christina gets to speak and uh dr jeremy gets to speak and we all get to speak and then the chairperson would get to rebuttal and then you make your vote if the vote is the majority guess what debate continues if the vote is in the minority the debate stops okay so that is appealing a decision of a chair all right in the case the chair would like to participate in the debate does he have to vacate the chair consult your bylaws okay there are some instances in which case the bylaws are very clear that the chairperson oversees the meeting and that they don&#39;t vote unless there is a tie in some cases the bylaws indicate that the chair is able to speak on a item or an agenda item in most cases the chair can debate in most cases the chair can vote to break a tie or anything else instances that may not necessarily the chair is often not encouraged not allowed to make the motion they&#39;re not allowed to institute the motion so that is why a chair says i will entertain a motion that says xyz the membership would then have to make the motion and second the motion in order to facilitate debate or in order to get to debate so that&#39;s a good question now again i&#39;m going to encourage you to check your bylaws or to check your structures in a township setting and i&#39;m going to give you a for instance on this in a township setting there are seven different board members the supervisor is the person who oversees the meeting in which case all seven members of the township board have the right to vote have the right to and and have to vote the supervisor has to vote on every single item they don&#39;t get even if it&#39;s all six others agree they still have to vote it has to be the seven votes okay this is why i&#39;m saying check your bylaws check your constitution check your ordinances check whatever that is because it can be different in a city government the chairperson doesn&#39;t vote the chairperson doesn&#39;t engage in debate in some instances if the chairperson is debating and you as a member find the chairperson to not be uh unbiased on the question what is your options i&#39;m testing you now so we&#39;re gonna follow on uh we&#39;re gonna follow on annika&#39;s we&#39;re gonna follow on let&#39;s see we gotta get this muted there we go and we&#39;re gonna follow on annika&#39;s question the chair is being biased the chair is engaged in debate and you don&#39;t think that they&#39;re being objective we appeal the chair we appeal the chair&#39;s decision we may even make an objection to say i object we want you to facilitate this discussion we would ask that if you have a strong opinion one way or the other that you step down from your chairperson&#39;s position and engage in a debate you can make that objection okay the chairperson says no i&#39;m the chair nan and boo boo you can&#39;t do anything about it that&#39;s false you can actually remove a chair from your meeting you is the members i move to remove the chairperson as the chairperson for this motion or line item it&#39;s supported by glc neil we now debate this and we remove the chairperson from that agenda item you can reinstate that chairperson afterwards if you want to again it is done in formality now you can make the objection first and maybe the chair says you&#39;re right i&#39;m sorry this is a passion topic i would like to recuse myself as the chair for the purposes of this agenda item i would like to appoint glc neil to chair this agenda item while i debate because this is a motion that i&#39;m very passionate about okay you always have options how we use those or how we effectively use those is really the question so i hope that answers your question check your bylaws of whether or not the chairperson is a breaking the tie vote is a expected vote now and let me tell you one other thing right if the chairperson is the president of my local organization and you are taking minutes i would like to know how my president voted i would like to see that vote on every single minutes is the president representing my interests my beliefs my values or whatever that they were elected to do in which case i find it very very appropriate for the president who might be chairing the meeting to cast their vote on a question should they be objective and unbiased and allow for the rights of the minority absolutely if they&#39;re not objections removing the chair making those motions or appeals good questions now we&#39;re getting deep this is fun all right these ones are often screwed up i&#39;m going to say it right there pay attention three different motions impacting three different ways in which we try to table a piece of business okay so the motion was made for the sokovia accords and we decide uh you know what captain america is not in the room right now and we really think that we would benefit from the discussion from captain america i move to table this item to the end of the meeting tabling something is taking it off of the current table and making it later in that same meeting if it is not brought up again in that meeting it dies tabling something is to make it later in that meeting to not deal with that business you may also i move to table this item until we discuss the budget okay that is a good uh that&#39;s a good postponement type motion well we need to know what the budget is before we approve our marketing expenditures great i move to table this until we&#39;ve had our budget discussion it requires a second the team the membership votes on that and then that item becomes item g directly under the budget a motion to postpone has a definitive end date i move to postpone the sokovia accords motion until august 2022 into our annual meeting of august 2022 i moved to postpone this until our next general membership meeting i moved to postpone this to a definitive time in date that item if approved if that motion is approved that item becomes old business on that next agenda i can also use a motion to postpone indefinitely that means i&#39;m killing it it&#39;s i never want to talk about this again burn those images into your brain emotion to table is later a motion to postpone is a specific time and date in the future and a motion to postpone indefinitely that motion&#39;s dead it&#39;s not brought up again in its existing form you&#39;d have to make amendments to it changes to its substantive changes to it in order for that peace to be revisited again use these ones correctly because if you accidentally postpone something indefinitely and it goes into your minutes in theory it&#39;s dead all right referring to a committee we&#39;re not getting anywhere two different ways to do this you can refer to an established committee or you can refer to an ad hoc committee the difference between those so say for example you already have a finance committee and you&#39;re talking about the budget and you realize that there&#39;s some big gaps or some big challenges i move to refer this back to the budget committee for further consideration that&#39;s already established they already exist they&#39;re already out there you can push it to that committee i move to send this to the bylaw committee for further consideration i move to send this to whatever the committee is in existence an ad hoc committee is a committee that is then created on site this is what that would look like say we&#39;re talking about the sokovia accords and i as a member i&#39;m tired of listening to the debate and clearly we&#39;re not there yet i move to send this to an ad hoc committee consisting of president iron man captain america gomorrah thanos and thor i&#39;ve identified what that ad-hoc committee is i would need a second when that second is made now if somebody says i move to amend that motion i believe that nebula should be on that committee as well i move to amend to insert nebula&#39;s name insert remember insert or strike i move to amend to strike thanos from that those would be acceptable amendments to the question an ad hoc committee is one that is formed if you&#39;re making the motion to send this to an ad hoc committee as a member i can also say i move to send this to an ad hoc committee formed by the chair i can put the onus on the chair to create an ad hoc committee for it if have here nice job then i like it if i don&#39;t want to be the person that decides who&#39;s on that committee i can encourage i can say i move to have this go to an ad hoc committee the chair will decide the committee members or the bylaws committee will decide the members of this ad hoc committee i move to send this to a committee of seven decided by the chair you can be very specific with your ad hoc committee requests that&#39;s going to get you out of some debate inside of your formal meeting which should be voted on before the main motion absolutely so if i am making a motion to send this to committee that occurs before we adopt the sokovia accords right because i&#39;m saying we&#39;re not ready to adopt these let&#39;s send it to committee for further consideration so the main motion is set aside and the committee motion is going to be taken up if there&#39;s amendments to the committee motion adding gamora subtracting gamora adding nebula then each of those amendments stack on top of each other you have to take the nebula one and get that out of the way then you take the gamora one and get that out of the way then you vote on the committee and get that out of the way and if the committee works it goes to committee if the committee&#39;s voted down it goes back to the original motion every time a motion is made they stack on top of each other in which case you have to unbundle them this is why when you&#39;re making amendments it&#39;s insert strike or insert and strike so that way your chairperson your sergeant-at-arms whomever can put the language specifically on the screen to follow along with each on the screen or on a piece of paper so they can follow the stacked amendments it&#39;s really critical in order for you to make clear what you&#39;re actually voting on that&#39;s also why it&#39;s very important that the chairperson says we are voting on the amendment to add nebula is there discussion if they start talking about gamora that is not that&#39;s out of order we&#39;re focused on nebula at this point in time because that is the amendment that&#39;s on the table we&#39;re not talking about adoption we&#39;re not talking about committee it&#39;s only about adding nebula to the committee so you might be in total disagreement with the committee but supportive to have nebula on the committee and still vote down the committee okay yeah ah you take them one at a time all right cool oops we messed up we signed the accords and we probably shouldn&#39;t have well there&#39;s a couple of ways that we can handle that if i am the person who made the motion and say that we&#39;re in discussion and at some point in time you&#39;ve shown me that there&#39;s some really bad language in the sokovia accord that i missed i can personally withdraw my motion that would be immediate i would draw my motion to adopt the sokovia accords somebody else can still make the motion to adopt it but i personally am withdrawing it i am the only person that can withdraw my motion reconsideration say we&#39;re in the avengers compound and the vote to adopt the sokovia accords passes okay motions passed somewhere down the line when they&#39;re talking about budgets they realize oh my gosh we passed this and we have no mechanism for enforcement what are we going to do i move to reconsider the motion to adopt the sokovia accords only this is the key the people that were on the majority have to make that motion so if i lost if i was on the minority and i said no don&#39;t pass it and it passes i can&#39;t move to reconsider it because i&#39;m under minority of course i&#39;m going to ask you to reconsider no reconsider this again and again and again nope it doesn&#39;t work like that only the only the majority can make the motion to reconsider the motion to reconsider is only done in the same meeting make sense if the motion to reconsider passes that means that you have to vote on the item again reconsidering doesn&#39;t mean that the item goes away again it&#39;s stacking your emotions i move to reconsider that passes now this motion is back on the table the motion to approve we can debate it again we can have arguments on it again but we still have to take action on that piece of uh on that piece of business okay so just because a motion to reconsider passes doesn&#39;t mean that the motion goes away it just means that it&#39;s back on the table for discussion and for a vote a motion to rescind is different what is a motion to rescind say you got to the next meeting we&#39;re going to say the meeting not the same meeting the next meeting and only the next meeting and only the next meeting be very clear the next meeting we realized oops we made a mistake on those sokovia accords the last three weeks you know it&#39;s been been bad the majority can make a motion to rescind the original motion essentially that kills it because that is a original business you you already passed it it&#39;s already in existence because you&#39;re killing something that the membership has already decided it requires a two-thirds majority it&#39;s not a simple majority at that point in time a two-thirds majority in order to be able to go through that all right uh i see a couple of questions haley would the withdrawal of the motion by the person who made it require a seconder no and and here&#39;s the interesting thing okay if i make a motion i am obligated to vote in favor of that motion if i make the motion and kneel seconds the motion he is not required to vote in favor of the motion the seconder or the supporter does not have to vote in favor of the motion that they support it a second is strictly to make discussion possible a second or supportive motion is only to make discussion possible in which case that i am withdrawing my original motion i don&#39;t need a second to do that if somebody uh you know if engine beer decides that she wants to make a motion somebody would have to second her motion in order for it to continue to have discussion okay two-thirds of all or two-thirds that voted for two-thirds of the voting members on the floor so if there&#39;s a hundred members and eighty people said yes the first time i still only need essentially 67 i need two thirds 67 people to say yes i don&#39;t need all 80 or two-thirds of the 80. i need 67 of the full voting body good ques good questions these are great questions by the way thank you all right so the difference between withdrawal reconsider same meeting and rescind rescinding also requires notice there has to be notice that a motion to rescind is on there that gives your membership and your voting body the opportunity to say hey we already we already said yes to this we need to show up to make sure that our voices are heard or we need to show up to get rid of this you have to have notice on emotion to resent all right yeah me too joanna that&#39;s funny all right so a house divided all right voting oftentimes we do a voice vote all in favor please say aye all opposed please say nay all all in favor please say bylaws all opposed please say no bylaws or whatever it is that would be a simple voice vote sometimes in the electronic media a little harder sometimes even in a room because you might have people go ah and they scream it out and you can&#39;t really tell okay well there are some votes different ways to do that first of all a roll call vote so for example and i use we have you know we use these things even within our company there are issues or items that a simple i nay might suffice but i as i chair of a meeting i may say this is a budget adoption i&#39;m looking for a roll call vote uh mr fitzgerald yes uh mr esenberg yes uh miss schmitz no uh ms delphine no because i want it recorded how each person has voted on that item okay that would be a roll call vote or a purpose for a roll call vote you can also do this if you have various levels of voting strength so say i&#39;ve got a hundred presidents but not all presidents are created equal because of their membership numbers i may ask for a roll call vote strictly because i have to tabulate how much voting power each member has inside of a space and thus a roll call vote would be necessary white ballot if i remember correctly christina that is really where it&#39;s more of a vote by acclimation so it&#39;s everybody&#39;s kind of in agreement or say that there&#39;s a candidate uh a candidate for elected office and there&#39;s no opposition candidate i may move to vote by acclimation so we don&#39;t have to do a roll call vote on that in which case we say i and nay but somebody could still actually ask for a division somebody can ask for a division the chair now this is an interesting thing okay say that we&#39;re in here and we&#39;ve got you know two 200 and 200 plus people on this and we say all in favor say aye and 220 people say i and i could hear them all and three people say nay and i is the chair say the eyes have it and we&#39;re moving forward and one of the nays one of the two people out of the 220 says division where very clearly there was a massive majority i as the chair can say objection out of order there was a clear division i&#39;m not going to recognize the division as it would just be a waste of time now they can appeal the decision of the chair they have that opportunity to appeal the decision of the chair but then the membership would vote and say no clearly 220 people said yes there&#39;s no reason for division to waste time even further okay division when called what we would do is say okay maybe it was too close and i couldn&#39;t really tell or it sounded like a hundred people said yes and 104 people said no and i&#39;m just not sure i could ask for division that could handle be handled in a couple of different ways it could be handled with raise your hands it could be handled with to the right side of the room uh the eyes to the left side of the room the nays and then we&#39;ll count heads that can be handled by essentially separating those two and making a more clear indication of what would be a dividing of the vote okay if you call a yay a vote and it&#39;s close can you call another vote using roll call yes absolutely if you&#39;re not certain as the chairperson and you&#39;re like i just don&#39;t know it&#39;s a big room um instead i&#39;m gonna request a roll call vote uh the esteemed person from uh from estonia yay nay the esteemed person from the americas yay nay and you could go around and do that or you could ask for division and a raising of the hands and in a request to essentially count the votes you know visually good question all right the last thing that i&#39;m going to cover abstentions don&#39;t do it if you are on a board of directors you are there to vote you are there to have your voice heard there is in my opinion really only one place that you should be making an abstention or not voting and that is if you have a authentic or legitimate conflict of interest if there is something that is a conflict of interest an abstention is not only uh appropriate but also ethically obliged okay with that being said just because it&#39;s a tough vote just because somebody&#39;s feelings could be hurt by the vote you as a leader or you as a member of a body you are the authority it is the expectation of a healthy organization that you can have disagreements and conflicts please see dealing with difficult people or difficult conversations trainings if that&#39;s not the case but an abstention is bad form unless there is a conflict of interest you should be making your vote you should be making your voice heard so that&#39;s all i&#39;ll say about that i know that was heavy right like we got in there deep we did some good i&#39;ve got a couple of best practices for chairing and i do want to make sure i&#39;m trying to catch some of these questions neil&#39;s capturing them if i have missed any and we will revisit those so if you want to shake it out a little bit move around get something going here we&#39;ll give you a couple of tips for sharing an effective meeting and then some of my favorite my 12-step program for having your meetings not suck all right all right here we go leading effective meetings during the meeting call to order on time i saw this question earlier people being late well if you have quorum go without them obviously with quorum that becomes a question if you&#39;re not i didn&#39;t obviously cover things of quorum there&#39;s different meetings that require different levels of quorum check your bylaws check your constitution etc but with that being said if a meeting starts at nine and you have quorum start the meeting at nine if you don&#39;t have quorum i would very very clearly indicate at the moment that quorum occurs doctor uh i&#39;m gonna use uh i&#39;m gonna use neil just so i can pick on neil neil thank you now that you&#39;ve arrived we have reached quorum we will be able to begin this meeting that&#39;s not rude that&#39;s factual but i have made it very clear neil we were waiting for you and now that we are here with you we are glad to start this meeting but i might also handle that either preceding the meeting or after the meeting neil i&#39;ve noticed that there&#39;s been a pattern of you being late to the meetings that&#39;s actually really slowing us down and not allowing our chapter our board our governing body to do business could i get a commitment from you to be on time so that way we can start the meetings effectively and i would have a conversation about that that would be a more direct appropriate but i&#39;m not gonna lie you walk in late to a comedy show and guess what you are the star of the comedy show and if you walk in late to my meeting and i&#39;ve had to wait because you weren&#39;t there i&#39;m at least going to politely and professionally point out that the meeting can now begin that neil has entered the room start your meetings on time if you&#39;re not bound by a quorum issue start your meeting on time and i have a very very strict rule i will not go back and catch you up to speed because you were late i have an expectation that you will catch up or engage in a better way all right stay focused using your agenda please stay focused using your agenda use that as your you use that as your shield your mighty shield to continue going forward to ensure that you&#39;re staying on track encourage participation and do your best to equalize participation we know that diversity equity and inclusion is important sometimes some people will take a little longer to and i&#39;m going to give you tactics to do this because me as an extrovert very easy for me to speak up in a meeting my colleague who&#39;s an introvert has flat outside i find it challenging because i need to think through or i need to do this and i&#39;m i&#39;m just not ready to do that there are ways for you to have equalization inside of a meeting i&#39;m going to give you a couple tactics for that but encourage that participation start by setting up the precedent i&#39;m expecting to hear everybody&#39;s opinion on this as this is a matter that is incredibly important to our organization prompt comments when necessary but do that with respect and dignity all right leading effective meetings during the meeting that was before during the meeting control and interrupt interruptions and digressions if captain america and iron man are getting out of control it is your duty as leading that meeting to call that quit i will thank you mr iron man thank you captain america we&#39;ve heard both of your points we&#39;d like to hear from everybody else in the meeting at this point in time before we allow you to speak again i&#39;m just going to make it very clear matter of fact and professional if they continue to do that there are options you know if your sergeant-at-arms take them out although i don&#39;t know that i would want to fight captain america but you can have your sergeant-at-arms remove them or you can call the meeting to recess until that is under control you maintain control and be consistent in your rulings park digressions i got a couple of tactics for this if somebody starts to veer off start talking about infinity stones set that aside table it put it to the parking lot or whatever it is deflate wind bags if i am gonna sit there and just talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk limit the debate limit the discussion use the tools that you&#39;ve been presented clarify and rephrase as the as the chair what i&#39;m hearing you say is you&#39;re ready to vote what i&#39;m hearing you say is we would like to entertain a motion to amend these bylaws you can clarify and rephrase to encourage and promote the meeting to continue forward even if you&#39;re not necessarily making motions yourself manage conflict if it gets out of control call a recess get temperatures down and then revisit or handle those on the side in more formal procedures is probably a better choice when you have a larger group this will help keep you on track so being formal the acknowledgements and everything else probably a better group when you better when you have a group of 12 or more last but not least we&#39;re gonna do some sample topic areas actually we&#39;re gonna we&#39;re gonna hold this off it&#39;s a lot what questions have i missed i did see one from dr jeremy let&#39;s say roll call is done in quorum established one person is absent halfway during the meeting the person comes to present their report but no roll call was repeated till the end of the meeting does the one person consider as present or observer prerogative of the chair i would call that the prerogative of the chair if they&#39;re late you can at this point now i would i would be reasonable with this right i would be reasonable with this but roll call has been completed if i have somebody that comes into my meeting and it&#39;s late i would acknowledge their presence please let the minutes reflect that uh neil has arrived at our meeting at 11 36 a.m and let that be reflected in roll call now neil&#39;s a part of the meeting it&#39;s been noted in the minutes that neil was an hour and 36 minutes late but i can continue forward from there especially if what you know we do want to be considerate that even in the event that somebody is late or done something that we want to make sure that voices are heard or that pieces of business have been done now if neil missed his line item you have a choice that could become old business that could become dead that could become something that you take on at the end of your meeting chair&#39;s prerogative good question we have some questions that have just come directly to me so what happens while we&#39;re waiting on neil let&#39;s say we don&#39;t meet quorum what happens then and i&#39;ve got a follow-up go ahead fire away okay so can we call it can we call the meeting to order if we don&#39;t have forum can we do reports but my understanding is we can&#39;t do new business nor old business is that right so what happens essentially if we don&#39;t have forum what kind of we can&#39;t do check your bylaws check your constitution i and i say that and i i literally say go back to there absolutely you would not be able to conduct business you would not be able to take votes which also means if your bylaws indicate that you have to open the meeting with a vote you&#39;re not you&#39;re not having your meeting that day if you have to set your agenda with the vote you&#39;re not meeting that day because you can&#39;t set your agenda which means that you don&#39;t have anything on the table check your bylaws check your constitution in the event that i didn&#39;t have quorum what i would probably do is instruct you know maybe committee meetings discussion open forum discussion none of this will be recorded in minutes none of this will be re right i would still try to make a value out of that but business probably would not get conducted at that day okay uh this was actually um something he said great because their bylaws didn&#39;t cover this so if your bylaws and constitution doesn&#39;t cover this what&#39;s the general procedure using robert&#39;s rules if the bylaws don&#39;t i&#39;m sorry ask that question one more time so if that you said to check for by laws and constitution about what to do if you don&#39;t have foreign but if your by-laws and constitution don&#39;t say anything what&#39;s the best practice so i&#39;m going to encourage you for two best practices uh first of all if your bylaws and your constitution don&#39;t address a critical issue consider having that critical issue addressed in future bylaw and constitution discussions second refer to something like roberts rules online and or the original roberts rules book believe it or not they have essentially how best to manage virtually any situation that you can imagine in a meeting this is you know this is an hour and a half long that we&#39;ve done here today and i&#39;ve scratched the surface of what is possible inside of that space of robert&#39;s rules of order so consult the online roberts rules or your book for robert&#39;s rules there&#39;s more than likely something that will help you cover if you&#39;re not finding a resolution to your specific thing two options chairs prerogative or have the membership vote to have the membership i&#39;d entertain a motion to take up this business even though it&#39;s not listed in our bylaws as a necessary function of tonight&#39;s meeting let me give you an example of this in 2009-2010 my local organization had a massive massive crisis one that made the entire board of directors resign from their positions one that lost roughly about uh 30 we had 36 members we went down to four literally overnight so now we have four members left in our organization there&#39;s no leadership there&#39;s nobody to appoint there&#39;s nobody to do anything if i look at my bylaws there is nothing in my bylaws or constitution to manage that situation so we called a full meeting of the membership which at that time was four people we moved to suspend our bylaws in terms of elections we did that and then we elected us as leaders so then we could take ownership of the chapter again those are sort of egregious and high level i often times well can we just suspend bylaws or can we suspend rules to do this under the most egregious circumstances yes don&#39;t use that as a default that is not a default practice and it defeats the purpose and the rules of protecting the minority of making sure that majority rules and democracy and to ensure that you have functional meetings okay so that would be how i&#39;d answer that question but a couple more do you want to take them now or in a bit yeah let&#39;s take them now and i&#39;ll rapid fire my 12-step program at the end so let&#39;s get those questions answered what&#39;s the difference between a motion to strike and a motion to rescind so emotion to strike is a motion that is an amen amendment i moved to strike the language of this motion i moved to strike uh i moved to strike the motion in general i moved to strike all the language of the motion i etc a motion to rescind is the motion&#39;s already passed and now we want to make it go away could we clarify about what happens when we rescind the motion as well you were talking about how with motions at the second of the motion doesn&#39;t have to actually vote for the motion so there was a couple people a little confused because they thought that meant that the seconder wasn&#39;t allowed to vote they are allowed to vote so yeah let me clarify good thank you for that that question if i make a motion i move to i move to adopt the sokovia accords and neil seconds that motion because i made the motion i am forced to be in favor of the motion if i&#39;m no longer in favor of the motion i would withdraw it neil seconded the motion he has a choice to vote yay or nay who made the motion is required to vote yay who seconded the motion still has the choice to vote yes or no seconding emotion is what allows it to have debate and discussion it doesn&#39;t mean that you&#39;re necessarily in support of the motion i see one in the chat if a person doesn&#39;t approve the agenda can they attend the meeting yes i can vote no on the agenda and say no i don&#39;t want no i don&#39;t like this or i can vote no on the minutes or anything else as a member so who gets and and let me clarify this this is actually a really really good i&#39;m gonna i&#39;m gonna lead this into something else your bylaws and your constitution should if they don&#39;t talk to glc neil should identify who your voting members are and should identify who has speaking rights inside of your meeting typically and i will say this so for example in my local organization only of age members in good standing have speaking rights and voting rights if i&#39;m the chair of my meeting and a senator comes in i have the prerogative of saying i would like to let the senator speak and i also have the prerogative of saying the senator is not an active of age member is not a voting member of this organization and therefore does not have speaking rights your bylaws should indicate who has speaking rights who has voting rights if it doesn&#39;t address that but with that being said chairs prerogative i can allow a non-member to speak i can request a non-member to speak if somebody&#39;s giving us a proposal i could invite them up to give their proposal even if they&#39;re not a member and again the membership controls the meeting so they can always overrule the prerogative of the chair i&#39;ve got one about the chair jay and then one about motions in general so with the chair there&#39;s been lots of questions over what a chair and can and can&#39;t do when does a chair when should a chair vote are there any circumstances where a chair should i actually vote yes i think that a chair should okay well this is going to be the question okay if your chairperson is the president and again this is going to be something that you can decide for your local organization i believe that the chair should probably vote as an elected person i have been elected by the membership to voice my opinion on matters of business that is being conducted in my business i vote as the chair of my meeting i vote on every item my name is listed in the minutes for the direction and the choice that i made on every single item whether i&#39;m on the right side or whether i am on the uh nay site okay as a president of my local organization i am a member i am a uh of age person and i have paid my dues i have the right to vote not just an obligation to vote as the local president if i&#39;m the local president or if i&#39;m the national president now do i have to it&#39;s one of those things where if i am the chair and i&#39;m calling for a vote all of the eyes please say aye all the nays please say nay okay we&#39;re going to roll call and it&#39;s a 50 50 vote at that point in time i&#39;m generally obligated to vote in order to break the tie how i conduct a roll call vote is in the first time that a roll call votes called uh we will say national president trine uh madam schmitz mr fitzgerald mr johnson yes and i will call myself and i will vote the next time that i&#39;m calling that roll call vote i don&#39;t start with national president trine i&#39;m going to start with madam schmitz yes mr fitzgerald yes national president trine yes mr johnson yes the third time that i call for a roll call vote mr fitzgerald yes national president trine yes madam schmitz yes mr johnson yes i don&#39;t always start with the same person every single time i would move one more into the order so that way one person whoever&#39;s the a in the alphabet doesn&#39;t necessarily always have the first vote in a roll call vote that&#39;s something for you to consider as well great we&#39;ve got a couple more and then there&#39;s one there&#39;s somebody who&#39;s been very keen and asked me this question but i&#39;m gonna use it right at the end because i think it&#39;ll be a great segue to your recap of the 12 points on how to run an effective meeting and we&#39;ve got a couple questions about what happens if a motion doesn&#39;t have a second can it move forward great question the answer is no it doesn&#39;t move forward now this is this is pro level chairpersonship okay i it drives me insane when i see this uh glc neil has made a motion is there a second is there a second is there a second come on guys is there no second like is somebody going to second this karen would you second this thank you that is not that is not good chairpersonship okay and now let me tell you i just got a new puppy on january 1st if i&#39;m going to train the puppy to be a good puppy i have to be consistent if i&#39;m sitting there begging for a second on every single one of my motions my meetings are going out of control if neil makes the motion is there a second is there a second if there is no second this motion will be will fail the motion fails that would be me being a very very very very very generous chair because i generally is is there a second hearing no second the motion fails discussion continued or if there&#39;s no discussion because that&#39;s the original main motion the next item of business is this well wait a second we we didn&#39;t have a chance it is your obligation as a member of this body to speak up to allow your voice to be heard a motion was made we requested a second twice there was no second the motion fails if you&#39;d like to bring this up again i would encourage you to do so in the next meeting or i can make a chair prerogative to go back and say i will allow for this item this one time to be discussed if there is a second neil would you like to continue forward with your original motion neil says yes is there a second i guarantee you people are gonna be like second yes second and then every time after that i do not have any patience for it every time after that is there is there a second to this motion is there a second to this motion if i have to say it twice the motion dies for lack of support next item of business and i&#39;m not going to have the second grace if you consistently apply the rules and your members understand the rules and what those procedures are that is what makes your meetings go faster it may sound harsh but i&#39;m not being harsh and being professional and being direct and i&#39;m being considerate of the entire memberships time energy and efficiency inside of that meeting that&#39;s how you have to think about it from the chairperson&#39;s perspective if there&#39;s no second next item of business or the motion fails for lack of support are there any other amendments or discussions thank you and just shut it down oh okay i&#39;m gonna we&#39;ve got three more questions and then in the interest of time i&#39;m gonna move on so that you can talk about 12 steps and then if anyone&#39;s got any questions at the end we can take them and of course you can always email me or jay and we will help get you the answers as well so a couple of other ones that have come up are very quick ones can a board member move a motion i go back to the check your bylaws check your constitution right because there are instances in which case yes and there will be instances in which case no i tend to default to the idea that in a and it also depends on the type of meeting right so for example i&#39;ll use um a national conference if the chairperson calls for a motion and a board person raises their hand in a general membership in a general assembly it&#39;s acknowledged if it&#39;s a board of directors meeting it may not be acknowledged ooh interesting a national vice president may have the ability to make a motion or to vote on a motion whereas the auxiliary board member may not check your bylaws check your constitution they should define who has speaking rights and who has voting rights in your meeting as a default for me personally and again as a default if they&#39;re on the board and they are a member of good standing and they are a member of the organization they have a right to make motions inside of the meeting if they have speaking rights i look at it and say that they should probably have voting rights and the ability to move business but again check your bylaws check your constitution if somebody voted no to the agenda can they still attend meeting and can they still vote on motions so somebody said no to the agenda can they still vote yes so if uh if they said no to the agenda now this is an interesting thing right because i had mentioned to you even like when you&#39;re stacking motions i could vote yes to add nebula to a committee and still vote down the committee when it gets back to the main motion so just because i voted no on an agenda just because i voted no on an agenda item or anything else doesn&#39;t procr preclude me from having a voice in all other matters of the meeting if i&#39;m a member i have a voice if i&#39;m a member of the majority or the minority i have a voice i can still make motions and i can still raise points of order points of privilege points of information even if i wasn&#39;t on board for the agenda and i want to bring something interesting here for you to think in my opinion and this is how i look at it and this is how i expect my meetings to run if we&#39;re in a very contentious issue and we&#39;re all aboard of directors and we&#39;re split 51 to 49 okay half of the group doesn&#39;t agree half of the group agrees the way that i conduct my organizations my meetings is at the point in time when we have voted and at the point in time the democracy has had the opportunity for the voices of i and the voices of nay to be heard and recognized and that vote is approved or disapproved the entire body is now representing that decision made by the democracy let me repeat that again you may not agree with it but if it&#39;s approved at that point in time you have an obligation as a member of that body to support whatever that is or to move forward with that as a part of the organization or the overseeing body okay if i am sitting there in a meeting with my business partners and my business partners all five of them say yes and i say no what would happen if i just decided to go well fine i&#39;m not going to do this anyways and blah blah it&#39;s not going to be good for business that is true inside of your local organizations your national organizations your state organizations once the voices have been heard debate has been managed and democracy and vote has taken place at that point in time it is a decision of the organization to go in a specific direction follow and support that decision or use the tools to rescind it later great we&#39;ve got two that are linked to each other and then we&#39;ve got karen&#39;s question that will nicely segue into your 12 steps so the first part of this question is people have heard sometimes that the chairperson will sometimes say a phrase like seeing none the motion is passed so what happens if there&#39;s no there&#39;s no debate no one&#39;s made an amendment no one&#39;s raising their hand and it looks like this motions just going to pass and the chairman says seeing none the motion is passed so when do people need to vote and raise their hand and when can we also vote by acclamation and what does voting right affirmation mean sure so if there is let&#39;s let me give a couple of quick examples um if i&#39;m the chair of a meeting and we&#39;re looking at the agenda i would entertain a motion to accept the agenda as presented motion made by diane seconded by gabriel is there any discussion hearing none i will call for the vote all in favor say aye all opposed say nay thank you motion passes next item of business okay and i would do it literally probably that quickly it&#39;s the agenda if somebody wants to add something it is the members responsibility to speak up it is the members responsibility to speak up in the event that i am we&#39;re evaluating the dissolution getting rid of the extinction of our chapter at that point in time i may very intentionally and very inclusively respectfully request that each member speaks before we go to vote context environment that might determine how much effort i make at requesting discussion there&#39;s a motion on the table to dissolve our chapter it has been supported at this point as the chair i would request that each member speaks how they feel about this motion i&#39;ll give you time if necessary in order to prepare your thoughts we will take a five-minute recess and when we reconvene i would like to hear from everyone i&#39;ve already set the standard i&#39;ve given you time and i&#39;ve set the expectation as the chair if we go around and uh nadia refuses to speak on the issue i can&#39;t force nadia to speak on the issue but i&#39;ve given her time i&#39;ve given encouragement i&#39;ve requested as we go through each of the line i can say nadia do you wish to speak on this issue and nadia says no i don&#39;t wish to speak on this issue i respect that and i move to the next person votes by acclimation is when there&#39;s no alternative generally okay again so a vote by acclimation is uh we have one candidate who is apply you know who&#39;s running for a position and there&#39;s no other candidates i would move to vote by acclimation so we don&#39;t have to go through the roll call vote process that&#39;s generally where you&#39;re going to use a vote by acclimation if the vote by acclimation is yes then it is still a vote of all in favor of glc neil i all opposed motion passes rather than having to waste the time of saying uh national president from estonia mr cataldo ms willis mr tong mr and going through all of that that is where the acclimation vote saves you time energy and efforts and then karen&#39;s fantastic question i think we&#39;ve all been there as members particularly if we&#39;ve checked meeting what do we do when members don&#39;t shut up so we&#39;ve had the motion we think we&#39;ve finished the we think we&#39;ve finished the point and you&#39;ve got that one person that doesn&#39;t know when to quit when can we throw them out of the beat in and how do we manage disruptive people well that&#39;s a great question you as the chair have that prerogative you can throw them out of the meeting the first time that they do it now the membership can overrule you the membership could request that somebody is point of order uh the the language that is being used at this point in time i believe is offensive and i would like to request that this person&#39;s removed from this hearing or from this meeting okay as a chair i have a choice i can say uh and again i&#39;m using neil just because it&#39;s you know a sensitive subject mr fitzgerald there&#39;s been a question about your language inside of this meeting i would ask you to please preclude from using uh the term jay johnson as a jerk any further and if you do you will be asked to leave this meeting now if neil does speak up again i might throw him out or the membership could essentially appeal the decision of the chair no jay we don&#39;t want him to ever say jay johnson&#39;s a jerk again and we appeal your decision to give him a second chance and we&#39;re going to vote that he leaves the meeting your members own the meeting and i know that this sounds really aggressive but i mean at the point in time that you have somebody that&#39;s so disruptive i will oftentimes take at this point in time i have asked glc neil to leave this meeting and that has not been conducted what i would request at this point is a 15 minute recess we will take that now we break away and i&#39;m going to start looking at what my constitution what my bylaws allow for disciplinary action am i allowed to remove neil&#39;s membership maybe am i allowed to uh you know extradite her or whatever maybe am i allowed to find him maybe that&#39;s going to be determined by my bylaws and my constitution in the event that he&#39;s disruptive aggressive or anything else guess what i have seen it happen more than one time where law enforcement like legit law enforcement has been called to a board of directors meetings because two members could not get their civil discourse under control escalate as appropriate don&#39;t go with the nuclear option right away but escalate as appropriate take a recess if necessary take a step back sometimes during a recess it might be neil i&#39;m not sure that you&#39;re aware of what impact you&#39;re having on the 200 people that are sitting around you but this is becoming very disruptive and they&#39;re very not happy with this how would you like to go forward would you be willing to sit and be quiet for the rest of this meeting or is this something that i&#39;m going to have to excuse you i refuse to leave neil if you refuse to leave i&#39;ll be forced to take action inside of the meeting to have your membership removed and you will no longer have speaking rights or membership rights i don&#39;t care i&#39;m really angry if you don&#39;t leave the meeting we&#39;re going to have to call the authorities and have you removed it happens it happens in government it happens in business it happens in nonprofits so again try to handle it with civility try to handle it with grace and style try to handle it using the tools like a recess or uh you know the motions or the points of order but in the end make sure you&#39;re firm and you&#39;re consistent and you&#39;re fair okay and then we&#39;ve got one bonus one and then we will wrap up and hang back over to you to go for the 12 steps so we all know that as members when we get to our next meeting we vote on the minutes of the previous meeting what should be in the minutes and second as a follow-up when what do we do when we have to talk about something confidential we don&#39;t necessarily want it on the minute can we use this thing called executive session and what is it and how does it work good questions so in the minutes you can do them in two different ways and i&#39;ve seen them done in two different ways i&#39;ve seen them where literally it&#39;s almost transcription where somebody is typing what each person says neil said this uh annette said this ashley said this simeon said this uh natasha said this and there&#39;s literally a transcript of everybody&#39;s discussion or at least kind of major points of it i&#39;ve also seen it where it&#39;s the agenda with each of the business items where it says motion was made by diane it was seconded by florence the eyes uh the eyes had it if it was a roll call vote it might list out every person&#39;s roll call vote you can do that in either way it&#39;s really what&#39;s being accepted by your membership it&#39;s what&#39;s being accepted by your board and it&#39;s what your best practices are that you set as the expectation of the chairperson in terms of something like executive session this concept of executive session that is designed to handle very sensitive issues so for example in township government we used executive session when we were discussing things like lawsuits you can&#39;t really have those out in the open you can&#39;t you can&#39;t be having the discussions about those out in the open or having those reflected in minutes executive session requires a vote to move into executive session when you move into executive session only voting members may remain unless the chair and the voting members encouraged so say for example um natasha has something natasha my dear friend has something to tell us that&#39;s really really important as a board and it&#39;s very sensitive information i might entertain a motion to move into executive session motion has been made by mr cataldo it has been supported by martina all in favor please say aye aye the eyes have it we will move into executive session i would like to invite anybody that is not a board of director to please vacate this meeting we will bring you back in when executive session concludes i would like to also invite natasha as she is sharing the sensitive information to participate in this executive session even though she is not a board member without you know with no uh with no essentially objections from the board hearing none thank you natasha please stay everybody else out we conduct our executive session no meeting notes are taken during that executive session and a vote is made to come out of executive session i think we&#39;ve heard from natasha effectively i think we know which direction we need to go as a board of directors i would entertain a motion to exit executive session motion made by christina it&#39;s been supported by richard all in favor please say aye aye we move out of executive session if in executive session we were talking about neil&#39;s bad behavior and having to remove neil from the organization we can&#39;t take that vote inside of executive session we can have the discussion but the vote still has to be on the record even if that&#39;s uncomfortable based on discussions from executive session i would entertain a motion to remove neil&#39;s membership motion&#39;s been made by melissa it&#39;s been seconded by gabriella is there any discussion hearing no discussion all in favor please say aye all opposed say nay the motion fails for support neil you get to retain your membership so with that being said you don&#39;t take votes inside of executive session you can have discussion you can have agreement but you still have to take your votes with transparency in the world of the real world okay great questions all right well thank you very much everybody if you could run through the 12 steps then if we&#39;ve got time at the end we&#39;ll see if we&#39;ve got any more and if not you can always email us and we will get you some answers too absolutely and neil&#39;s a great resource to tap into so i&#39;ll be very quick on this 12 steps to get you to effective meetings first step does this need to be a meeting stop having meetings that should be an email does it need to be a meeting do you need everybody that&#39;s in there to be in that meeting this is this is above and beyond questions of robert&#39;s rules second the bezos approach making sure that everybody&#39;s on the same page jeff bezos of amazon what he does is the first 20 minutes of the meeting is the people that are in the meeting reviewing the documents that they&#39;re going to discuss why because he understands human behavior and if i give you the documents in advance you&#39;re probably not going to read them until the meeting anyways so let&#39;s take 20 minutes all get on the same page and then have our discussion but make sure your team&#39;s on the same page third time is of the essence and what i mean by that is don&#39;t schedule your meeting for friday at 4 pm and expect people to still be engaged generally tuesdays wednesdays thursdays 2 p.m is one of the best documented times for meetings next manage the environment make sure that it&#39;s not too cold make sure that it&#39;s not noisy that it&#39;s not full of distractions and that your people have the opportunity to be comfortable inside of that meeting space next assign roles give people responsibilities or jobs to do whether that&#39;s time keeping whether that&#39;s writing things on the board whether that&#39;s keeping track of how many times somebody says um in the meeting you can have some fun with this this doesn&#39;t have to be all boring and anything else but make sure that people have jobs or assigned roles inside of the meeting that will help to keep engagement the 10-minute rule by john medina who&#39;s an evolutionary psychologist as well as neuroscientist and he says you&#39;ve got about 10 minutes of actual attention inside of a meeting and you have about 30 seconds to earn it and if you&#39;re not checking in with your attendees every 10 minutes or so probably going to lose them encourage written notes there is statistical significance in studies that show that people remember more are more active and engaged and they&#39;re more participatory when written notes are actually utilized and it is written not necessarily typed just fyi so that&#39;s founded in the science writing down questions this is one way to help make your meetings inclusive some people may not be comfortable speaking up some people may not necessarily uh have the ability to just jump in and ask the questions that they need to ask give people i&#39;m going to give a few moments here for you to consider your questions to write them down and then we&#39;ll collect the questions and re react to them as a group this gives people the ability to have their voices heard to think through it and to also make sure that it&#39;s a group facilitation i love jigsaw meetings i will divide up my team you three you&#39;re going to take on this issue you three you&#39;re going to take on that issue you three you&#39;re going to take on that issue we&#39;ll bring it back in 15 minutes and i want you to come up with at least three potential solutions that we can consider as a group ready set go i&#39;ve just broken it up to essentially ad hoc committees and broken up that meeting now people have three people in a group it&#39;s very difficult to hide it&#39;s very difficult to not be engaged or participate and there&#39;s an expectation at the end that they have to bring some value back to the full group of which we can then determine what&#39;s the best course of action or a different one swapping chairpersons sometimes i&#39;m not the right person to lead a meeting sometimes i am if you want the hatchet if you want quick direct probably the right person if it is going to be something that is not along that line maybe i&#39;m not the right person this is something that you have an option for as the chairperson i would like to appoint kyle as the chairperson for this meeting kyle and i had a discussion and we really felt that kyle&#39;s position and you know objectiveness in this case would be a great value i would entertain a motion to adopt kyle as our chairperson for this meeting thank you neil thank you uh florence all in favor kyle&#39;s the chairperson don&#39;t be afraid to swap a chairperson that&#39;s okay you can do that end with clear action items don&#39;t have a meeting for meeting sake what are the action items at the end of it who&#39;s responsible for what by when and how and then send it out send out the summary send out the minutes a lot of times no one sees the minutes until the next meeting when they&#39;re like here&#39;s the minutes go ahead and approve them send out the summary send out with the exciting things that people missed the value propositions that occurred get that out quickly and efficiently after the meeting that is a 12-step program and tactics for you to have very successful meetings i want to say thank you so much for spending the time with us [Music] you

all right robert&amp;#39;s rules by show of chat how many of you have sat in a three and a half hour meeting that probably could have been an email give me a show a chat we&amp;#39;re gonna we&amp;#39;re gonna have some interaction today i see hands raising all right beautiful yeah all right well if you&amp;#39;re a member of jci that might have happened at least once uh if you&amp;#39;re not a member of jci well you know these are pretty common factors and i&amp;#39;ll tell you right now i do a lot of work with non-profits boards of directors government boards of directors and it&amp;#39;s not necessarily just jci that experiences this it is all over and part of that is is because people don&amp;#39;t necessarily look at what the importance of a meeting is or what the value of a meeting is and oftentimes we get a little lacks and we don&amp;#39;t necessarily use the tools that we&amp;#39;ve been given so today is going to be a primer on this i want to encourage you to ask questions i do have it structured logically so hopefully we can get through it and i do have one question just so i can get to know my audience a little bit better how many of you are marvel universe superhero fans or at least aware of them okay good good good good if you&amp;#39;re not it&amp;#39;s not gonna hurt you but uh you know i like to have a little fun with these types of things so you&amp;#39;ll get to see what that means in just a little bit if you didn&amp;#39;t know this already about me i am a gigantic nerd i love robert&amp;#39;s rules of order plus marvel plus behavioral science and all that fun stuff but let&amp;#39;s kick this off right and start with why why is something like a rule structure why do you think a rule structure or a system like robert&amp;#39;s rules is important for a meeting let&amp;#39;s fire that off in the chat let&amp;#39;s see what you got and let&amp;#39;s find out what you think why do we use something like robert&amp;#39;s rules or a meeting structure exactly for structure to prevent chaos yes jonathan absolutely organization consistency i love that kiki for all parties to be heard absolutely yes efficiency protocol to avoid long tangents democracy saving time love it nailed the answers right so we need to get a firm understanding of why are we using this before we start trying to really understand how to use them and and the reason for that is is because when you have a new member or if you&amp;#39;re on a new board of directors and they don&amp;#39;t understand the purpose that&amp;#39;s what allows us to get informal and then all of a sudden all of the bad habits of meetings start to come out so helping your boards your teams to understand the purpose of robert&amp;#39;s rules is one of the best things you can do here are the five main reasons that i&amp;#39;ll start with number one order and maintaining focus because none of us want to be there for five hour meetings and yes i have sat through a five hour meeting where i literally wanted to bang my head against the wall just to see if something interesting would come out of it professionalism and decorum if you&amp;#39;ve been in a meeting where people are arguing or fighting or going back and forth or even a meeting where two people completely take over the meeting and just argue back and forth with each other while everyone else sits completely bored robert&amp;#39;s rules is for you fairness if you&amp;#39;ve ever felt like your voice has been taken away if you ever feel like you have something to say but you&amp;#39;re not exactly sure how to get in there or if you see that some people in your organization have something to say but they&amp;#39;re being kind of silenced or pushed to the side that&amp;#39;s why robert&amp;#39;s rules is critical for democracy and making sure that those voices are heard for civility this is really important we live in a a in a world at this point in time where communication has gotten progressively less and less civil people argue they fight they uh they sometimes you know use language that they probably shouldn&amp;#39;t inside of meetings and we see this whether it&amp;#39;s at the highest forms of government or even inside of a business meeting or a non-profit meeting non-governmental meeting so those are our reasons now i&amp;#39;m going to give you one more and this is a tool that you can use whether it&amp;#39;s in jci or in business this is called the hidden costs of meetings this is a calculator okay so i&amp;#39;m going to give you a quick for instance let me click on this so we have it up everybody can see the calculator give me a quick nod if you do all right perfect use this tool it will literally nauseate you so let me just go down and say all right the tool is jci congress oh i&amp;#39;ll try not to misspell it we&amp;#39;re gonna say that our congress we&amp;#39;re gonna be really nice our congress meeting lasts three hours we know there&amp;#39;s at least 50 participants from around the world we&amp;#39;re gonna just say an average salary of forty thousand dollars so some people have more some people have less look at that cost go up oh my gosh this is getting disgusting getting disgusting oh 4 200 for 50 people to sit in a room for three hours if that doesn&amp;#39;t make you want to have more efficient meetings i literally do not know what else could this is a cool tool whether you&amp;#39;re in business or anything else i have calculated the cost of every one of our team meetings to understand do we need to figure out a way to shorten this do we need to figure out a way to reduce the number of people that are in that meeting space so i encourage you to go ahead and take a look at this tool it&amp;#39;s going to be shared along with the slides to each and every one of you so you&amp;#39;ll have these links to be able to use afterwards all right the second aspect that i want to cover today and we&amp;#39;re going to go back to our slide presentation is the behaviors of meeting so most of you know that i&amp;#39;m into behavioral science we have an entire behavior program how many of you have taken the behavioral elements program if you have throw your primary element into the chat right now let&amp;#39;s see how many people have done this and i&amp;#39;m going to give you the opportunity to do this afterwards all right so we have waters and ooh a couple of fires yeah i know you annika and train it&amp;#39;s good to see you friends nora there&amp;#39;s my water yan hello sir gisele yes yes yes all right so we&amp;#39;ve got a lot of people that have taken it but if you haven&amp;#39;t that&amp;#39;s perfectly okay so for the purposes of today&amp;#39;s training let&amp;#39;s just take a look at what each of those individual areas are our fire elements are the competitors they want to be fast they want to make the decision they want to get done and quickly and if you are chit chatting we ain&amp;#39;t got time for that so we just push forward incidentally i might be a fire element as my primary element the air element is in service to learning and they like to brainstorm they like to talk they like to have conversations they like to explore new ideas our earth element is our defense drive that is much more focused on structure procedure logic analytics they&amp;#39;re the ones that&amp;#39;s going to say bylaw 8.49613 indicates that you will uh not have this speaking turn and then our water elements which is much more of our people our drive to bond they are focused on consensus and understanding and empathy and conversations with each other so you see the link at the bottom you can take a quick assessment it&amp;#39;s absolutely free that&amp;#39;ll tell you what your primary element is we&amp;#39;re not going to spend too much time here what are those elements relate to four core biological drives as discovered by paul lawrence and nitin noria to management scientists we determined how to measure those things and that&amp;#39;s where our elements come from but what does that mean in the context of a meeting all right so in a meeting if we look at our element wheel our fire elements can be very assertive this is the one that&amp;#39;s demanding maybe requires or requests or pushes can be very focused on the task at hand they also might get bored very very quickly don&amp;#39;t sit there and be labor the point oh god why didn&amp;#39;t we just make this decision already we&amp;#39;ve been talking about this for 38 seconds that&amp;#39;s something you&amp;#39;d hear come out of the fire&amp;#39;s mouth they also will utilize things like robert&amp;#39;s rules to win so you might think that the fire who uh doesn&amp;#39;t necessarily you know follow all the rules all the time they will follow the rules and use the rules when it&amp;#39;s to their advantage it&amp;#39;s in service to that competition our air elements and meetings much more explorative so brainstorming they&amp;#39;re gonna like debate they&amp;#39;re gonna look for multiple ideas and options they&amp;#39;re going to be open to discussions and discussions can go and go and go and before you know it you might have been talking about bylaw changes and all of a sudden you&amp;#39;re talking about polar bear migratory patterns in the arctic so that would be very common inside of an air element meeting i tease a little bit on these but these are common behavioral traits of each our water elements are going to be much more focused on consensus they&amp;#39;re going to be slow to vote because they&amp;#39;re going to want to make sure that everybody has had the chance to be heard and hurt again and hurt again and hurt again until literally there might be exhaustion coming from everybody but they&amp;#39;re very considerate of the impact on all of the people in the organization so it&amp;#39;s not just going to be about them it&amp;#39;s going to be about everyone they may bring up different ideas or concepts to make sure that all voices are not only heard but represented and then last but not least our earth elements going to be much more methodical in its reactions they&amp;#39;re likely to more follow the rules and the procedures this means that if you have times on your agenda and you are behind the times the earth elements internal mechanisms are going to start tightening up and they&amp;#39;re going to say you&amp;#39;re off of your timing and be pushing you to stay on track but it&amp;#39;s going to be in service to that defense that logic that structure so one of the things that i would encourage you to do and use this as a tool is to assess your board learn which element your board is that&amp;#39;s going to give you an idea of how to manage them as a chairperson for a meeting if i know i&amp;#39;m sitting in a room full of fires i&amp;#39;m going to have to be a little quicker if i&amp;#39;m in a room full of waters i&amp;#39;m going to need to make sure that i&amp;#39;m intentionally being more inclusive to reach out and ask their opinions because they may be reluctant to give their opinion because they don&amp;#39;t want to rock a boat this is something that can be very helpful in understanding your board dynamics so that way you can be more effective in engaging your entire group most groups are going to have a mixture of each of the different elements that&amp;#39;s going to be something where you can learn okay i need to give jay a job or he&amp;#39;s gonna get bored very very quickly uh i need to make sure that neil uh neil you&amp;#39;re an heir right were you an air i&amp;#39;m force a fair amount of all but actually earth winds okay so if i know that neil is my earth i need to make sure that neil is going to be uh following the orders and the agenda i need to make sure that we&amp;#39;re not stepping out of line if i know that yeah nadia right if i know my friend nadia is a water well then i&amp;#39;m gonna need to make sure that she is making sure that everybody&amp;#39;s taken care of inside of that meeting and that nobody&amp;#39;s being left behind and so on and so forth so use this as a tool to understand who you&amp;#39;re working with and that will give you a much better meeting all right so let&amp;#39;s move forward to the principles of procedure oh the exciting stuff well i&amp;#39;m hoping it&amp;#39;s exciting safa that&amp;#39;s a great question can we be be a bit of each depending on circumstances and the nature of meetings yes so the quick assessment will tell you what your primary element is our full assessment actually measures all of the different elements inside of you so we as humans have all four elements and it&amp;#39;s just varying levels of which one drives us more or which one produces more of our behavior we all need to actually work to fill all of our different elements otherwise we might not feel fulfilled as well so great question yes absolutely understanding that primary one should give you some good insight but you can always go deeper with that all right the principles behind parley pro there&amp;#39;s three main principles that i want you to be aware of one majority rules right we take a vote the majority wins all right we move on to the next item the second is minority rights minority meaning whoever is on the side of a debate whoever&amp;#39;s on the side of the discussion that they still have the opportunity to engage and to participate and to have their voices heard they also have tools to make sure that they&amp;#39;re not just being overrun by a majority so if myself christina arthur and kyle are all on one team and rachel and richard are on the minority side of things rachel and richard still have a lot of ability to be able to make influence inside of a meeting when utilizing something like robert&amp;#39;s rules the last but not least and this is where i&amp;#39;m going to really hammer on things silence is compliance what does that mean if you don&amp;#39;t speak up you are leaving your rights on the table you are leaving your ability to make influence on the table you are leaving your leadership on the table silence means that you are not engaging one of the things that i really try to do especially in jci boards but also even in some of the other boards that i serve on is encourage that everyone speaks at different points and times to make sure that they&amp;#39;re that they are at least engaged in the meeting but have the opportunity to share their ideas okay that is called in intentional inclusion making sure because sometimes people don&amp;#39;t want to necessarily get out there now you do that in a soft way you don&amp;#39;t say all of a sudden mariette you&amp;#39;re up go ahead speak because if marriott&amp;#39;s not ready to speak that&amp;#39;s going to be very uncomfortable but i might start the meeting by saying i&amp;#39;m going to be looking to hear from everyone sitting at this table i&amp;#39;ll take volunteers to start and then i&amp;#39;ll go around to all of the other people in the meeting to make sure that uh to make sure that every voice is represented i&amp;#39;m giving them a heads up in advance you&amp;#39;re gonna get called on if you don&amp;#39;t volunteer all right so that&amp;#39;s a good practice silence is compliance sometimes we might want to be more formal with the rules sometimes we can be a little less formal with the rules that&amp;#39;s going to depend on the environment the group that you&amp;#39;re with and who you&amp;#39;re serving and there&amp;#39;s value to both of those some of this today that we&amp;#39;re going to talk about is the more formalized version and i&amp;#39;m going to give you scripts and examples so that way you can literally cut names out paste your name in and you&amp;#39;ve got tools to run your meetings effectively but also to empower the people in your meetings to do this effectively all right so before we get into this i want to ask you and we&amp;#39;re going to crowdsource this thing what are some of the big challenges that you&amp;#39;ve had inside of meetings so an example of that might be somebody who talks too much that&amp;#39;s an example of a challenge that you might have inside of a meeting using the chat let&amp;#39;s fire off what do you got what are your challenges people not reading the agenda or the preliminary materials absolutely what else do we have off topic good time time management nobody talking the leader of the meeting doesn&amp;#39;t do the job to steer the meeting good people not being on time ouch yes people cutting others not listening people not having prepared for the meeting a lot of time spent on neglecting yes good these are all all major challenges and they&amp;#39;re not just unique to us sitting here they are unique to the world my friends they are unique to business they are unique to uh government it is everywhere derailing conversations i love that somebody said poor chairmanship we&amp;#39;re gonna talk about how to lead meetings because that&amp;#39;s one of the most critical things as a leader and a chairperson of the meeting you have a lot of authority that oftentimes especially in the world of jci i see completely not utilized if a meeting gets out of control i often times very first will look to the chair as the reason that that meeting got out of control and that&amp;#39;s that can suck if you&amp;#39;re the chair you&amp;#39;re like uh how did this happen well we&amp;#39;re gonna give you the tools today to make sure that you&amp;#39;re on point all right and i start with that the chairperson the chairperson does not own the meeting if i was to ask you who owns the meeting tell me who do you think owns the meeting yes the membership the participants now that doesn&amp;#39;t mean that the chairperson&amp;#39;s absolved of responsibility on this right the chairperson is responsible for keeping the meeting on track for running the meeting efficiently and effectively and they have a lot of tools to do so you&amp;#39;re going to see the language and the opportunities of how they&amp;#39;re going to be able to do that during a meeting but with that being said you as a member even the membership has a lot of opportunity and power to also support the chair in keeping the meeting on track and that&amp;#39;s something really important to keep into the back of your mind all right so let&amp;#39;s start with the first things first the agenda setting how many of you have an agenda that is the exact same structure that you have seen for the better part of a decade and you haven&amp;#39;t made any changes or done anything with your agenda it&amp;#39;s just always exactly the same thing okay treasurer&amp;#39;s report secretary&amp;#39;s report old business new business uh blah blah blah blah blah i&amp;#39;m already bored as a fire i&amp;#39;m already bored literally your meeting agenda has bored me to death all right when we think about an agenda we obviously have specific business that needs to be conducted for our organizations we understand that we do have to file reports that we do have to make votes and etc but one of the things that i would encourage you to do is to really take a look at your agenda and ask why is this meeting necessary what are we accomplishing with this meeting and when you start to think about that you might end up finding that there&amp;#39;s places that you can add things like consent agendas and if you don&amp;#39;t know what that is we&amp;#39;ll cover that you might find some places where instead of actually having reports that those reports are sent out in advance as a meeting packet that you don&amp;#39;t have to have discussions around all of it nothing bugs me more than when i see a treasurer&amp;#39;s report saying we have money or when i see a treasurer&amp;#39;s report that says here&amp;#39;s the balances in all of the accounts that i&amp;#39;m reading directly from the agenda that i could personally read myself thank you that is not a report that is reading off of a piece of paper when we think about an agenda or what goes on to an agenda we really need to be considering what is the purpose of each of those individual items when you are looking at when you&amp;#39;re looking at different aspects of your meeting agenda thinking about that purpose is going to be critical once you establish your agenda though that is your roadmap for order that is something that you are going to take with you and follow meticulously how many of you by show of chat have time signatures or time stamps on your agenda so you have each item that is specifically timed does anybody use time signatures on their agenda you know as soon as i saw that i was like i knew who was going to be my first to say yes on there that&amp;#39;s pretty funny time signatures on agenda okay that can help to keep a meeting on track some people who don&amp;#39;t use that give that a shot if you do use that that can be a great way now we start our conversation and all of a sudden the conversation derails whose job primarily primarily if we&amp;#39;re going to bring the meeting back and we know the chairperson can say okay we&amp;#39;re going to stick to the agenda we&amp;#39;re going to follow the order who else what else can be done in order to make sure that we&amp;#39;re following the agenda anybody got any ideas because i know that there&amp;#39;s a lot of the levels of parliamentary procedure here i know that i have a couple of parliamentarians on here i know that i have some people that robert&amp;#39;s rules what&amp;#39;s that who&amp;#39;s robert is that robert downey jr you did say avengers and marvel right so there&amp;#39;s a you know a wide variety i love a time keeper or a sergeant-at-arms you can appoint one of these in a meeting and say we are going to have uh we are going to have yup she&amp;#39;s going to be the sergeant there we go so we are going to have somebody become the sergeant-at-arms or the timekeeper for the meeting that will be giving us five minute notices three minute notices two minute notices one minute notices and even stopping somebody from talking now again we don&amp;#39;t want to necessarily violate rights but we establish the procedures and the expectations preceding the meeting other things that you can do is calling an objection uh we&amp;#39;ll see how that looks in the language we&amp;#39;re going to give you some structured language for that or calling for the orders of the day calling for the orders of the day is essentially a motion that will encourage the chair to get back on track so that would be to the chair i move for the orders of the day that is the indication for the chair to say you&amp;#39;re correct jay i appreciate what you&amp;#39;re saying we have gotten off track from the agenda we will move back to the points that are being discussed at hand okay again a little bit formal an objection i&amp;#39;ll give you an example of a specific example of that coming up who here has ever used something called in a consent agenda let&amp;#39;s see what the crowd has anybody know what a consent agenda is or used to consent agenda is this a familiar term okay good all right when i was when i was serving in government i was an elected official in my local municipality consent agenda was my favorite thing in the entire world and let me tell you why because when we were presented with our board packets that we were to prepare and read in advance we would be given roughly about a 342 page line item document of all of the warrant list of bills everything that the township had spent in the last two weeks can you imagine if you had to individually approve each of those specific items now that could be rolled into a consent agenda we already spent the money the money was spent by the treasurer it followed those specific rules so now at this point in time the unanimous consent of the entirety of the board could push that through if i didn&amp;#39;t want something to be pushed through if i had a specific thing that i didn&amp;#39;t necessarily want to have consent i could request that that piece of uh legislation or that item be pulled out and we could then put that onto the regular agenda and have discussion about it so the consent agenda is designed to say these are things that virtually everyone will just agree with things like potentially setting up your approval of the minutes approval of the agenda those could be consent items if you have them on a consent agenda you can vote on the entire package all is one vote now if you need to make addendums to the agenda or if you need to make amendments or changes that would be pulled out of the consent and put onto the first item of business okay so if you have questions yeah if you do have questions glc neil is capturing them so if i don&amp;#39;t cover it before the end of this we will go back to that i did leave time to make sure that we can cover some specific questions okay uh i do i&amp;#39;m gonna address your online timekeeper question in about two slides i think all right so so bear with me on that one leticia great question all right one of the ways that i watch us as jci members and a lot of boards of directors make a mistake is that there&amp;#39;s not acknowledgement okay what does acknowledgement mean if you have a meeting where people are arguing back and forth that means that you&amp;#39;re probably not using the acknowledgement function of effective meetings acknowledgement function is is if i want to speak i address the chairperson at the meeting and i might do that by saying to the chair or mr chairperson or madam chairwoman or something of that nature me as a member am not allowed to speak until i am given the floor and that is an acknowledgement from the chair that it is now my turn to speak in order or logical order by enforcing acknowledgement as an expectation in your meetings it will stop people from just randomly rachel and i can&amp;#39;t just start arguing with each other because back and forth back and forth back and forth doesn&amp;#39;t occur without the chair&amp;#39;s permission to give you the floor of the meeting so that is something that i really want to hone in on because that will help reduce the amount of tensions the other reason that we ask to the chair is that we&amp;#39;re not actually arguing with our colleague it&amp;#39;s not a question of rachel and i arguing with each other it is a question of the two of us to the chair my esteemed colleague from uh my esteemed colleague from malta has indicated x y and z i would like to counter that with this i&amp;#39;m not arguing with rachel i&amp;#39;m more arguing to the chair so that&amp;#39;s that acknowledgement function and the direction of those questions all right making emotion i move i move to do something move being a verb so in some cases the chair might say i will entertain a motion to do x in which case so moved otherwise if there is a piece of item an item for business on the agenda i would say something along the lines of i move to adopt the new bylaw changes as presented and then of course that requires a second that&amp;#39;s like that&amp;#39;s like 101 that is the 101 10101 what does that look like okay so we&amp;#39;re gonna test here not so much test your avengers knowledge here but chairman fury might open up by saying we are on to new business item one it&amp;#39;s the adoption of the sokovia accords i open the floor to which president iron man says to the chair looking for the acknowledgement before a motion is made the chair acknowledges president iron man at that point in time president iron man says thank you mr chairman i move to adopt the sokovia accords as presented the vice president black widow says mr chairman i second the motion the chairman then repeats the motion there&amp;#39;s a motion on the floor to adopt the sokovia accords as presented is there debate or discussion that would be a very formal way of us introducing new business or items that would require a vote why do we do it in this structure because we can repeat it over and over and over again get acknowledgement motion is made motion is seconded the chair repeats the motion and then following the repeating of the motion debate begins let me be very clear debate does not occur until a motion is made debate does not occur until a motion is made if there is overlying discussion and a lot of discussion on an item or it&amp;#39;s a brainstorming session that should be done in committee if it is a we don&amp;#39;t know what we want to do and we&amp;#39;re just going to have it out with this that can be done in a committee of the whole should not be a line item for business the line item for business is am i going to adopt these sokovia accords or not and we&amp;#39;re going to talk about how to amend and all of the other pieces that go with us if it is a large discussion you you should be looking to use some of the tools of pushing it to committee if there is no debate do you have to ask three times no you do not that is a meeting expectation i would say look towards uh i would look towards best practices for me is their debate is their debate hearing none will move to vote quick it is the responsibility of the membership to not be silent if they have something to say it is the responsibility of the membership to speak up if they have something to say i&amp;#39;m not going to sit there is there debate bueller bueller bueller no absolutely not that is gonna take your time away all right i have some real avengers fans out there i know i know i know all right so if a debate had to be done how much time is ideal to spend on it great question stevenson i think that&amp;#39;s really going to depend on a number of things if you&amp;#39;re following formal robert&amp;#39;s rules of order you&amp;#39;re going to follow a speaking order who speaks first the person who made the motion generally would have the right to speak first let me give you an example of how this goes off the rails so we added we had a motion and debate president iron man has come in and says i believe that due to recent events the accords must be signed captain america asks to the chair to get the acknowledgement of the chair which fury acknowledges the esteemed gentleman from brooklyn captain america says i must respectfully disagree with my dear colleague the accords would be a violation of liberty so far so good but how many times has the following happened in your meetings obs fu language order and then all of a sudden yeah welcome to a jay johnson training you knew that was gonna happen at some point in time uh with that being said captain america and iron man are now completely bogarting your meeting and that is not the purpose of the robert&amp;#39;s rules of order what we would be looking for is following speaking turns iron man speaks captain america speaks and then everyone else in your membership speaks before iron man or captain america get to speak again it doesn&amp;#39;t matter if they&amp;#39;ve got a really good argument it doesn&amp;#39;t matter if they feel like they need to say all of these things or respond or react that is not the tools that they are given inside of a meeting from the point that they&amp;#39;ve spoken if i&amp;#39;m the chairperson and that starts to occur i would say order mr iron man mr america i&amp;#39;m sorry you&amp;#39;ve spoken allow the rest of the membership to please speak we will come back to you if there is time in this debate to hear your rebuttals and i would move forward okay now to the question of how much debate is appropriate when all voices have been heard or had the opportunity to speak it is your prerogative as the chair of whether you let them speak a second time or a third time or a fourth time if you&amp;#39;re allowing captain america and iron man to speak four times each and they&amp;#39;re just going back and forth you have allowed your meeting to get out of control say your peace and then we vote say your peace and then we vote speaking time and limitations you can use tools such as uh the esteemed gentleman from brooklyn will have three minutes to present his case the timer starts now could we please start the timer you may also say we will only allow for 15 minutes of debate to occur on this topic area as many people can speak in that 15 minute time frame now when you make a ruling such as that what if you need more time yes you can extend debate what if you need less time yes you can call the vote what if somebody wants to speak six times yes you can stop them from speaking six times you&amp;#39;re the chairperson you own them own the rules of the meeting and there are opportunities to overrule the chair we&amp;#39;ll get to some of those okay in google meet there&amp;#39;s a function to send two people to another meeting room same with zoom you can say all right iron man uh uh iron man captain america go go argue this out now if you&amp;#39;re sitting there and you go three rounds of debate and you still don&amp;#39;t have a good clear picture maybe that&amp;#39;s something that needs to be moved to committee and to let that debate occur inside of committee not in your formal meeting here is something that you can use in that digital space i said i would get back to this this is a digital timer you can very easily set up times and you can set up limitations and use this as an online tool to be able to keep track of things all right so let&amp;#39;s move forward with that limiting and ending debate this drives me nuts because i see it used incorrectly literally constantly if i call the question which some people have maybe heard i move the question or i move the previous question or i move to call the question what i&amp;#39;m literally doing is saying i would like to end debate and vote on this question in a three-hour meeting usually you hear somebody at some point in time get super frustrated it&amp;#39;s probably a fire that says i move the question why do we do that okay well this can make sure now the chairperson this is important there&amp;#39;s two things that happen with a call to question the chairperson has the ability to recognize that motion if that motion is something now the chairperson can be overruled on this okay but the chairperson can say we have not heard from the esteemed kyle as well as melissa i would entertain that motion to call the question once they have spoken you can push it you can&amp;#39;t debate it the chairperson can make that ruling if the membership says no we don&amp;#39;t want to hear from kyle and melissa they can appeal the chair&amp;#39;s decision on that question okay so this is getting a little bit complicated but we&amp;#39;ll we&amp;#39;ll work through this together ending debate or limiting debate these are rules that essentially reduce the membership&amp;#39;s ability to have their voices heard in which case calling the question requires a two-thirds majority not a simple majority we&amp;#39;ll get into what&amp;#39;s simple and two-thirds and everything else which means two-thirds of all of the votes would have to agree to end debate it might look a little something like this chairman fury acknowledges the red witch the red witch says thank you mr chairman i moved the previous question i call the question drax the destroyer says support and jumps right in chairman fury says it has been moved and seconded that we stop debate and vote on the pending question which is and states the motion that&amp;#39;s on the floor at that person point in time a vote is taken all those in favor of stopping debate and voting now raise your right hand members raise hands all those opposed raise your hand members raise hands if the eyes have it it means there are two thirds in favor and we will vote immediately and then you vote on the motion voting on to call the question is not voting on the motion that&amp;#39;s why this language is very important all those in favor of stopping debate and voting now rather than all those in favor because what you&amp;#39;re doing is you&amp;#39;re telling your membership exactly what they&amp;#39;re voting on if the eyes don&amp;#39;t have it there are not two-thirds in favor and debate will continue next speaker please okay now this is an example again this is one of those examples of how these things can go and i&amp;#39;m looking through how does a chairperson decide to push to a committee for more brainstorm versus voting and let&amp;#39;s see it&amp;#39;s a good question and i think it&amp;#39;s going to be context dependent if i am a chairperson and i&amp;#39;m looking for a and there&amp;#39;s a item on the agenda for amended bylaws and as that discussion starts to go it&amp;#39;s very very evident to me that there were some things that were not thought about that there were some major issues or challenges with the amendments at that point in time i might entertain emotion to send this back to committee if it&amp;#39;s just that people disagree yes no yes no i don&amp;#39;t like it i do like it i don&amp;#39;t like it i do like it take the vote let it sort itself out that way but if i&amp;#39;m in the middle of that discussion and i hear major gaps major misrepresentations or misinterpretations i might at that point in time say it appears that this item may not be ready for consideration by the membership i would entertain a motion to move this back to the bylaws committee for further consideration i hope that makes sense is there a problem with it back to committee is it that two people don&amp;#39;t like it take the vote that would be my best interpretation for you on that and again it&amp;#39;s going to be somewhat context dependent all right interruptions what&amp;#39;s the point what are the points these are different points that can be made at any point in time points of order points of information and points of privilege you can interrupt a speaker in order to make these points so i could be delivering my best arguments for why i we should adopt the sokovia accords and in the middle of me speaking somebody can say point of order so it is an interruptible uh i think so you should be looking at interruptions point of order information and privilege are we all okay good deal so at that point in time they could interrupt me for one of these points of orders each of these serves a little bit of a different function i&amp;#39;ll give you just a quick example of each one of them a point of order for example might look something like this captain marvel gets the approval and acknowledgement from the chairpoint of order the chair acknowledges captain marvel the motion on the floor is about the sokovia accords and the conversation has drifted into infinitive stones in which case the chairperson would make a ruling thank you captain marvel we will limit debate to the question at hand which is the sokovia accords so a point of order is to bring us back onto what it is it&amp;#39;s to say uh point of order we are now discussing the original motion but an amendment has been made the discussion should be limited to the amendment the chairperson would say duly noted we will limit the discussion to the amendment now if the chair does not take that point of order we&amp;#39;ll get into what that looks like in just a little bit okay that would be where the chair says i believe that the infinity stones discussion is pertinent to the sokovia accords we will allow this debate to continue the chair can make that ruling again this is where the chair gets to decide is it on track is it not on track if it&amp;#39;s not on track let&amp;#39;s bring it back to track if it is on track or we feel like it is on track the chairperson essentially acts as your adjudicator to make that decision and allow it to go forward if the chair doesn&amp;#39;t make a decision that the membership likes again there is a process for fixing that point of information thor odinson says point of information gets acknowledgement from the chair did the sokovia accords assume jurisdiction in asgard to which the chairperson is now going to answer if the chairperson doesn&amp;#39;t have the answer the chairperson might look to whoever made the motion or the committee that made the motion in order to answer that question chairman fury says thank you mr odinson the accords are limited to the laws of midgard in which case now that has been answered and the speaking and the debate can be continued okay so point of information is asking a question that is related to what the business is on the floor can a person take several motions in a debate yes a person can make motions all over the place if you are a member and you are a member that is a part of the voting body then you have the right to do point of informations point of orders points of privilege motions amended motions and so on and so forth okay let&amp;#39;s get to a point of privilege this is one that&amp;#39;s sometimes used sometimes not used particularly well a point of privilege is where somebody has something now there is a general point of privilege and a personal point of privilege again that&amp;#39;s getting maybe a little technical but a general point of privilege and this was literally done in a meeting i think it&amp;#39;s one of the best examples to the chair point of privilege uh what&amp;#39;s that uh there is a the boiler is about to explode okay that is a general point of privilege that is going to affect everybody that is in the room it is time for us to recess and get the hell out of this room versus a personal point of privilege which might be to the chair clint clint barton says chairman fury i rise to a point of personal privilege chairman fury please state your point i&amp;#39;m finding it difficult to hear the speakers clearly would everyone be good enough to lean into their microphone speak up and enunciate so that i i will know what is being said chairman fury thank you for bringing this up members are requested to speak up loudly and clearly during discussion alexis absolutely you nailed it uh point of privilege it is an ice box in this room and i can&amp;#39;t take notes because my hands are shaking so badly i have heard that and that is a very very valid point of privilege okay from the chairperson they might respond thank you for bringing that up uh we will look to try to get the heating and cooling taken care of inside of this room now if it&amp;#39;s going to take more than a few seconds to do so if i&amp;#39;m the chairperson i may entertain a motion for a short recess to get the temperature under control i may take a i may take a point of you know a request for a recess in order to have the technology fixed so we&amp;#39;re not sitting there in the middle of the meeting where everyone&amp;#39;s wasting their time uh i would entertain a motion for a short recess so we can handle the technological issues that have been presented we take that recess people get to go they get their break and so on and so forth and now we work on those pieces if it&amp;#39;s going to be a short fix or a super quick thing that&amp;#39;s not necessarily something that you need a recess but again use that as a tool if necessary all right thank you jonathan amendments we are terrible at making amendments and i&amp;#39;m going to give you three rules your amendment should be striking something your amendment should be inserting something or your amendment should be striking and inserting something so if i make the motion to adopt the sokovia accords and you don&amp;#39;t like that you vote no if i make the amen if i make the motion to adopt the sokovia accords and you want to adopt a different set of accords you want to adopt the uh jci accords i move to strike the sokovia accords and insert the jci accords in its place that would be an amendment if you&amp;#39;re not striking language or inserting language odds are your amendment is probably not on point what does that look like madame gamora i move to amend the motion to adopting the sokovia chords with the inserted language of to take effect only on the planet earth to which the response i am groot which you know of course we all know means second and chairman fury there is an amendment to insert the language to take effect only on the planet earth debate on this amendment may commence at this point in time the only debate is not whether you&amp;#39;re going to adopt the sokovia accords it is only going to be about whether or not the sokovia accords will only be on the planet earth okay does that make sense we&amp;#39;re not we&amp;#39;re not talking about adoption it&amp;#39;s strictly about whether or not it should be earth or across the entire universe i&amp;#39;m going to go back to uh kevin&amp;#39;s question must all points of order privilege information be recognized by the chair essentially what you&amp;#39;re doing by making a point is getting the chair&amp;#39;s attention to make a ruling on something or to take action on something you&amp;#39;re essentially using your points in order to get the chair to do something or to provide something for you so yes i would encourage point of orders directly to the chair the chair will acknowledge it if the chair does not acknowledge your point of order you can always do something differently and you&amp;#39;re about to see what that looks like does anybody know and let&amp;#39;s all right so now i&amp;#39;m going to test you what is one issue with this amendment that just got made what is one thing that could be wrong with this amendment anybody want to take a gander shoot in a chat what do you think so if it&amp;#39;s illegal or if it&amp;#39;s completely incorrect yeah the chair does not have to acknowledge that oh interesting what do you mean debate should be on to allow the amendment you could have a debate on that question where it should happen what did we learn from thor odinson&amp;#39;s point of information earlier is that the sokovia accords are only for midgard which is earth for those of you not keeping square at home on the avengers alternatively in this case the chairman might say or a member could object to the amendment on the grounds that the motion the original motion only pertains to earth and that this would be redundant an interesting little fix here okay now if you have a motion that has been made and an amendment is made to it and that amendment is redundant it&amp;#39;s not on point it&amp;#39;s not necessary it&amp;#39;s not useful or it&amp;#39;s illegal or it&amp;#39;s against your constitution or whatever the reason is you can object to that amendment and ask for a ruling from the chair i object to this amendment this amendment is redundant it was identified already that there was uh that this only applies to earth in which case there&amp;#39;s no need for this amendment chairperson fury at that point in time might say the objection is noted and i agree this is a redundant amendment we will continue with discussion and debate on the original motion made and share that information or they may say i disagree the language that has been presented is a necessary condition to ensure that the sokovia accords are very clearly on the earth i will allow this amendment to continue forward so an ejection can be raised and it can be approved or it could be disapproved again we&amp;#39;re getting into some higher level robert&amp;#39;s rules here now what if you don&amp;#39;t like the chairperson&amp;#39;s ruling what if he says all right this amendment is out of order we&amp;#39;re not going to listen to it well at that point in time if you don&amp;#39;t like the chairs ruling on something as a member you have the ability to challenge the chairperson&amp;#39;s ruling this would be making an appeal okay so we appeal the decision of the chair we&amp;#39;re now getting into a little bit higher levels so bear with me if it is something that you have questions on this is an under utilized tool often times because the chairperson doesn&amp;#39;t necessarily make the rulings in the formal settings or in the informal settings of some of the jcis but this is one of the rules that you have the ability to challenge a chair&amp;#39;s decision if the body votes and it&amp;#39;s a majority you don&amp;#39;t get to challenge that decision there&amp;#39;s other tools for that that we&amp;#39;ll talk about if the body if it&amp;#39;s the chair&amp;#39;s decision only so in this last scenario fury said this amendment doesn&amp;#39;t fly what would an appeal look like spider-man says i rise to a point of order state your point my colleague has proposed moving our headquarters to planet titan this motion does not fall within the scope of our constitution chairman fury the point is well taken and this motion will not be taken up thanos disagrees i appeal the chair&amp;#39;s decision i believe that this motion does fall within our scope nebula seconds that and chairman fury says very well since the decision of the chair has been appealed the group will decide at that point in time the members would debate it the chairperson speaks first all members get to speak once and the chair may speak again at the end of the debate to sum up the discussion and a vote is made this is how the members are in control of the meeting not the chairperson the chairperson&amp;#39;s job is to run it is to adjudicate it is to manage it but it is the members who own it that&amp;#39;s really really critical and again this is something that&amp;#39;s not often used but it is an option in order to make sure that the minority voices are heard so if the chair says i&amp;#39;m not going to hear any more debate anymore on this topic move to appeal the decision of the chair seconded by eugenio and at that point in time the chairperson says i think we&amp;#39;ve heard enough of this debate we don&amp;#39;t need to hear any more but then teresita gets to speak and christina gets to speak and uh dr jeremy gets to speak and we all get to speak and then the chairperson would get to rebuttal and then you make your vote if the vote is the majority guess what debate continues if the vote is in the minority the debate stops okay so that is appealing a decision of a chair all right in the case the chair would like to participate in the debate does he have to vacate the chair consult your bylaws okay there are some instances in which case the bylaws are very clear that the chairperson oversees the meeting and that they don&amp;#39;t vote unless there is a tie in some cases the bylaws indicate that the chair is able to speak on a item or an agenda item in most cases the chair can debate in most cases the chair can vote to break a tie or anything else instances that may not necessarily the chair is often not encouraged not allowed to make the motion they&amp;#39;re not allowed to institute the motion so that is why a chair says i will entertain a motion that says xyz the membership would then have to make the motion and second the motion in order to facilitate debate or in order to get to debate so that&amp;#39;s a good question now again i&amp;#39;m going to encourage you to check your bylaws or to check your structures in a township setting and i&amp;#39;m going to give you a for instance on this in a township setting there are seven different board members the supervisor is the person who oversees the meeting in which case all seven members of the township board have the right to vote have the right to and and have to vote the supervisor has to vote on every single item they don&amp;#39;t get even if it&amp;#39;s all six others agree they still have to vote it has to be the seven votes okay this is why i&amp;#39;m saying check your bylaws check your constitution check your ordinances check whatever that is because it can be different in a city government the chairperson doesn&amp;#39;t vote the chairperson doesn&amp;#39;t engage in debate in some instances if the chairperson is debating and you as a member find the chairperson to not be uh unbiased on the question what is your options i&amp;#39;m testing you now so we&amp;#39;re gonna follow on uh we&amp;#39;re gonna follow on annika&amp;#39;s we&amp;#39;re gonna follow on let&amp;#39;s see we gotta get this muted there we go and we&amp;#39;re gonna follow on annika&amp;#39;s question the chair is being biased the chair is engaged in debate and you don&amp;#39;t think that they&amp;#39;re being objective we appeal the chair we appeal the chair&amp;#39;s decision we may even make an objection to say i object we want you to facilitate this discussion we would ask that if you have a strong opinion one way or the other that you step down from your chairperson&amp;#39;s position and engage in a debate you can make that objection okay the chairperson says no i&amp;#39;m the chair nan and boo boo you can&amp;#39;t do anything about it that&amp;#39;s false you can actually remove a chair from your meeting you is the members i move to remove the chairperson as the chairperson for this motion or line item it&amp;#39;s supported by glc neil we now debate this and we remove the chairperson from that agenda item you can reinstate that chairperson afterwards if you want to again it is done in formality now you can make the objection first and maybe the chair says you&amp;#39;re right i&amp;#39;m sorry this is a passion topic i would like to recuse myself as the chair for the purposes of this agenda item i would like to appoint glc neil to chair this agenda item while i debate because this is a motion that i&amp;#39;m very passionate about okay you always have options how we use those or how we effectively use those is really the question so i hope that answers your question check your bylaws of whether or not the chairperson is a breaking the tie vote is a expected vote now and let me tell you one other thing right if the chairperson is the president of my local organization and you are taking minutes i would like to know how my president voted i would like to see that vote on every single minutes is the president representing my interests my beliefs my values or whatever that they were elected to do in which case i find it very very appropriate for the president who might be chairing the meeting to cast their vote on a question should they be objective and unbiased and allow for the rights of the minority absolutely if they&amp;#39;re not objections removing the chair making those motions or appeals good questions now we&amp;#39;re getting deep this is fun all right these ones are often screwed up i&amp;#39;m going to say it right there pay attention three different motions impacting three different ways in which we try to table a piece of business okay so the motion was made for the sokovia accords and we decide uh you know what captain america is not in the room right now and we really think that we would benefit from the discussion from captain america i move to table this item to the end of the meeting tabling something is taking it off of the current table and making it later in that same meeting if it is not brought up again in that meeting it dies tabling something is to make it later in that meeting to not deal with that business you may also i move to table this item until we discuss the budget okay that is a good uh that&amp;#39;s a good postponement type motion well we need to know what the budget is before we approve our marketing expenditures great i move to table this until we&amp;#39;ve had our budget discussion it requires a second the team the membership votes on that and then that item becomes item g directly under the budget a motion to postpone has a definitive end date i move to postpone the sokovia accords motion until august 2022 into our annual meeting of august 2022 i moved to postpone this until our next general membership meeting i moved to postpone this to a definitive time in date that item if approved if that motion is approved that item becomes old business on that next agenda i can also use a motion to postpone indefinitely that means i&amp;#39;m killing it it&amp;#39;s i never want to talk about this again burn those images into your brain emotion to table is later a motion to postpone is a specific time and date in the future and a motion to postpone indefinitely that motion&amp;#39;s dead it&amp;#39;s not brought up again in its existing form you&amp;#39;d have to make amendments to it changes to its substantive changes to it in order for that peace to be revisited again use these ones correctly because if you accidentally postpone something indefinitely and it goes into your minutes in theory it&amp;#39;s dead all right referring to a committee we&amp;#39;re not getting anywhere two different ways to do this you can refer to an established committee or you can refer to an ad hoc committee the difference between those so say for example you already have a finance committee and you&amp;#39;re talking about the budget and you realize that there&amp;#39;s some big gaps or some big challenges i move to refer this back to the budget committee for further consideration that&amp;#39;s already established they already exist they&amp;#39;re already out there you can push it to that committee i move to send this to the bylaw committee for further consideration i move to send this to whatever the committee is in existence an ad hoc committee is a committee that is then created on site this is what that would look like say we&amp;#39;re talking about the sokovia accords and i as a member i&amp;#39;m tired of listening to the debate and clearly we&amp;#39;re not there yet i move to send this to an ad hoc committee consisting of president iron man captain america gomorrah thanos and thor i&amp;#39;ve identified what that ad-hoc committee is i would need a second when that second is made now if somebody says i move to amend that motion i believe that nebula should be on that committee as well i move to amend to insert nebula&amp;#39;s name insert remember insert or strike i move to amend to strike thanos from that those would be acceptable amendments to the question an ad hoc committee is one that is formed if you&amp;#39;re making the motion to send this to an ad hoc committee as a member i can also say i move to send this to an ad hoc committee formed by the chair i can put the onus on the chair to create an ad hoc committee for it if have here nice job then i like it if i don&amp;#39;t want to be the person that decides who&amp;#39;s on that committee i can encourage i can say i move to have this go to an ad hoc committee the chair will decide the committee members or the bylaws committee will decide the members of this ad hoc committee i move to send this to a committee of seven decided by the chair you can be very specific with your ad hoc committee requests that&amp;#39;s going to get you out of some debate inside of your formal meeting which should be voted on before the main motion absolutely so if i am making a motion to send this to committee that occurs before we adopt the sokovia accords right because i&amp;#39;m saying we&amp;#39;re not ready to adopt these let&amp;#39;s send it to committee for further consideration so the main motion is set aside and the committee motion is going to be taken up if there&amp;#39;s amendments to the committee motion adding gamora subtracting gamora adding nebula then each of those amendments stack on top of each other you have to take the nebula one and get that out of the way then you take the gamora one and get that out of the way then you vote on the committee and get that out of the way and if the committee works it goes to committee if the committee&amp;#39;s voted down it goes back to the original motion every time a motion is made they stack on top of each other in which case you have to unbundle them this is why when you&amp;#39;re making amendments it&amp;#39;s insert strike or insert and strike so that way your chairperson your sergeant-at-arms whomever can put the language specifically on the screen to follow along with each on the screen or on a piece of paper so they can follow the stacked amendments it&amp;#39;s really critical in order for you to make clear what you&amp;#39;re actually voting on that&amp;#39;s also why it&amp;#39;s very important that the chairperson says we are voting on the amendment to add nebula is there discussion if they start talking about gamora that is not that&amp;#39;s out of order we&amp;#39;re focused on nebula at this point in time because that is the amendment that&amp;#39;s on the table we&amp;#39;re not talking about adoption we&amp;#39;re not talking about committee it&amp;#39;s only about adding nebula to the committee so you might be in total disagreement with the committee but supportive to have nebula on the committee and still vote down the committee okay yeah ah you take them one at a time all right cool oops we messed up we signed the accords and we probably shouldn&amp;#39;t have well there&amp;#39;s a couple of ways that we can handle that if i am the person who made the motion and say that we&amp;#39;re in discussion and at some point in time you&amp;#39;ve shown me that there&amp;#39;s some really bad language in the sokovia accord that i missed i can personally withdraw my motion that would be immediate i would draw my motion to adopt the sokovia accords somebody else can still make the motion to adopt it but i personally am withdrawing it i am the only person that can withdraw my motion reconsideration say we&amp;#39;re in the avengers compound and the vote to adopt the sokovia accords passes okay motions passed somewhere down the line when they&amp;#39;re talking about budgets they realize oh my gosh we passed this and we have no mechanism for enforcement what are we going to do i move to reconsider the motion to adopt the sokovia accords only this is the key the people that were on the majority have to make that motion so if i lost if i was on the minority and i said no don&amp;#39;t pass it and it passes i can&amp;#39;t move to reconsider it because i&amp;#39;m under minority of course i&amp;#39;m going to ask you to reconsider no reconsider this again and again and again nope it doesn&amp;#39;t work like that only the only the majority can make the motion to reconsider the motion to reconsider is only done in the same meeting make sense if the motion to reconsider passes that means that you have to vote on the item again reconsidering doesn&amp;#39;t mean that the item goes away again it&amp;#39;s stacking your emotions i move to reconsider that passes now this motion is back on the table the motion to approve we can debate it again we can have arguments on it again but we still have to take action on that piece of uh on that piece of business okay so just because a motion to reconsider passes doesn&amp;#39;t mean that the motion goes away it just means that it&amp;#39;s back on the table for discussion and for a vote a motion to rescind is different what is a motion to rescind say you got to the next meeting we&amp;#39;re going to say the meeting not the same meeting the next meeting and only the next meeting and only the next meeting be very clear the next meeting we realized oops we made a mistake on those sokovia accords the last three weeks you know it&amp;#39;s been been bad the majority can make a motion to rescind the original motion essentially that kills it because that is a original business you you already passed it it&amp;#39;s already in existence because you&amp;#39;re killing something that the membership has already decided it requires a two-thirds majority it&amp;#39;s not a simple majority at that point in time a two-thirds majority in order to be able to go through that all right uh i see a couple of questions haley would the withdrawal of the motion by the person who made it require a seconder no and and here&amp;#39;s the interesting thing okay if i make a motion i am obligated to vote in favor of that motion if i make the motion and kneel seconds the motion he is not required to vote in favor of the motion the seconder or the supporter does not have to vote in favor of the motion that they support it a second is strictly to make discussion possible a second or supportive motion is only to make discussion possible in which case that i am withdrawing my original motion i don&amp;#39;t need a second to do that if somebody uh you know if engine beer decides that she wants to make a motion somebody would have to second her motion in order for it to continue to have discussion okay two-thirds of all or two-thirds that voted for two-thirds of the voting members on the floor so if there&amp;#39;s a hundred members and eighty people said yes the first time i still only need essentially 67 i need two thirds 67 people to say yes i don&amp;#39;t need all 80 or two-thirds of the 80. i need 67 of the full voting body good ques good questions these are great questions by the way thank you all right so the difference between withdrawal reconsider same meeting and rescind rescinding also requires notice there has to be notice that a motion to rescind is on there that gives your membership and your voting body the opportunity to say hey we already we already said yes to this we need to show up to make sure that our voices are heard or we need to show up to get rid of this you have to have notice on emotion to resent all right yeah me too joanna that&amp;#39;s funny all right so a house divided all right voting oftentimes we do a voice vote all in favor please say aye all opposed please say nay all all in favor please say bylaws all opposed please say no bylaws or whatever it is that would be a simple voice vote sometimes in the electronic media a little harder sometimes even in a room because you might have people go ah and they scream it out and you can&amp;#39;t really tell okay well there are some votes different ways to do that first of all a roll call vote so for example and i use we have you know we use these things even within our company there are issues or items that a simple i nay might suffice but i as i chair of a meeting i may say this is a budget adoption i&amp;#39;m looking for a roll call vote uh mr fitzgerald yes uh mr esenberg yes uh miss schmitz no uh ms delphine no because i want it recorded how each person has voted on that item okay that would be a roll call vote or a purpose for a roll call vote you can also do this if you have various levels of voting strength so say i&amp;#39;ve got a hundred presidents but not all presidents are created equal because of their membership numbers i may ask for a roll call vote strictly because i have to tabulate how much voting power each member has inside of a space and thus a roll call vote would be necessary white ballot if i remember correctly christina that is really where it&amp;#39;s more of a vote by acclimation so it&amp;#39;s everybody&amp;#39;s kind of in agreement or say that there&amp;#39;s a candidate uh a candidate for elected office and there&amp;#39;s no opposition candidate i may move to vote by acclimation so we don&amp;#39;t have to do a roll call vote on that in which case we say i and nay but somebody could still actually ask for a division somebody can ask for a division the chair now this is an interesting thing okay say that we&amp;#39;re in here and we&amp;#39;ve got you know two 200 and 200 plus people on this and we say all in favor say aye and 220 people say i and i could hear them all and three people say nay and i is the chair say the eyes have it and we&amp;#39;re moving forward and one of the nays one of the two people out of the 220 says division where very clearly there was a massive majority i as the chair can say objection out of order there was a clear division i&amp;#39;m not going to recognize the division as it would just be a waste of time now they can appeal the decision of the chair they have that opportunity to appeal the decision of the chair but then the membership would vote and say no clearly 220 people said yes there&amp;#39;s no reason for division to waste time even further okay division when called what we would do is say okay maybe it was too close and i couldn&amp;#39;t really tell or it sounded like a hundred people said yes and 104 people said no and i&amp;#39;m just not sure i could ask for division that could handle be handled in a couple of different ways it could be handled with raise your hands it could be handled with to the right side of the room uh the eyes to the left side of the room the nays and then we&amp;#39;ll count heads that can be handled by essentially separating those two and making a more clear indication of what would be a dividing of the vote okay if you call a yay a vote and it&amp;#39;s close can you call another vote using roll call yes absolutely if you&amp;#39;re not certain as the chairperson and you&amp;#39;re like i just don&amp;#39;t know it&amp;#39;s a big room um instead i&amp;#39;m gonna request a roll call vote uh the esteemed person from uh from estonia yay nay the esteemed person from the americas yay nay and you could go around and do that or you could ask for division and a raising of the hands and in a request to essentially count the votes you know visually good question all right the last thing that i&amp;#39;m going to cover abstentions don&amp;#39;t do it if you are on a board of directors you are there to vote you are there to have your voice heard there is in my opinion really only one place that you should be making an abstention or not voting and that is if you have a authentic or legitimate conflict of interest if there is something that is a conflict of interest an abstention is not only uh appropriate but also ethically obliged okay with that being said just because it&amp;#39;s a tough vote just because somebody&amp;#39;s feelings could be hurt by the vote you as a leader or you as a member of a body you are the authority it is the expectation of a healthy organization that you can have disagreements and conflicts please see dealing with difficult people or difficult conversations trainings if that&amp;#39;s not the case but an abstention is bad form unless there is a conflict of interest you should be making your vote you should be making your voice heard so that&amp;#39;s all i&amp;#39;ll say about that i know that was heavy right like we got in there deep we did some good i&amp;#39;ve got a couple of best practices for chairing and i do want to make sure i&amp;#39;m trying to catch some of these questions neil&amp;#39;s capturing them if i have missed any and we will revisit those so if you want to shake it out a little bit move around get something going here we&amp;#39;ll give you a couple of tips for sharing an effective meeting and then some of my favorite my 12-step program for having your meetings not suck all right all right here we go leading effective meetings during the meeting call to order on time i saw this question earlier people being late well if you have quorum go without them obviously with quorum that becomes a question if you&amp;#39;re not i didn&amp;#39;t obviously cover things of quorum there&amp;#39;s different meetings that require different levels of quorum check your bylaws check your constitution etc but with that being said if a meeting starts at nine and you have quorum start the meeting at nine if you don&amp;#39;t have quorum i would very very clearly indicate at the moment that quorum occurs doctor uh i&amp;#39;m gonna use uh i&amp;#39;m gonna use neil just so i can pick on neil neil thank you now that you&amp;#39;ve arrived we have reached quorum we will be able to begin this meeting that&amp;#39;s not rude that&amp;#39;s factual but i have made it very clear neil we were waiting for you and now that we are here with you we are glad to start this meeting but i might also handle that either preceding the meeting or after the meeting neil i&amp;#39;ve noticed that there&amp;#39;s been a pattern of you being late to the meetings that&amp;#39;s actually really slowing us down and not allowing our chapter our board our governing body to do business could i get a commitment from you to be on time so that way we can start the meetings effectively and i would have a conversation about that that would be a more direct appropriate but i&amp;#39;m not gonna lie you walk in late to a comedy show and guess what you are the star of the comedy show and if you walk in late to my meeting and i&amp;#39;ve had to wait because you weren&amp;#39;t there i&amp;#39;m at least going to politely and professionally point out that the meeting can now begin that neil has entered the room start your meetings on time if you&amp;#39;re not bound by a quorum issue start your meeting on time and i have a very very strict rule i will not go back and catch you up to speed because you were late i have an expectation that you will catch up or engage in a better way all right stay focused using your agenda please stay focused using your agenda use that as your you use that as your shield your mighty shield to continue going forward to ensure that you&amp;#39;re staying on track encourage participation and do your best to equalize participation we know that diversity equity and inclusion is important sometimes some people will take a little longer to and i&amp;#39;m going to give you tactics to do this because me as an extrovert very easy for me to speak up in a meeting my colleague who&amp;#39;s an introvert has flat outside i find it challenging because i need to think through or i need to do this and i&amp;#39;m i&amp;#39;m just not ready to do that there are ways for you to have equalization inside of a meeting i&amp;#39;m going to give you a couple tactics for that but encourage that participation start by setting up the precedent i&amp;#39;m expecting to hear everybody&amp;#39;s opinion on this as this is a matter that is incredibly important to our organization prompt comments when necessary but do that with respect and dignity all right leading effective meetings during the meeting that was before during the meeting control and interrupt interruptions and digressions if captain america and iron man are getting out of control it is your duty as leading that meeting to call that quit i will thank you mr iron man thank you captain america we&amp;#39;ve heard both of your points we&amp;#39;d like to hear from everybody else in the meeting at this point in time before we allow you to speak again i&amp;#39;m just going to make it very clear matter of fact and professional if they continue to do that there are options you know if your sergeant-at-arms take them out although i don&amp;#39;t know that i would want to fight captain america but you can have your sergeant-at-arms remove them or you can call the meeting to recess until that is under control you maintain control and be consistent in your rulings park digressions i got a couple of tactics for this if somebody starts to veer off start talking about infinity stones set that aside table it put it to the parking lot or whatever it is deflate wind bags if i am gonna sit there and just talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk limit the debate limit the discussion use the tools that you&amp;#39;ve been presented clarify and rephrase as the as the chair what i&amp;#39;m hearing you say is you&amp;#39;re ready to vote what i&amp;#39;m hearing you say is we would like to entertain a motion to amend these bylaws you can clarify and rephrase to encourage and promote the meeting to continue forward even if you&amp;#39;re not necessarily making motions yourself manage conflict if it gets out of control call a recess get temperatures down and then revisit or handle those on the side in more formal procedures is probably a better choice when you have a larger group this will help keep you on track so being formal the acknowledgements and everything else probably a better group when you better when you have a group of 12 or more last but not least we&amp;#39;re gonna do some sample topic areas actually we&amp;#39;re gonna we&amp;#39;re gonna hold this off it&amp;#39;s a lot what questions have i missed i did see one from dr jeremy let&amp;#39;s say roll call is done in quorum established one person is absent halfway during the meeting the person comes to present their report but no roll call was repeated till the end of the meeting does the one person consider as present or observer prerogative of the chair i would call that the prerogative of the chair if they&amp;#39;re late you can at this point now i would i would be reasonable with this right i would be reasonable with this but roll call has been completed if i have somebody that comes into my meeting and it&amp;#39;s late i would acknowledge their presence please let the minutes reflect that uh neil has arrived at our meeting at 11 36 a.m and let that be reflected in roll call now neil&amp;#39;s a part of the meeting it&amp;#39;s been noted in the minutes that neil was an hour and 36 minutes late but i can continue forward from there especially if what you know we do want to be considerate that even in the event that somebody is late or done something that we want to make sure that voices are heard or that pieces of business have been done now if neil missed his line item you have a choice that could become old business that could become dead that could become something that you take on at the end of your meeting chair&amp;#39;s prerogative good question we have some questions that have just come directly to me so what happens while we&amp;#39;re waiting on neil let&amp;#39;s say we don&amp;#39;t meet quorum what happens then and i&amp;#39;ve got a follow-up go ahead fire away okay so can we call it can we call the meeting to order if we don&amp;#39;t have forum can we do reports but my understanding is we can&amp;#39;t do new business nor old business is that right so what happens essentially if we don&amp;#39;t have forum what kind of we can&amp;#39;t do check your bylaws check your constitution i and i say that and i i literally say go back to there absolutely you would not be able to conduct business you would not be able to take votes which also means if your bylaws indicate that you have to open the meeting with a vote you&amp;#39;re not you&amp;#39;re not having your meeting that day if you have to set your agenda with the vote you&amp;#39;re not meeting that day because you can&amp;#39;t set your agenda which means that you don&amp;#39;t have anything on the table check your bylaws check your constitution in the event that i didn&amp;#39;t have quorum what i would probably do is instruct you know maybe committee meetings discussion open forum discussion none of this will be recorded in minutes none of this will be re right i would still try to make a value out of that but business probably would not get conducted at that day okay uh this was actually um something he said great because their bylaws didn&amp;#39;t cover this so if your bylaws and constitution doesn&amp;#39;t cover this what&amp;#39;s the general procedure using robert&amp;#39;s rules if the bylaws don&amp;#39;t i&amp;#39;m sorry ask that question one more time so if that you said to check for by laws and constitution about what to do if you don&amp;#39;t have foreign but if your by-laws and constitution don&amp;#39;t say anything what&amp;#39;s the best practice so i&amp;#39;m going to encourage you for two best practices uh first of all if your bylaws and your constitution don&amp;#39;t address a critical issue consider having that critical issue addressed in future bylaw and constitution discussions second refer to something like roberts rules online and or the original roberts rules book believe it or not they have essentially how best to manage virtually any situation that you can imagine in a meeting this is you know this is an hour and a half long that we&amp;#39;ve done here today and i&amp;#39;ve scratched the surface of what is possible inside of that space of robert&amp;#39;s rules of order so consult the online roberts rules or your book for robert&amp;#39;s rules there&amp;#39;s more than likely something that will help you cover if you&amp;#39;re not finding a resolution to your specific thing two options chairs prerogative or have the membership vote to have the membership i&amp;#39;d entertain a motion to take up this business even though it&amp;#39;s not listed in our bylaws as a necessary function of tonight&amp;#39;s meeting let me give you an example of this in 2009-2010 my local organization had a massive massive crisis one that made the entire board of directors resign from their positions one that lost roughly about uh 30 we had 36 members we went down to four literally overnight so now we have four members left in our organization there&amp;#39;s no leadership there&amp;#39;s nobody to appoint there&amp;#39;s nobody to do anything if i look at my bylaws there is nothing in my bylaws or constitution to manage that situation so we called a full meeting of the membership which at that time was four people we moved to suspend our bylaws in terms of elections we did that and then we elected us as leaders so then we could take ownership of the chapter again those are sort of egregious and high level i often times well can we just suspend bylaws or can we suspend rules to do this under the most egregious circumstances yes don&amp;#39;t use that as a default that is not a default practice and it defeats the purpose and the rules of protecting the minority of making sure that majority rules and democracy and to ensure that you have functional meetings okay so that would be how i&amp;#39;d answer that question but a couple more do you want to take them now or in a bit yeah let&amp;#39;s take them now and i&amp;#39;ll rapid fire my 12-step program at the end so let&amp;#39;s get those questions answered what&amp;#39;s the difference between a motion to strike and a motion to rescind so emotion to strike is a motion that is an amen amendment i moved to strike the language of this motion i moved to strike uh i moved to strike the motion in general i moved to strike all the language of the motion i etc a motion to rescind is the motion&amp;#39;s already passed and now we want to make it go away could we clarify about what happens when we rescind the motion as well you were talking about how with motions at the second of the motion doesn&amp;#39;t have to actually vote for the motion so there was a couple people a little confused because they thought that meant that the seconder wasn&amp;#39;t allowed to vote they are allowed to vote so yeah let me clarify good thank you for that that question if i make a motion i move to i move to adopt the sokovia accords and neil seconds that motion because i made the motion i am forced to be in favor of the motion if i&amp;#39;m no longer in favor of the motion i would withdraw it neil seconded the motion he has a choice to vote yay or nay who made the motion is required to vote yay who seconded the motion still has the choice to vote yes or no seconding emotion is what allows it to have debate and discussion it doesn&amp;#39;t mean that you&amp;#39;re necessarily in support of the motion i see one in the chat if a person doesn&amp;#39;t approve the agenda can they attend the meeting yes i can vote no on the agenda and say no i don&amp;#39;t want no i don&amp;#39;t like this or i can vote no on the minutes or anything else as a member so who gets and and let me clarify this this is actually a really really good i&amp;#39;m gonna i&amp;#39;m gonna lead this into something else your bylaws and your constitution should if they don&amp;#39;t talk to glc neil should identify who your voting members are and should identify who has speaking rights inside of your meeting typically and i will say this so for example in my local organization only of age members in good standing have speaking rights and voting rights if i&amp;#39;m the chair of my meeting and a senator comes in i have the prerogative of saying i would like to let the senator speak and i also have the prerogative of saying the senator is not an active of age member is not a voting member of this organization and therefore does not have speaking rights your bylaws should indicate who has speaking rights who has voting rights if it doesn&amp;#39;t address that but with that being said chairs prerogative i can allow a non-member to speak i can request a non-member to speak if somebody&amp;#39;s giving us a proposal i could invite them up to give their proposal even if they&amp;#39;re not a member and again the membership controls the meeting so they can always overrule the prerogative of the chair i&amp;#39;ve got one about the chair jay and then one about motions in general so with the chair there&amp;#39;s been lots of questions over what a chair and can and can&amp;#39;t do when does a chair when should a chair vote are there any circumstances where a chair should i actually vote yes i think that a chair should okay well this is going to be the question okay if your chairperson is the president and again this is going to be something that you can decide for your local organization i believe that the chair should probably vote as an elected person i have been elected by the membership to voice my opinion on matters of business that is being conducted in my business i vote as the chair of my meeting i vote on every item my name is listed in the minutes for the direction and the choice that i made on every single item whether i&amp;#39;m on the right side or whether i am on the uh nay site okay as a president of my local organization i am a member i am a uh of age person and i have paid my dues i have the right to vote not just an obligation to vote as the local president if i&amp;#39;m the local president or if i&amp;#39;m the national president now do i have to it&amp;#39;s one of those things where if i am the chair and i&amp;#39;m calling for a vote all of the eyes please say aye all the nays please say nay okay we&amp;#39;re going to roll call and it&amp;#39;s a 50 50 vote at that point in time i&amp;#39;m generally obligated to vote in order to break the tie how i conduct a roll call vote is in the first time that a roll call votes called uh we will say national president trine uh madam schmitz mr fitzgerald mr johnson yes and i will call myself and i will vote the next time that i&amp;#39;m calling that roll call vote i don&amp;#39;t start with national president trine i&amp;#39;m going to start with madam schmitz yes mr fitzgerald yes national president trine yes mr johnson yes the third time that i call for a roll call vote mr fitzgerald yes national president trine yes madam schmitz yes mr johnson yes i don&amp;#39;t always start with the same person every single time i would move one more into the order so that way one person whoever&amp;#39;s the a in the alphabet doesn&amp;#39;t necessarily always have the first vote in a roll call vote that&amp;#39;s something for you to consider as well great we&amp;#39;ve got a couple more and then there&amp;#39;s one there&amp;#39;s somebody who&amp;#39;s been very keen and asked me this question but i&amp;#39;m gonna use it right at the end because i think it&amp;#39;ll be a great segue to your recap of the 12 points on how to run an effective meeting and we&amp;#39;ve got a couple questions about what happens if a motion doesn&amp;#39;t have a second can it move forward great question the answer is no it doesn&amp;#39;t move forward now this is this is pro level chairpersonship okay i it drives me insane when i see this uh glc neil has made a motion is there a second is there a second is there a second come on guys is there no second like is somebody going to second this karen would you second this thank you that is not that is not good chairpersonship okay and now let me tell you i just got a new puppy on january 1st if i&amp;#39;m going to train the puppy to be a good puppy i have to be consistent if i&amp;#39;m sitting there begging for a second on every single one of my motions my meetings are going out of control if neil makes the motion is there a second is there a second if there is no second this motion will be will fail the motion fails that would be me being a very very very very very generous chair because i generally is is there a second hearing no second the motion fails discussion continued or if there&amp;#39;s no discussion because that&amp;#39;s the original main motion the next item of business is this well wait a second we we didn&amp;#39;t have a chance it is your obligation as a member of this body to speak up to allow your voice to be heard a motion was made we requested a second twice there was no second the motion fails if you&amp;#39;d like to bring this up again i would encourage you to do so in the next meeting or i can make a chair prerogative to go back and say i will allow for this item this one time to be discussed if there is a second neil would you like to continue forward with your original motion neil says yes is there a second i guarantee you people are gonna be like second yes second and then every time after that i do not have any patience for it every time after that is there is there a second to this motion is there a second to this motion if i have to say it twice the motion dies for lack of support next item of business and i&amp;#39;m not going to have the second grace if you consistently apply the rules and your members understand the rules and what those procedures are that is what makes your meetings go faster it may sound harsh but i&amp;#39;m not being harsh and being professional and being direct and i&amp;#39;m being considerate of the entire memberships time energy and efficiency inside of that meeting that&amp;#39;s how you have to think about it from the chairperson&amp;#39;s perspective if there&amp;#39;s no second next item of business or the motion fails for lack of support are there any other amendments or discussions thank you and just shut it down oh okay i&amp;#39;m gonna we&amp;#39;ve got three more questions and then in the interest of time i&amp;#39;m gonna move on so that you can talk about 12 steps and then if anyone&amp;#39;s got any questions at the end we can take them and of course you can always email me or jay and we will help get you the answers as well so a couple of other ones that have come up are very quick ones can a board member move a motion i go back to the check your bylaws check your constitution right because there are instances in which case yes and there will be instances in which case no i tend to default to the idea that in a and it also depends on the type of meeting right so for example i&amp;#39;ll use um a national conference if the chairperson calls for a motion and a board person raises their hand in a general membership in a general assembly it&amp;#39;s acknowledged if it&amp;#39;s a board of directors meeting it may not be acknowledged ooh interesting a national vice president may have the ability to make a motion or to vote on a motion whereas the auxiliary board member may not check your bylaws check your constitution they should define who has speaking rights and who has voting rights in your meeting as a default for me personally and again as a default if they&amp;#39;re on the board and they are a member of good standing and they are a member of the organization they have a right to make motions inside of the meeting if they have speaking rights i look at it and say that they should probably have voting rights and the ability to move business but again check your bylaws check your constitution if somebody voted no to the agenda can they still attend meeting and can they still vote on motions so somebody said no to the agenda can they still vote yes so if uh if they said no to the agenda now this is an interesting thing right because i had mentioned to you even like when you&amp;#39;re stacking motions i could vote yes to add nebula to a committee and still vote down the committee when it gets back to the main motion so just because i voted no on an agenda just because i voted no on an agenda item or anything else doesn&amp;#39;t procr preclude me from having a voice in all other matters of the meeting if i&amp;#39;m a member i have a voice if i&amp;#39;m a member of the majority or the minority i have a voice i can still make motions and i can still raise points of order points of privilege points of information even if i wasn&amp;#39;t on board for the agenda and i want to bring something interesting here for you to think in my opinion and this is how i look at it and this is how i expect my meetings to run if we&amp;#39;re in a very contentious issue and we&amp;#39;re all aboard of directors and we&amp;#39;re split 51 to 49 okay half of the group doesn&amp;#39;t agree half of the group agrees the way that i conduct my organizations my meetings is at the point in time when we have voted and at the point in time the democracy has had the opportunity for the voices of i and the voices of nay to be heard and recognized and that vote is approved or disapproved the entire body is now representing that decision made by the democracy let me repeat that again you may not agree with it but if it&amp;#39;s approved at that point in time you have an obligation as a member of that body to support whatever that is or to move forward with that as a part of the organization or the overseeing body okay if i am sitting there in a meeting with my business partners and my business partners all five of them say yes and i say no what would happen if i just decided to go well fine i&amp;#39;m not going to do this anyways and blah blah it&amp;#39;s not going to be good for business that is true inside of your local organizations your national organizations your state organizations once the voices have been heard debate has been managed and democracy and vote has taken place at that point in time it is a decision of the organization to go in a specific direction follow and support that decision or use the tools to rescind it later great we&amp;#39;ve got two that are linked to each other and then we&amp;#39;ve got karen&amp;#39;s question that will nicely segue into your 12 steps so the first part of this question is people have heard sometimes that the chairperson will sometimes say a phrase like seeing none the motion is passed so what happens if there&amp;#39;s no there&amp;#39;s no debate no one&amp;#39;s made an amendment no one&amp;#39;s raising their hand and it looks like this motions just going to pass and the chairman says seeing none the motion is passed so when do people need to vote and raise their hand and when can we also vote by acclamation and what does voting right affirmation mean sure so if there is let&amp;#39;s let me give a couple of quick examples um if i&amp;#39;m the chair of a meeting and we&amp;#39;re looking at the agenda i would entertain a motion to accept the agenda as presented motion made by diane seconded by gabriel is there any discussion hearing none i will call for the vote all in favor say aye all opposed say nay thank you motion passes next item of business okay and i would do it literally probably that quickly it&amp;#39;s the agenda if somebody wants to add something it is the members responsibility to speak up it is the members responsibility to speak up in the event that i am we&amp;#39;re evaluating the dissolution getting rid of the extinction of our chapter at that point in time i may very intentionally and very inclusively respectfully request that each member speaks before we go to vote context environment that might determine how much effort i make at requesting discussion there&amp;#39;s a motion on the table to dissolve our chapter it has been supported at this point as the chair i would request that each member speaks how they feel about this motion i&amp;#39;ll give you time if necessary in order to prepare your thoughts we will take a five-minute recess and when we reconvene i would like to hear from everyone i&amp;#39;ve already set the standard i&amp;#39;ve given you time and i&amp;#39;ve set the expectation as the chair if we go around and uh nadia refuses to speak on the issue i can&amp;#39;t force nadia to speak on the issue but i&amp;#39;ve given her time i&amp;#39;ve given encouragement i&amp;#39;ve requested as we go through each of the line i can say nadia do you wish to speak on this issue and nadia says no i don&amp;#39;t wish to speak on this issue i respect that and i move to the next person votes by acclimation is when there&amp;#39;s no alternative generally okay again so a vote by acclimation is uh we have one candidate who is apply you know who&amp;#39;s running for a position and there&amp;#39;s no other candidates i would move to vote by acclimation so we don&amp;#39;t have to go through the roll call vote process that&amp;#39;s generally where you&amp;#39;re going to use a vote by acclimation if the vote by acclimation is yes then it is still a vote of all in favor of glc neil i all opposed motion passes rather than having to waste the time of saying uh national president from estonia mr cataldo ms willis mr tong mr and going through all of that that is where the acclimation vote saves you time energy and efforts and then karen&amp;#39;s fantastic question i think we&amp;#39;ve all been there as members particularly if we&amp;#39;ve checked meeting what do we do when members don&amp;#39;t shut up so we&amp;#39;ve had the motion we think we&amp;#39;ve finished the we think we&amp;#39;ve finished the point and you&amp;#39;ve got that one person that doesn&amp;#39;t know when to quit when can we throw them out of the beat in and how do we manage disruptive people well that&amp;#39;s a great question you as the chair have that prerogative you can throw them out of the meeting the first time that they do it now the membership can overrule you the membership could request that somebody is point of order uh the the language that is being used at this point in time i believe is offensive and i would like to request that this person&amp;#39;s removed from this hearing or from this meeting okay as a chair i have a choice i can say uh and again i&amp;#39;m using neil just because it&amp;#39;s you know a sensitive subject mr fitzgerald there&amp;#39;s been a question about your language inside of this meeting i would ask you to please preclude from using uh the term jay johnson as a jerk any further and if you do you will be asked to leave this meeting now if neil does speak up again i might throw him out or the membership could essentially appeal the decision of the chair no jay we don&amp;#39;t want him to ever say jay johnson&amp;#39;s a jerk again and we appeal your decision to give him a second chance and we&amp;#39;re going to vote that he leaves the meeting your members own the meeting and i know that this sounds really aggressive but i mean at the point in time that you have somebody that&amp;#39;s so disruptive i will oftentimes take at this point in time i have asked glc neil to leave this meeting and that has not been conducted what i would request at this point is a 15 minute recess we will take that now we break away and i&amp;#39;m going to start looking at what my constitution what my bylaws allow for disciplinary action am i allowed to remove neil&amp;#39;s membership maybe am i allowed to uh you know extradite her or whatever maybe am i allowed to find him maybe that&amp;#39;s going to be determined by my bylaws and my constitution in the event that he&amp;#39;s disruptive aggressive or anything else guess what i have seen it happen more than one time where law enforcement like legit law enforcement has been called to a board of directors meetings because two members could not get their civil discourse under control escalate as appropriate don&amp;#39;t go with the nuclear option right away but escalate as appropriate take a recess if necessary take a step back sometimes during a recess it might be neil i&amp;#39;m not sure that you&amp;#39;re aware of what impact you&amp;#39;re having on the 200 people that are sitting around you but this is becoming very disruptive and they&amp;#39;re very not happy with this how would you like to go forward would you be willing to sit and be quiet for the rest of this meeting or is this something that i&amp;#39;m going to have to excuse you i refuse to leave neil if you refuse to leave i&amp;#39;ll be forced to take action inside of the meeting to have your membership removed and you will no longer have speaking rights or membership rights i don&amp;#39;t care i&amp;#39;m really angry if you don&amp;#39;t leave the meeting we&amp;#39;re going to have to call the authorities and have you removed it happens it happens in government it happens in business it happens in nonprofits so again try to handle it with civility try to handle it with grace and style try to handle it using the tools like a recess or uh you know the motions or the points of order but in the end make sure you&amp;#39;re firm and you&amp;#39;re consistent and you&amp;#39;re fair okay and then we&amp;#39;ve got one bonus one and then we will wrap up and hang back over to you to go for the 12 steps so we all know that as members when we get to our next meeting we vote on the minutes of the previous meeting what should be in the minutes and second as a follow-up when what do we do when we have to talk about something confidential we don&amp;#39;t necessarily want it on the minute can we use this thing called executive session and what is it and how does it work good questions so in the minutes you can do them in two different ways and i&amp;#39;ve seen them done in two different ways i&amp;#39;ve seen them where literally it&amp;#39;s almost transcription where somebody is typing what each person says neil said this uh annette said this ashley said this simeon said this uh natasha said this and there&amp;#39;s literally a transcript of everybody&amp;#39;s discussion or at least kind of major points of it i&amp;#39;ve also seen it where it&amp;#39;s the agenda with each of the business items where it says motion was made by diane it was seconded by florence the eyes uh the eyes had it if it was a roll call vote it might list out every person&amp;#39;s roll call vote you can do that in either way it&amp;#39;s really what&amp;#39;s being accepted by your membership it&amp;#39;s what&amp;#39;s being accepted by your board and it&amp;#39;s what your best practices are that you set as the expectation of the chairperson in terms of something like executive session this concept of executive session that is designed to handle very sensitive issues so for example in township government we used executive session when we were discussing things like lawsuits you can&amp;#39;t really have those out in the open you can&amp;#39;t you can&amp;#39;t be having the discussions about those out in the open or having those reflected in minutes executive session requires a vote to move into executive session when you move into executive session only voting members may remain unless the chair and the voting members encouraged so say for example um natasha has something natasha my dear friend has something to tell us that&amp;#39;s really really important as a board and it&amp;#39;s very sensitive information i might entertain a motion to move into executive session motion has been made by mr cataldo it has been supported by martina all in favor please say aye aye the eyes have it we will move into executive session i would like to invite anybody that is not a board of director to please vacate this meeting we will bring you back in when executive session concludes i would like to also invite natasha as she is sharing the sensitive information to participate in this executive session even though she is not a board member without you know with no uh with no essentially objections from the board hearing none thank you natasha please stay everybody else out we conduct our executive session no meeting notes are taken during that executive session and a vote is made to come out of executive session i think we&amp;#39;ve heard from natasha effectively i think we know which direction we need to go as a board of directors i would entertain a motion to exit executive session motion made by christina it&amp;#39;s been supported by richard all in favor please say aye aye we move out of executive session if in executive session we were talking about neil&amp;#39;s bad behavior and having to remove neil from the organization we can&amp;#39;t take that vote inside of executive session we can have the discussion but the vote still has to be on the record even if that&amp;#39;s uncomfortable based on discussions from executive session i would entertain a motion to remove neil&amp;#39;s membership motion&amp;#39;s been made by melissa it&amp;#39;s been seconded by gabriella is there any discussion hearing no discussion all in favor please say aye all opposed say nay the motion fails for support neil you get to retain your membership so with that being said you don&amp;#39;t take votes inside of executive session you can have discussion you can have agreement but you still have to take your votes with transparency in the world of the real world okay great questions all right well thank you very much everybody if you could run through the 12 steps then if we&amp;#39;ve got time at the end we&amp;#39;ll see if we&amp;#39;ve got any more and if not you can always email us and we will get you some answers too absolutely and neil&amp;#39;s a great resource to tap into so i&amp;#39;ll be very quick on this 12 steps to get you to effective meetings first step does this need to be a meeting stop having meetings that should be an email does it need to be a meeting do you need everybody that&amp;#39;s in there to be in that meeting this is this is above and beyond questions of robert&amp;#39;s rules second the bezos approach making sure that everybody&amp;#39;s on the same page jeff bezos of amazon what he does is the first 20 minutes of the meeting is the people that are in the meeting reviewing the documents that they&amp;#39;re going to discuss why because he understands human behavior and if i give you the documents in advance you&amp;#39;re probably not going to read them until the meeting anyways so let&amp;#39;s take 20 minutes all get on the same page and then have our discussion but make sure your team&amp;#39;s on the same page third time is of the essence and what i mean by that is don&amp;#39;t schedule your meeting for friday at 4 pm and expect people to still be engaged generally tuesdays wednesdays thursdays 2 p.m is one of the best documented times for meetings next manage the environment make sure that it&amp;#39;s not too cold make sure that it&amp;#39;s not noisy that it&amp;#39;s not full of distractions and that your people have the opportunity to be comfortable inside of that meeting space next assign roles give people responsibilities or jobs to do whether that&amp;#39;s time keeping whether that&amp;#39;s writing things on the board whether that&amp;#39;s keeping track of how many times somebody says um in the meeting you can have some fun with this this doesn&amp;#39;t have to be all boring and anything else but make sure that people have jobs or assigned roles inside of the meeting that will help to keep engagement the 10-minute rule by john medina who&amp;#39;s an evolutionary psychologist as well as neuroscientist and he says you&amp;#39;ve got about 10 minutes of actual attention inside of a meeting and you have about 30 seconds to earn it and if you&amp;#39;re not checking in with your attendees every 10 minutes or so probably going to lose them encourage written notes there is statistical significance in studies that show that people remember more are more active and engaged and they&amp;#39;re more participatory when written notes are actually utilized and it is written not necessarily typed just fyi so that&amp;#39;s founded in the science writing down questions this is one way to help make your meetings inclusive some people may not be comfortable speaking up some people may not necessarily uh have the ability to just jump in and ask the questions that they need to ask give people i&amp;#39;m going to give a few moments here for you to consider your questions to write them down and then we&amp;#39;ll collect the questions and re react to them as a group this gives people the ability to have their voices heard to think through it and to also make sure that it&amp;#39;s a group facilitation i love jigsaw meetings i will divide up my team you three you&amp;#39;re going to take on this issue you three you&amp;#39;re going to take on that issue you three you&amp;#39;re going to take on that issue we&amp;#39;ll bring it back in 15 minutes and i want you to come up with at least three potential solutions that we can consider as a group ready set go i&amp;#39;ve just broken it up to essentially ad hoc committees and broken up that meeting now people have three people in a group it&amp;#39;s very difficult to hide it&amp;#39;s very difficult to not be engaged or participate and there&amp;#39;s an expectation at the end that they have to bring some value back to the full group of which we can then determine what&amp;#39;s the best course of action or a different one swapping chairpersons sometimes i&amp;#39;m not the right person to lead a meeting sometimes i am if you want the hatchet if you want quick direct probably the right person if it is going to be something that is not along that line maybe i&amp;#39;m not the right person this is something that you have an option for as the chairperson i would like to appoint kyle as the chairperson for this meeting kyle and i had a discussion and we really felt that kyle&amp;#39;s position and you know objectiveness in this case would be a great value i would entertain a motion to adopt kyle as our chairperson for this meeting thank you neil thank you uh florence all in favor kyle&amp;#39;s the chairperson don&amp;#39;t be afraid to swap a chairperson that&amp;#39;s okay you can do that end with clear action items don&amp;#39;t have a meeting for meeting sake what are the action items at the end of it who&amp;#39;s responsible for what by when and how and then send it out send out the summary send out the minutes a lot of times no one sees the minutes until the next meeting when they&amp;#39;re like here&amp;#39;s the minutes go ahead and approve them send out the summary send out with the exciting things that people missed the value propositions that occurred get that out quickly and efficiently after the meeting that is a 12-step program and tactics for you to have very successful meetings i want to say thank you so much for spending the time with us [Music] you

Transcript for:Robert's Rules and Effective Meetings

Transcript for:
Robert's Rules and Effective Meetings