Tips for Effectively Staffing your Committees

How can you increase your effectiveness as a staff liaison to those committees? Here are some tips for fulfilling your role and building a solid partnership with your committee chair and committee members.

• Recognize that you are a valuable resource to the committee in helping to advance its work while advancing the organization’s goals and objectives.
• Spend time fully understanding the committee’s background, its previous work accomplishments, and organizational policies that might impact that committee.
• Become thoroughly familiar with the committee’s current scope of work and the outcomes it hopes to achieve for the coming year.
• Understand that every committee has a “culture,” a set of assumptions, attitudes and beliefs that guide its behavior. Do your best to figure out and adapt to the culture as quickly as possible.
• Work with the committee chair to:
  1. Develop an annual written work plan with timelines that will keep the committee focused and able to accomplish its priorities;
  2. Prepare agendas, and distribute prior to meetings;
  3. Facilitate robust committee discussions and activities that address the committee’s charge;
  4. Foster a culture of openness and transparency, and respect for all committee members as equal partners in discussions;
  5. Provide orientation for new and continuing committee members each year; and
  6. Provide administrative and on-site support for planning and follow-up of all committee meetings
  7. Draft reports of committee meetings for review and approval
  8. Facilitate communication of committee updates and requests for action to the chief staff executive and board.
• Where appropriate, offer suggestions for proposed products and services that will help advance the organization’s mission.
• Encourage self-assessment of the committee from time to time on individual and overall committee performance.
• Recognize that your work with the committee chair and its members is a partnership, with each role having its own set of responsibilities and complementing one another.

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