BNI 767: Should We Be Strict on Engagement? - BNI & The Power of One

Summary5 min read

Podcast Summary: BNI 767 – Should We Be Strict on Engagement?

Title: BNI & The Power of One
Host: Tim Roberts
Episode: BNI 767: Should We Be Strict on Engagement?
Release Date: December 5, 2024

In episode 767 of the BNI & The Power of One podcast, host Tim Roberts delves into a pressing issue faced by BNI chapters operating in a virtual landscape: the enforcement of engagement rules, particularly concerning members' presence and participation during online meetings. Drawing from a listener's query from Florida, Roberts offers comprehensive insights and strategies to enhance member engagement and uphold the integrity of BNI meetings in an increasingly digital environment.

1. The Importance of Strict Engagement Rules

Roberts begins by addressing the core question about whether BNI chapters should implement strict and concrete rules regarding camera usage, punctuality, and active participation to be counted as present. He emphatically supports strict enforcement, emphasizing that “I do think the rules should be strict and concrete about being on camera, engaged on time, and presenting your weekly presentations in order to be counted as present” (01:30).

Key Points:

Engagement Equals Effectiveness: In virtual settings, maintaining high levels of engagement is crucial to ensure meetings are productive and members reap the intended benefits.
Discipline Over Flexibility: Allowing leniency with engagement rules can lead to diminished participation and eventual ineffectiveness of the chapter.

2. Challenges of Virtual Meetings and the Need for Discipline

Roberts highlights the unique challenges posed by online meetings, such as increased distractions and opportunities for disengagement. He underscores the necessity for members to be fully present and attentive, stating, “If you can't do it in a live meeting, you shouldn't be doing it in an online meeting.” (02:50).

Key Points:

Distractions and Disengagement: Virtual environments are rife with potential interruptions, making it imperative for members to remain focused.
Efficiency Requires Discipline: While online meetings can be more time-efficient, they demand greater self-discipline to maintain the same level of engagement as in-person gatherings.

3. Consistent Enforcement of Rules for Chapter Success

Roberts reinforces that BNI’s rules and policies are non-negotiable and uniform for all members. He asserts, “All B and I rules, policies, et cetera, are not personal. They are the same for everyone,” (05:15) emphasizing fairness and equality in enforcement.

Key Points:

Uniform Application: Rules must apply equally to all members to prevent perceptions of favoritism and ensure fairness.
Avoiding Policy Exceptions: Making exceptions undermines the structure and can lead to larger issues within the chapter.

4. Implementing Cultural Change Through Education

When introducing stricter engagement rules, particularly around camera usage, Roberts advises a strategic approach. He recommends initiating an educational session to explain both the “what” and the “why” behind the changes. “You start with an educational moment. You start at your meeting, have the education coordinator or somebody take that education time and explain not only what the change is, but the why behind it,” he explains (08:00).

Key Points:

Educate Before Enforcing: Providing context and rationale helps members understand the importance of the changes, fostering smoother transitions.
Set Clear Expectations: Clearly communicate when the new rules will take effect, allowing members to prepare and adjust accordingly.

5. Handling Resistance and Maintaining Discipline

Roberts acknowledges that resistance to change is natural but stresses the importance of steadfastly enforcing new policies. He notes, “Whenever you make a change, you're going to hear some people complain about it because people don't like change just is what it is in that sense,” (12:45) and advises maintaining discipline to ensure long-term compliance.

Key Points:

Anticipate Complaints: Expect some pushback when implementing new rules, but remain committed to the chapter’s standards.
Consistency is Key: Upholding rules consistently over time helps in solidifying new norms and reducing resistance.

6. The Role of Accountability and Equality in Membership

Emphasizing that no member is above the rules, Roberts states, “We are all replaceable, every single one of us,” (15:20), highlighting the importance of collective accountability. He discusses the detrimental effects of allowing disengaged members to remain in the chapter, including reduced effectiveness and compromised group integrity.

Key Points:

Equal Enforcement: Enforcing rules uniformly ensures that all members are held to the same standard, fostering a sense of equality.
Replacement Philosophy: Recognizing that every member is replaceable encourages individuals to remain actively engaged and committed.

7. Maintaining Chapter Effectiveness and Fun Through Rules

Roberts challenges the notion that strict rules make BNI chapters unfun. He argues, “The rules are not what make B and I, for lack of a better term, unfun. They're actually what makes B and I potentially very fun,” (18:10). By ensuring that all members are equally committed and engaged, the chapter can achieve meaningful results, enhancing the overall experience.

Key Points:

Rules Enhance Fun: Structured environments prevent chaos, allowing members to focus on networking and business growth.
Shared Commitment Drives Success: When everyone is equally invested, the collective success of the chapter is amplified, making participation more rewarding.

8. Conclusion: Upholding Standards for Collective Success

Tim Roberts wraps up the discussion by reiterating the necessity of strict engagement rules to maintain the effectiveness and integrity of BNI chapters in a virtual setting. He encourages chapter leaders to remain disciplined, uphold rules consistently, and prioritize the collective good over individual preferences. Roberts concludes, “The rules are what is best for the group to have everybody's camera on. And there's no one individual who's above the group. Everybody's the same, pays the same membership. Everybody is equal in that sense,” (20:30) reinforcing the principle of equality and shared responsibility.

Key Takeaways:

Strict Engagement Rules are Essential: Ensuring full participation maintains the efficacy and reputation of BNI chapters.
Consistency and Fairness Matter: Uniform enforcement of rules fosters a fair and productive environment.
Collective Commitment Drives Success: When all members are equally engaged, the entire chapter thrives, benefiting each individual’s business growth.

Timestamp Guide:

01:30 – Emphasis on strict engagement rules
02:50 – Challenges of virtual meetings
05:15 – Uniform enforcement of rules
08:00 – Implementing cultural change through education
12:45 – Handling resistance to change
15:20 – Accountability and equality in membership
18:10 – Rules enhancing chapter fun and effectiveness
20:30 – Conclusion on upholding standards

Note: Timestamps are approximate estimates based on the transcript provided.

Final Thoughts

Episode 767 of BNI & The Power of One offers invaluable guidance for BNI chapter leaders navigating the complexities of virtual meetings. By advocating for strict engagement rules, consistent enforcement, and collective accountability, Tim Roberts provides a roadmap for maintaining chapter effectiveness and fostering a thriving, engaged community. Leaders are encouraged to embrace these strategies to ensure their chapters not only survive but flourish in the digital age.

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Transcript1 lines

[00:40]
Tim
Welcome back to B and I and the Power of One. Thank you for joining me again today. Back with your questions and topics submitted at bnipower of 1. Com. So once again, if you have any questions, any topics you'd like us to Discuss, go to bnipowerofone.com Leave it there, let me know and we will absolutely get to it. Today's comes from Florida and it says hey Tim, big fan of the podcast. I'm the president of a fully online chapter and wanted to get your perspective on attendance in the virtual landscape. In the past we've been pretty relaxed on rules and now that new leadership is in place, we have made it a priority to tighten the screws on legitimate attendance and engagement. It's difficult to adjust the culture of a chapter, which you have already helped with tremendously. However, one particular issue that has risen is that of being on camera without signaling anyone out or making someone feel targeted. Let's just say that some folks are sporadic with their camera time for a multitude of reasons. Do you think that the rules should be strict and concrete about being on camera, engaged on time, and presenting your information? Your weekly presentations and I have portion in order to be counted as present. Are there circumstances that you would be more flexible with, for instance, joining the zoom but staying off camera and not engaging during your allotted times? Thank you. All right, so this one's a pretty easy one for me, but I'm also going to talk about all chapters and some of that culture thing. So to your question, do you think the rules should be strict, concrete on being on camera, engaged on time, and presenting your info in order to be counted as president? 100% I do, yes. This is the challenge with online meetings. Whether you're fully online or hybrid where you're meeting 75% of the time online, it's all about engagement. Zoom is a great tool for efficiency, right? You can have your hour and a half meeting without any of the other time needed a lot that a live meeting requires. That would be travel time to and from the meeting, etc. So you could be much more efficient. However, it requires more discipline. It's littered with distractions and it's littered with opportunity like this for people to be disengaged. So in order for it to be effective, you need everyone fully engaged. Fully engaged means they're on camera, they're visibly engaged. They are, to your best ability, not involved in other things during the meeting like emails and reading online articles and those kind of things. And they're present. So I've always said that if you can't do it in a live meeting, you shouldn't be doing it in an online meeting. And that would be things like not being visible in the room, that would be turning your cameras off. It says if you're not there, you can't be at a live meeting, but not be visibly present, getting up and walking away, driving these kind of things. So do I think the rules should be strict and concrete? Yes, and it's not to be difficult. It's to be ensuring that everybody's playing the same game, everybody's following the same rules, and everybody's fully engaged to the same level. If you don't do that, when you get lax, do you get a little relaxed and you don't hold people accountable? It perpetuates. It starts becoming bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger, meaning the problem. And that's when things really can spiral out of control. The chapter becomes highly ineffective. You're going to start having retention issues. You're going to have all kinds of other problems. So all B and I rules, policies, et cetera, are not personal. They are the same for everyone. The only time the policies become personal is when we start making exceptions. So are there circumstances that you would be more flexible with? Not really. Not really. Again, if you can't do it in a live meeting, shouldn't be allowed in an online meeting. So camera off, those kind of things? No, I. I would bet that anybody who has their camera off had their camera on when they first joined, if they joined while you were fully online. So it's not a tech issue. And if it was a tech issue, that just means they're not the right fit. They. And again, I have very little sympathy around the tech issue because webcams are so cheap now, you know, they're not hundreds and hundreds of dollars that it's a very small investment for somebody to make. And again, I would assume they would already have it when they're visiting. I don't think any chapter would accept somebody who showed up to the meeting with their camera off for the first time as a visitor happened to apply. If you are, you're making a huge mistake right out of the gate. So it really is a matter of people not wanting to be marked absent, but not really being engaged. If they're not listening, if they're not engaged, they're not hearing your weekly presentations. They're not caring about that kind of stuff. They're not going to produce the same results for everybody else. They're definitely not going to get the same results. They want from it. And so it just doesn't work that way. So yes. And then. So this is an online format. Thinking about all chapters in cultural change, how would you handle it? I wouldn't just go into the meeting the next week and be like, guess what? If your camera's not on, we're marking you absent. Anytime you're trying to make changes in a chapter to get it back in line with the set operations of a, B and I chapter, which includes everything from following policies or implementing policies that weren't implemented before to getting back on track with just the general operations of the meeting, the agenda, et cetera. You start with an educational moment. You start at your meeting, have the education coordinator or somebody take that education time and explain not only what the change is, but the why behind it. In this instance, the why behind it is multifactorial. So one is, we want to be as effective as possible. It's the only reason to be together is to be effective for one another. And the only way we can truly be effective for one another is, is if that we are all engaged to the same level. Now, we can't, you might say you're fully engaged with the cameras off, but we can't see it. And perception is reality. So cameras must be on. You have to be on time just like you would to a live meeting. You have to be engaged in open networking, just like you would have to be in a live meeting. You have to be clearly not distracted. So even though your camera's on, you can't be clearly having a side conversation or reading emails and not paying attention, just like you wouldn't in a live meeting, in person meeting. Explain how and why. This is important not only for producing results, but also for the perception of the group as you have visitors coming. If you visited a chapter that was online and you showed up and multiple members had their cameras off, just blank screens, multiple members were clearly doing other things, what is your perception of that group? It's not going to be great. It's not going to be something you're like, hey, let me join this, and, you know, pay good money to be a part of this. Versus everybody's cameras on, everybody's engaged, everybody's paying attention. Again, I think you can be highly effective in a zoom format if everybody is disciplined enough to do it correctly. If everybody's using zoom as a way to do less, not just about being more efficient, but actually physically do less, it's not going to work. And your visitors are going to pick up on that. Your members are going to pick up on that. And when we have disengagement, you have members right now. If you've had a bunch of members with their cameras off and they're not paying attention and not participating, I guarantee you have members who've already decided that I'm out. Like I might stay until my renewal time because I paid for that time, but I'm out. And once they've mentally checked out like that, they're not doing as many one to ones, they're not paying as much attention, they're not giving it the same effort. So while they're physically on your roster, they're kind of not really there either and the whole thing can really fall apart. So I would have an educational moment on why are we doing this? Why are we making the change? And then set the clear expectation. So you say starting next week, this is what we're doing. And that goes for again, any change you need to make in the chapter to get back in line with how it's supposed to be run. You said, you know, we're making it a priority to tighten the screws. Well, if it's been going on for a while, you don't want to just walk in and be like starting right this second today because there'll be an uproar. You got to explain it. You got to give everybody a chance to be prepared for it and run with it. You can even say in two weeks this is what's going to happen. And then once you've decided that though you hold to it your first couple of weeks, there might be somebody who's testing the water, see how serious you really are. Hold to it, mark them, mark them as absent or whatever you're deciding to do, you just got to be disciplined. Once you stick to it for a few weeks, the complaining, the whining, the all that quiet stuff, it quiets down pretty quick. It just becomes, this is how we're doing it now and you move forward. It's when you try to make a change and then the first time somebody complains, you go, oh my God, maybe we don't. You just constantly, you know, I mean, I guess you're just constantly changing over and over again. That's when as a leadership team, you've lost all control, all credibility and nothing's going to really work well for you. So whenever you make a change of any kind, you're going to hear some people complain about it because people don't like change just is what it is in that sense. So you just have to move forward through it remain disciplined, remain focused, and within a couple weeks, that all stops. And if it doesn't, then that person just isn't the right fit. You know, they don't want to play the game the way everybody else is playing the game. They want to follow the rules the way everybody else is following the rules. They think they're above it, they don't agree with it, whatever their crazy reason might be, then it's no longer the right fit for them. And trust me, you're not really losing in that situation. You're not going to lose out even when it's the. You know, we've talked about this on past podcasts. There's always that member who thinks they're more valuable than everybody else. In about, just about every chapter, there's that member who thinks they're above everybody else. Whether it's because they, they have the biggest thank you Foco business number in the chapter or they've been around the longest or what, what have you. There's always like something I like to remind our chapters that we are all replaceable, every single one of us. And if you've got somebody who's not fully engaged, not following the policies, thinks they're above everybody else, even if they're the largest thank you for closed business pastor in the group. Imagine what their replacement would be doing if they were fully engaged, probably much more. I'd also tell you that typically in that scenario, not always, but typically, especially when somebody's running around touting how much thank you for closed business and why they're above the rules, that thank you for closed business isn't going equally across. That's not like they're helping a lot of people in the chapter. They're usually helping one or two people in the chapter. Maybe they have a strong contact sphere that's inflating their numbers. Not inflating. Meaning they're not real. They are, but they're not. To a large segment of the group. To a very small segment of the group. So again, I go, well, if they're doing all that, what would their replacement do? Right? If you, if you can be the biggest thank you for closed business passer but be in the gray and red and the power of one. Imagine what the person who replaces you does when they're in the green. None of us are above the rules. None of us are above the policies. None of us are above the chapter as a whole. It doesn't matter. So when people, if you have to make a change, you know, let's just say you say hey, from now on, your camera's on, you're marked absent, and somebody starts complaining about it. This is what's best for the group. That's what every policy and rule ever has been created for or needs to be created around is what is best for the group. And if somebody's like, well, I'm not going to be here if you make me have my camera on, then I guess you're not going to be here because it's what's best for the group to have everybody's camera on. And there's no one individual who's above the group. Everybody's the same, pays the same membership. Everybody is equal in that sense. So it's a great question. And it's not just this question in particular is very zoom related with camera on, but it really, it talks about and touches on any, any rule, any policy, any operational change. We face the same thing. So I'm a big believer and be strict on them. The rules don't make B and I, for lack of a better term, unfun. They're actually what makes B and I potentially very fun. It's when we all know we're equally committed and equally focused and equally engaged that the real results really start happening. And that's what's fun. That's what makes it fun. And I always, you know, at trainings and stuff, I go into a room and ask everybody like, hey, who here likes rules and regulations? And very few hands go up and it's like, yeah, of course, that's why your entrepreneurs and your sales professionals, etc. We like to make our own rules. Then I remind, ask them, like, think about your favorite game that you play or have played, whether it's a sport, board game, a card game, what have you. The one thing they all have in common is they have rules. And it's the rules that allow the game to be fun. It's the rules that avoid chaos. And BNI is the same way. Without them, you get chaos, without them you get ineffectiveness, you get inefficiencies, you get a waste of time. So, yes, be strict and concrete and hold people accountable. As long as you're doing it for everyone, it's fair. So great question. And as always, if you've got any other topics, questions, follow up to this, go to bnipower of1.com Let me know if you're finding value out of this. Please let us know by leaving us a review on either Apple podcast or Spotify. Seeing a lot of people finding this on Spotify now, which is awesome. So if you are there and you haven't, leave us a comment, leave us a review. Love to hear from you, engage with you on that as well. Your feedback really does matter to me and I appreciate all of it. Have a great day.