3 Weeks Before the Event!

Last Sunday (Oct 12), I had two meetings.  The first  was with the High Council for our stake, in which I had to present our current readiness to the Stake Presidency and the members of the High Council.  I also was able to make a few requests for what we needed from the High Council.  This included ushers and technology set up for the day of the event.  The second was another meeting with the Family History Consultants from the various wards to continue our efforts in planning the event.

The High Councilman over family history who I have been working with was going out of town and would not be present for either meeting, so he and I met Friday afternoon to help me prepare for both meetings.  It was in this meeting that I really learned the most.  I learned that preparation really does help you be less nervous.  I was nervous for meeting with the High Council, but he helped me know exactly what I needed to tell them and ask them for, which helped me feel much less nervous.  I also learned that to have a really effective meeting, you need to know what you want from the others in attendance and the meeting needs to have a specific goal.  For the meeting with the family history consultants, we set the goal of collecting 15 names of possible presenters.

I emailed all the family history consultants in our stake on Friday night to make sure they knew about the meeting on Sunday.  As a result, I ended up with about ten people there, total.  I was nervous that we would be unable to meet our goal, but I expressed this goal to those in attendance, and they surprised me.  We were able to come up with about 13 names and then two more pools of people from which we might pull presenters.  We had met my goal!  I believe that letting everyone in attendance know the purpose and goal of the meeting allowed us to meet the goal.  In the future, I will have a goal for any meeting I hold.  If a meeting doesn't have a goal, then it is probably not going to be a worthwhile meeting, so there is no point in having it.  If a meeting does have a goal, then I need to share that goal with everyone in attendance in order to reach that goal in the most efficient way.