Preparing and running an HOA Board Member meeting can sometimes feel like a difficult and daunting task. Do you feel like the meeting goes too long? Do you feel like you and your fellow members have difficulty making decisions for important tasks? Perhaps you feel like you never accomplish everything that needs to be done? Today we’ll cover a few simple (but crucial!) steps you can take to hold a productive HOA Board Member meeting.

Preparation

Have you ever heard the phrase, “Failure to prepare is preparing to fail?” This quote is especially true when it comes to holding a meeting. If you put some time and effort into preparing for the meeting beforehand, you will find that your meetings stay on-track. Here are a few things you should always have on your prep checklist:

  1. Send out a notice a few days before the meeting to all board members with the meeting agenda. It makes the tasks of the meeting clear and will encourage the members to start sorting out their thoughts and ideas. Ask your fellow members if there’s anything else they want added to the meeting agenda. This should help curb random tangents or topics in the meeting.
  2. Print out hard copies of the agenda for each board member to have during the meeting, or have a large copy on a board somewhere so everyone can refer back to it. This will help keep everyone on topic and to time.
  3. Appoint a scribe to take notes during the meeting of all decisions made and any concerns that need to be addressed in another meeting.

Maintain a Schedule

Tangents and conversation loops are the enemies of a productive meeting. Here are a couple ways you can redirect your fellow members:

  1. When someone wants to jump ahead to another topic in the agenda, recognize that there are valid concerns, remind them that it is on the agenda for a later discussion, and direct the conversation back to the relevant topic.
  2. If a member wants to discuss an issue that is non-emergent and not on the agenda, validate the member that the issue should be discussed, but is not on the agenda for this meeting (remember how you invited the members to submit topics in your earlier notice?). Ask the scribe to make a note that it needs to be discussed at the next meeting.
  3. Remind the members of the time limit.

As a final note, remember to send out a notice a few days following the meeting with the notes and decisions made during the meeting so that no members can feel like they misunderstood what went on or was discussed. With a few simple preparations and crowd control techniques, you will find your HOA Board Member meetings will be more fruitful and efficient.