Tips for Creating Livelier, More Productive Board and Staff Meetings

Let Becky Christianson count the ways in which well-intentioned nonprofit meetings can go so terribly wrong.

For example, she says, “There’s having the wrong physical arrangement for a room. I mean, it’s hard to discuss something with the back of somebody else’s head.”

Or not being given a chance to prepare for a meeting. Or being trapped at one that rambles on interminably. Or both. “There was this one that was just so disorganized,” she says. “There were a considerable number of people — 45 or 50. We hadn’t had a chance to look at the agenda, as it was handed out at the door. An hour and 40 minutes later, we moved on to the second item on the agenda, and about half the people got up and left. It was absolutely horrible. And it was a meeting that people were hopeful about.”

Ms. Christianson, who works as an assistant human-resources director at Michigan Technological University, decided to take action. “Running effective meetings is one of my passions because I’ve sat through so many bad ones,” she says. She created her own lecture series to help the university’s faculty members and administrators improve the way they manage meetings. The meetings take place in the hourlong gap between classes. Participants are flabbergasted, she says, when the meetings end within 30 minutes, rather than taking the full break and leaving everyone scrambling to make it back to class. “People are amazed at the change in culture,” she says.

Meetings — with trustees, staff members, volunteers, clients, and donors — are a large part of life in the nonprofit world. At their worst, these gatherings can demoralize a board and anger a staff, resulting in lots of talk but little action. But at their best, according to Sy Friedland, executive director of Jewish Family & Children’s Service, in Boston, they can engage trustees and help an organization benefit fully from its employees’ and volunteers’ skills.

To hold concise, fruitful meetings, consider the following tips from nonprofit managers and consultants.

Prepare. Give meeting participants agendas — and any additional information — at least 48 hours before the gathering, says Carol Weisman, a consultant in St. Louis who works with nonprofit boards nationwide.

Set rules. When meetings will be held on a continuing basis, Ms. Weisman says, it is best to set up rules of procedure, which can include limiting the length of debate. “It gives the chairman permission to keep things on track,” she says. “They can say, ‘You’ve asked me to make sure we get this done, and we seem to be straying.’ It’s very empowering. It gives you the moral authority. You remind them that the will of the group has been to keep us on time, or that we hear from everyone, and so you can stop people from hogging the floor.”

Mr. Friedland is another strict believer in the power of organized meetings — so strict that he appoints a committee of staff members each year to help the organization streamline its gatherings.

“A lot of people make an agenda, and that’s it, and comes the time of the board meeting, they hope everything goes well,” he says. His group’s committee names a set of producers for each meeting. “They’ll pick the speakers, they’ll pick the order of things, they’ll time the meeting. We’ll even go to rehearse it,” he says. “They’ll ask the speakers for outlines to make sure it’s interesting. When we have people come to the meeting, we want them to feel effort went into it and it was well done.”

Think interactively. Don’t allow a meeting to turn into a lecture, says Ms. Weisman. “The more interactive a meeting is, the more you can absorb, because you don’t get bored,” she says. “When it’s a knowledge dump, as a lot of meetings are, it gets boring. The worst of all meetings is when you bring intelligent people together and report on what’s already been decided. That’s a crime. There’s no strategic thinking.”

In other words, meetings where staff members come together simply to describe a new program are counterproductive. “A better way to do it,” she says, “is, ‘We’re considering a new program. These are the strategic issues that need to be discussed.’”

And yet, decisions cannot be made without information, notes Mr. Friedland. His group’s board meetings are structured in two-hour blocks, combining a social event, a lecture, and a decision-making session. The lecture isn’t about ongoing programs, however. “We try to have an external speaker who can provide a broader view of the background in which the decisions are being made,” he says. “When we were talking about state and federal budget cuts, we had someone in from a major state medical trade agency, so we could look at where we might work in the future. We don’t want [trustees] looking at the internal business in isolation.”

Keep it short. “I know it sounds basic, but you might want to have time limits assigned for the different parts of the meeting,” Ms. Christianson says. “If people have a sense ahead of time that we’re only going to have 15 minutes to talk about this [agenda item], then they’ll make sure their ducks are in a row.”

Time allotments also help participants focus and keep them from expending too much energy on minor matters, she adds. Hot topics can be assigned to future gatherings rather than boiling over during the current one. “When I’m with a group, the last few minutes of a meeting, we’ll spend planning the agenda for the next meeting,” she says. “That way, the agenda doesn’t just belong to the facilitator, it belongs to the group.”

Limit debate. When discussions threaten to careen out of control, the meeting leader must gently take control, says Vige Barrie, a media consultant who has served as board chairwoman of the Dallas Visual Arts Center and the Texas Fine Arts Association. “I’ve been known to interrupt and say, ‘I appreciate the feedback, but given the time constraints, we can’t go into that detail, ‘” she says. “I tell them I’d be happy to discuss it after the meeting.”

Again, advance planning can help, according to Mr. Friedland. “When you’re getting presentations that are clear and you’re more focused on specific issues or pieces of information, there’s less of a tendency for people to ask irrelevant questions or editorialize,” he say. “In a lot of board meetings, there’s a sense that time is limitless, and there’s a tendency to get up and talk. If the goal is to get out at 9, people tend to filter themselves accordingly.”

Share the spotlight. A common problem with many board meetings in particular is that they tend to be focused on the progress of the staff rather than the involvement of the board, according to Paul Minorini, the president of Boys Hope Girls Hope, a national youth-development group in Bridgeton, Mo. “If everyone in the room has made a suggestion or asked a question, I feel like it’s an engaged board,” he says. “And an engaged board is a successful board.”

One way to keep trustees interested, he says, is to entrust them with giving the majority of the presentations at board meetings. “I always get worried when I look at the agenda and it’s mostly staff people,” Mr. Minorini adds. “If you’ve got a finance report that needs to be given, the treasurer should be giving the report. The staff should be helping, but the board should be hearing the treasurer’s information.”

Board members will pay attention to each other and work harder if they get the sense that they are all working at the meetings, he says. “The bulk of the time you spend at a board meeting should be presenting real organizational issues, challenges, ideas about where the organization is going, and to engage the board on those topics,” he says. “If you read to them, they’re not going to be engaged. But if we say, ‘We’re having turnover at too high a rate, we think we could do better, this is the challenge we’re facing, ‘ and you say, ‘Do any of you have any thoughts? ‘ then you’re engaging them. Most boards have smart, experienced people with strong expertise, but most nonprofits don’t engage their board members as well as they can to deal with problems and opportunities.”

Break into smaller groups. There is no need to involve an entire board or staff in an issue that could be handled by a more select group, or one that requires specific expertise, say nonprofit managers, board members, and consultants. Subcommittees and discussion groups can help break up meeting tedium, and can help isolate thorny issues that might cause a larger, general gathering to go off track.

Abstract issues can particularly benefit from being tackled by smaller groups, and sometimes by several smaller groups simultaneously, says Mr. Friedland. “If there’s a lot of talking, it’s good that a part of the meeting has something that’s interactive, like a breakout group,” he says. “People don’t like to sit and listen for too long a time.”

Pay attention to comfort. A carefully planned agenda that runs right on schedule won’t help meeting attendees make decisions if they can’t see each other — or are too hot, cold, tired, or hungry to think.

While charities are usually good at addressing basics that are conducive to helping trustees and other meeting attendees get acquainted, such as name cards and mixing over coffee, they often botch seating arrangements, according to Paul Radde, a Houston psychologist and consultant on meeting and conference design.

One of the worst arrangements, he says, are straight rows, which leave people looking forward at only one speaker. “It keeps people from being able to form a tight community and leaves them as an audience,” he says. “They can only really see the person to the right or the left. The only place you really want straight rows are a jury box, a bus station, or an egg carton.”

Mr. Radde recommends that small-group meetings be held at oval or circular tables where participants can see one another, in order to promote group efforts. “You want to see each other’s faces,” he says. “You want to be able to pick up on nonverbal cues, like whether someone takes umbrage at something, or realizes something is important that they hadn’t thought about before. If I see them taking notes, I’m probably going to pay more attention.”

It is also important to note whether the board has gotten unresponsive, Mr. Minorini says. “I always take a break,” he says. “If it looks like the eyes are glazing over, if people are looking like they’re bored, tired, confused or anxious about something, we take a break.”

Ask for feedback. Efforts to improve shouldn’t stop when the meeting ends, Mr. Friedland says. His group evaluates every board meeting, including speakers and venues. “We started doing it about four years ago,” he says. “It takes a lot more time and effort, but I think people like the meetings more, they find them more interesting.” Board members, he says, have been more engaged since the feedback process began: “They’re motivated to put in more time with committees and other things because we don’t waste their time.”

Even without a formal process, evaluations are valuable, according to Ms. Barrie. “I always ask people what went right or wrong on an informal basis after a meeting,” she says. “You learn what quicksand not to step into next time. You also might identify people who are being underutilized or overutilized. Sometimes, when you’re in front of a large group of people, you might not catch the subtleties until you sit back and reflect.”

What tips can you offer for making meetings more productive? Share your thoughts in the Building a Better Board online forum.