In our recent article, Tapping the Full Potential of Community Meetings, we explored the many challenges – and enormous workload – Community Managers face in planning, facilitating, and concluding community meetings.

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Today, we’ll be examining the other side of the coin: community meetings’ importance as a touchpoint for Community Managers to engage their communities and drive progress on critical, high-impact matters.

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The reality is, despite their many challenges, community meetings offer an unrivalled opportunity for Community Managers to demonstrate – and leverage – their professional skills for the benefit of their communities. From guiding strategic decision-making, to accelerating budget approvals, to facilitating trustee selections – the value-adding potential is endless.

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By taking full advantage of this opportunity in AGMs, SGMs and Trustee Meetings, it’s possible for Community Managers to make significant inroads into connecting and engaging with their clients. More importantly, they’re able to add visible value to those clients in a way that positions their services as those of a trusted – and essential – advisor.

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The thing is: to unlock this vast potential, it’s not enough to make community meetings good – they need to be great.  So, let’s take a look at how to kick your meeting game up to the next level.

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Critical pain points related to meetings

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The first step to making something better is identifying where there’s room to improve. The following pain points directly increase the effort Community Managers have to invest before, during and after every meeting.

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Multiple meeting formats

In-person meetings are the accepted industry standard, but online meetings are a popular convenience. As a result, more than 50% of all community meetings are now hybrid (a combination of in-person and online), leaving Community Managers to shoulder the challenges of both.

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Quorum challenges

Around 30% to 40% of community meetings are reconvened due to insufficient quorum – a frustrating waste of time for everyone involved. Any meeting technology that can effectively assist in achieving quorum faster and more easily is definitely worth pursuing.

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Voting

Community voting in line with participation quotas is complex. Results are traditionally calculated on a spreadsheet – a slow and error-prone process. Tech-enabled Community Managers, on the other hand, are able to capture, calculate and publish voting results almost instantaneously.

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Time

Greater complexity and a suboptimal combination of meeting tools has dramatically increased the time Community Managers need to prep, facilitate, and conclude community meetings.

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People and personalities

Maintaining a positive and productive meeting environment is difficult when conflict arises, or disruptive personalities derail progress. A lack of industry standards pertaining to meetings means there are currently no guardrails or standards that govern the behaviour of all the stakeholders e.g. meeting time, rules of engagement, coming prepared, etc.

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Adoption of technology to make meetings more efficient

The demographics of many community residents often results in reluctance to adopt new meeting management technology. The reality is that “slow adopters” will always be there. Taking the time to inform and educate them on meeting technology and its many benefits can make it easier for them to transition.

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The gap between reality and expectations

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These pain points do more than just demonstrate the increasing load on Community Managers. They also highlight the gap between what Community Managers do, and what their clients think they do when it comes to meetings. The sad fact is: most trustees and owners believe their Community Manager does little more than take minutes at their meetings.

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This value perception is further degraded by the current reality of 3-hour meetings, slow decision-making, wasted time and disruptive personalities derailing meetings – all unfortunate symptoms of unresolved pain points.

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There is another side to this coin, however.

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Those Community Managers who are able to proactively plan, facilitate and seamlessly execute efficient, effective and professional meetings – where all parties come prepared – are instantly on another level to their competition. They are closing the gap between reality and expectations and showcasing their true value by tapping into the full spectrum of their professional skills (before, during and after meetings) in order to:

• Influence decisions and behaviours to support optimal outcomes, contributing to the creation of a desired place of living and greater ROI for owners.
• Provide insight and clarity into rules, regulations, best practice principles and community specific trends/red flags.
• Apply the necessary soft skills to run a professional meeting, despite the tech, people, personalities and uncontrollable/unforeseeable challenges.
• Lead the meeting where necessary to get decisions made and drive progress.
• Be the authority, sharing critical knowledge in a way that makes stakeholders sit up and listen.

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How do we step into the future of community meetings?

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So, how can Community Managers unlock the full potential of community meetings and focus more attention on these value-adding meeting elements? It’s simple: get the basics nailed down using streamlined meeting workflows and specialised meeting technology that gives you more opportunity to add visible value.

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The best way to do that is to apply the Five P's of Meetings.

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Before Meeting Workflows

✔️  Define the purpose of the meeting

✔️  Choose the best meeting format for that purpose (e.g. online for quick decisions; in-person for relationship building)

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✔️  Confirm dates and send invitations

✔️  Track RSVPs to determine quorum in advance

✔️  Draft the agenda (and use a template for consistency)

✔️  Gather supporting documents

✔️  Prep and send the Meeting Pack at least 14 days before the meeting date

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✔️  Create the attendance register

✔️  Prepare voting:

• proxies
• ballots
• tools
• permissions

✔️  Check Actions Items from previous minutes

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During Meeting Workflows

✔️  Establish quorum early

✔️  Facilitate the meeting professionally

‍✔️  Facilitate compliant voting, calculating and publishing the results immediately

✔️  Capture meeting minutes and general notes

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After Meeting Workflows

✔️  Polish and finalise meeting minutes for approval

✔️  Send out final approved minutes

✔️  Post meeting actions and follow-ups

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If you’re thinking that these workflows seem obvious (and nearly identical to what most of the industry is already doing), you’re not wrong. Some Community Managers apply the Ps using outdated and generic tools, while others use new-generation meeting technology. They both get to the same result in the end: approved meeting minutes.

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The difference lies in the meeting experience: time-consuming, inconvenient and inefficient with minimal apparent value vs convenient, professional and streamlined with a clear value proposition.

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By enhancing their execution of the Five Ps with their own value-adding skills and new-generation technology, future-forward Community Managers are able to create a meeting experience that takes efficiency, compliancy, professionalism and inclusiveness to the next level.

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It's this combination of people (skilled Community Managers), processes (the Five Ps) and technology that unlocks the immeasurable benefits of community meetings. These include:

• Reducing meeting prep time by 1-2 hours.
• Shaving 1-2 hours off every meeting.
• Reducing the risk of non-compliance (particularly around quorum management, voting procedures and general attendance)
• Creating a more professional meeting experience that saves time (and money) for everyone.
• Laying a rock-solid foundation of basics on top of which Community Managers can layer their own, tangible, professional value.

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Perhaps even more importantly, Community Managers willing to rethink their meeting experience have the opportunity to differentiate themselves from their competition in a way that communities cannot – and will not – ignore.

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Did you know? WeconnectU advocates for the development of a Community Meeting Manifesto to guide and standardise all community meetings, ensuring consistent and effective practices across the industry.