Meeting with a potential new forum member: What do we discuss?

If you are considering adding a new member to your forum, it’s ideal for two or more members to meet the candidate for coffee.  The current members can then compare notes after the conversation.

Your meeting agenda can include:

• Sharing your forum’s constitution/norms, both to educate the candidate and to encourage their own questions about forum commitments and principles.
• Describing your forum’s typical meeting schedule (day, time, location) to see how that fits with the candidate’s schedule. Ask yourself whether the forum would be willing and able to adjust to accommodate the new member’s needs?
• Asking about the candidate’s previous experience as a member of a peer support group. What are the candidate’s objectives in joining?
• Without breaking forum confidentiality, sharing some themes and types of issues your forum has explored. Ask what topics the candidate would like to explore in forum.
• After explaining and committing to forum confidentiality, doing a short icebreaker exercise where the current members share a past experience or current challenge that might come up in forum, and the candidate shares some aspect of their life. This can help spark a conversation about how forum supports its members.

At the end of the meeting, be clear with the candidate about next steps, and when they can expect to hear about being invited to an upcoming forum meeting.

The many alternatives to a standard four-hour meeting

Many forums standardize on one four-hour meeting monthly plus an annual retreat.  However, there are many ways to mix it up, to accommodate individual scheduling needs, and to build richer connections between members.  Some options to consider on an occasional or regular basis:

• Try a shorter meeting between 2-3.5 hours, either because that’s what works one month or because your forum is smaller and less time is needed.
• If you regularly have shorter meetings, consider adding a 30-minute check-in/quick update call between monthly meetings.
• Once or twice a year, shorten the meeting to about 2.5 hours (time for updates and one presentation), and then go out to dinner or cater the meal in to a member’s conference room or home.
• Plan a 5-6 hour mini-retreat, with or without a professional facilitator.
• In the summer, rent a boat (or find a friend who has one). Go on a 2-3 hour cruise, including extended updates only, then socializing.
• Plan a holiday dinner with spouses or a summer picnic with kids to get to know each other’s families.
• Don’t limit connections to forum meetings. Meet one-on-one, either as part of the coaching process, as a follow-up to someone’s presentation, or to discuss shared personal or professional interests.
• When requested by a member with an urgent issue, schedule an emergency meeting. Such sessions have only one agenda item – a presentation of the member’s urgent issue. The meeting usually lasts an hour or less and may be held via conference or video call.  Because the meeting is not on the regular calendar, absences don’t affect member attendance statistics.
• If too many members are traveling, meet virtually using Skype, Zoom or another video meeting platform.

The power of pairs: A new approach to your presentation parking lot

Forums sometimes struggle with the process and effort of generating a rich parking lot of possible presentation topics. If you want to almost guarantee a great list of options, try this method at your next meeting.

• Before updates, randomly pair members up and announce the pairings. (Have a trio in addition to the pairs if you have an odd number in attendance.)
• To prepare updates, members can use the standard update form, but also ask them to consider these questions:
  • Great questions that lead to great updates
  • And before members share their updates, ask them to consider how they would complete one of these sentences:
    • “The one thing I don’t want to share with my Forum is…”
      or
    • “The one thing I have not yet shared with my Forum is…”

• When members are sharing their updates, everyone listens carefully, but we pay particular attention to the update of the person we have been paired with. Proceed through updates without any interruptions or questions.
• Immediately after updates, meet separately in your pairs (or trio) for 10-15 minutes to help each other reflect on and define the most significant, deep issue or two on which each of you would like to hear the group’s experience.  Consider in your conversation what you heard today, but also issues that your partner has mentioned in the past.
• Come back together and each member reports out the issue(s) they have identified for possible presentation.  Someone should scribe all of these topics on a white board or in a notebook.

This should generate a great list of at least one topic per member for presentation either that day or in the future.

Who is presenting at your forum meeting today?

One sign of a healthy forum is that all members are willing, even eager, to explore their toughest issues and highest aspirations in forum.

While that is the ideal, some forums find that members are reluctant to present, or are always deferring to others. To encourage more members to step forward, first ask all members at every meeting to complete one of these sentences:

If I was to present today, I would explore…

OR

I would appreciate hearing the group’s experience that can help me think about…

Then, working with that list, don’t just wait or plead for a volunteer. Instead call on a full repertoire of presentation selection methods including:

• Voting: During a break, each member gets to cast three votes for the topic/presenter. Your votes can go all to your own topic, all to another member, or be divided as you wish. The member with the most votes becomes today’s presenter. This method can be done in the open (everyone can see which topics are getting the most votes) or anonymously (put your votes on a separate piece of paper, and the moderator then counts up the votes).
• Secret ballot: Each member writes on a paper the name of the person they would most like to see present today. Again, you can vote for yourself or someone else. The moderate collects and counts the papers. The member with the most votes is invited to present, either on the topic they proposed for the parking lot, or something else of their choosing.
• Finger shoot: All members are asked simultaneously to hold out between one and five fingers. Five = I must present today. Four = I want to present. Three = I would like to present. Two = I don’t need to present. One = I don’t want to present.
• Put in place a rotation of one presenter scheduled in advance, and one chosen on the day of the meeting. The scheduled sequence is reviewed monthly and presenters may be moved forward or backwards in the queue based on the urgency and importance of issues.