Hosting a board meeting requires a thorough and time-consuming process. Regardless of your role, a board meeting includes many important steps. In this article, we’ll talk about one particular step and that’s closing the board of directors. We’ll cover how to properly close a board meeting in a few simple steps.
Steps to closing a meeting well
Any board member will tell you that the most important thing in a meeting is to have it when it’s scheduled and that’s the first key to a successful meeting. Here are four simple steps to follow to make meetings more productive for board members and also to end a board meeting with all the important business on the right track and schedule.
Create a good agenda
The agenda is the most important document on the board, including the time and place of the meeting and the end of the meeting. The main difficulty is to organize and distribute the time for discussion of an issue so that there is enough time to decide the issue and the meeting will end on schedule.
We strongly recommend that board members are notified in advance of any discussion material to be brought before the board and that precious meeting time not be wasted on providing information. But creating an agenda can take some time; it’s important to start creating it a few weeks before the day it needs to be sent out. It’s important to put only the most important topics on the agenda that need to be addressed urgently for the well-being of your company.
Actively manage your meeting schedule
With an agenda, it will be easier for the board leader to navigate the boarding process because he or she will be able to build on the content and keep the discussions moving in the right direction.
The chairman needs to keep track of time and allocate as much or as little attention to each issue as he requires. He or she should control the speaking time of each board member and not let them get too “carried away.
However, there are “hot topics” that everyone wants to talk about, and this is quite normal. If this is the case, the chair should point out if it is a priority and strategically important, and if the answer is yes, he or she may allow the discussion to go on a little longer, but if not, the leader should suggest that the topic be moved to the next meeting.
Allow time to review board meeting materials
Board members often complain that they are not adequately prepared for the upcoming meeting. This may be due to either the slow distribution of information or the heavy presentation of material that is difficult to absorb.
Board organizers should send all necessary materials to attendees at least one week before the meeting. That way they will have more opportunities to form their ideas and concerns.
Make preparations for board meetings efficient
It was said earlier that it is important for board participants to make the documentation easy to understand. For the board organizer and chair, quality board information is a major responsibility, so they need to present all information easily and in a readable way if they want the meeting to be productive.
And to successfully close a board meeting, professionals state that it is very important to feel some progress and valuable input. The board chair should properly thank board members at the end of the meeting and in an email that should be sent the day after the meeting.