Roberts Rules is an essential tool for any parent teacher organization whether you are “making a motion” in a conference room or sipping coffee at a kitchen table.
Here is a quick self-assessment tool to see if Roberts Rules would be beneficial to you…
- Your PTO board has a member with a “strong personality” who tends to dominant conversations
- PTO meetings regularly stray from topics of conversation that need to be discussed
- You find yourself wondering “where to go from here” during your PTO meetings
- Your PTO meeting minutes are missing important parts of previous PTO meetings
- Even short agenda’s end up taking hours to accomplish
- You are looking to move through topics more efficiently during meetings
Everyone Has a Voice
The process of Roberts Rules ensures that everyone has the opportunity to speak on a topic. A good meeting coordinator will use Roberts Rules to check in with every person at the table and give them the chance to speak.
It can also limit the amount of opportunities someone can speak on a topic. The idea of limiting the number of times members can speak on a topic has advantages:
- Members will learn to be more on point and thorough when it is there turn to speak
- Quicken the decision making process without sacrificing the opportunity to share information
- Help prevent members, who are determined to have the last word, from repeating the same points over and over
Meeting Minutes Made Easy
It can be difficult to track what is being said at a meeting when the conversation strays from a topic. By using motions, in accordance with Roberts Rules, the tracking of meetings becomes easier to document and straying off topic, a common problem for many boards, becomes easier to recognize and correct. (Your board secretary will thank you for the structure of a more formalized process!)
Roberts Rules Are The Road Map You’ve Been Looking For For Your PTO Meetings
Roberts Rules will help give your PTO’s meetings structure by providing a proven process to follow during meetings. Start using Roberts Rules and in just a few months, your meetings and sure to go faster and more tasks will get done.
Roberts Rules Means Freedom (Really!)
I know it sounds funny to think that a more formal process will result in more freedom, but it is true. Anyone who has run a meeting, at some point, has found themselves more caught up in the “running the meeting” than actually paying attention to what is being discussed. With a firm grasp of Roberts Rules, the meeting coordinator can relax and let Robert Rules run the meeting for them, allowing them to play a more active role in the meeting itself.
Final Notes:
About 80% of all volunteer association’s by-laws state that they will use Roberts Rules to run their meetings. Chances are your suppose to be using them too.
Roberts rules can seem too formal and stuffy for some people but know that the rules can be adjusted to the needs and “personality” of your PTO. The important thing is to have a process by which you run meetings and accomplish the work that needs to be done. The more you repeat this process, the more efficient your meetings will become and the more effective you will be at accomplishing your mission!
