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BNI & The Power of One
BNI 857: Should Our Director be in Membership Committee and Member Only Meetings?
00:11:17
We are back with your submitted questions. This week it is around the involvement of your chapter's Director.
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SA Foreign welcome back to B and I and the Power of One. Thank you for joining me again today. Back with your questions. Topic submitted@bnipowerofone.com Today's topic I feel like I might be walking into a trap on but that's okay. I'm going to keep it anonymous even though it wasn't requested to, just in case the question is it's not from the United States so I'll just say that it's from outside the U.S. but should the area director slash director consultant be sitting in the membership committee meetings and or closed member only meetings? Okay, so I feel like I might be stepping in something here because it's almost, it almost comes across like they don't want the person to and they want the podcast to tell them they're not allowed to. But let's just go under. It's just a general request for advice. Should the area director or director consultant be sitting in membership committee meetings and or closed member only meetings? Typically I would say they can, yeah. Do they have to? No, not necessarily. But let's talk about what is an area director direct consultant supposed to be for you? And the titles are different in each region. So for us, you know, this would be more like a managing director role type of question. But it depends on how you use different titles and positions in bni. But type typically these are the people who are there and a part of the chapter and I emphasize that they are a part of the chapter whose role it is is to coach, train and support that chapter as a whole so that that chapter can continue to succeed and reach new levels of success. So what happens in a lot of regions is they're looked at as like outside of the chapter because they're not there every week, they're not a member of the chapter and because of that they're, you know they can get almost a stigmata of like the BNI police. They're just here to tell us what we're doing wrong and blah blah blah. That's not the, it's not the case and it's not the design of the role. It's not the case. I know in my regions I could speak to is and I, I spoke to this at our chapter success ratings that BNI doesn't win at any level of the organization. When it's us versus you or an us versus them kind of mentality. B and I is the ultimate win win organization that yes, as an organization BNI wants to grow its membership count. Obviously it is a membership based organization. It is A for profit company, there's only one line of revenue, blah, blah, blah. However, BNI's membership doesn't grow if the chapter members are not succeeding. The only way it really grows is if the members are getting maximum value out of it, thus are willing to talk about it to other people, get them into their meetings, join all those things. So it is a win, win. You know, I've talked about and believe that growth of membership is the ultimate tool to achieving the ultimate goal, which is member retention. It's not about just adding members and not caring what happens to them because then you won't actually grow and you'll just burn through people and that's not a long term success plan. There are regions that I'm aware of that might operate that way and that's heartbreaking. But the high, high, high, high, high majority of them do not. And thus we have these roles to give access to the chapter, to training, experience, coaching, advice, support. And that's what these roles are about. And that's why I say they are part of the chapter. They, they have ownership stake, if you will, for lack of a better term, in the success of the group. So in theory it would make sense for them to be in these meetings when they can be, because under the, under the role as of advisor. So let me just clarify. If there's a membership committee meeting and I'm asked to sit in it, as the director, I'm going to sit in that meeting. What I'm not going to do is make a decision for that membership committee. I'm there to give advice on the questions and the tactics they are discussing. So let's just say it's a, they're having a member complaint issue about, or they, they got a member who's having issues with attendance or whatever, I might be there to ask, okay, what conversations have already taken place? Oh, well, we've never talked to them about it. Okay, maybe we want to talk to them before we take any steps or we talk to them. This was a conversation. Great. Did anybody follow up with that in an email? Yep. Awesome. What do you want to do? We want to remove them. Okay. Is that your vote? Everybody votes yes. Okay, here's the next step to do that effectively, right. We do not make decisions for the membership committee, whether it's accepting an application, accepting a renewal member issues, everything else. But you might want that person in the meeting because typically they have far more BNI experience than the people in the chapter because they're working with multiple groups or they've been in BNI for a long time or what have you, that they are a resource for you to get through that situation, whatever that situation might be. And if it's just a regular membership committee meeting, again, just there to know what's going on, give little bits of advice to help not to run the meeting, not to take over the meeting, not to control the meeting, not to make decisions to me that would like, if I was a membership committee, I'd want them there for that very reason. One of the things that in our regions we talk about is the years of experience that exist in our region on our management teams that just is invaluable because there's unlikely a situation we come across that we haven't already come across. I've been in BNI now for 24 years, for over 20 of that full time averaging. Think about bni non stop 24,7 and for many of those years, I'd say for about 15 of those years or so, averaging four to five BNI meetings a week. So if you think about just, let's just say it was 15 years, 15 years of 4 to 5 B and I meetings a week. Well, a normal BNI member goes to a meeting a week. So if you say, oh I've been in BNI for a year, that's great, that's a meeting a week. So that would mean for every BNI member year I was getting five years of experience, right? Because I was going to five meetings a week. So that 15 years of being I experience isn't really what you would Normally count as 15 years BNI experience. From a member standpoint. From a member standpoint, that was like 75 years of experience. So and, and I'm just one example of that. My team, Jamie Stein, who's on my team, he's got like coming up on 20 years, Stephanie Robinson. Decades and decades and decades of BNI experience that are multiple higher than a regular BNI experience because it's not just being a member in a chapter, working with hundreds of chapters, thousands of members and crazy scenario after crazy scenario after crazy scenario. So that's the idea of these roles, is to bring in that insight, bring in that experience, bring in that advice. Same thing for a member only meeting. I, I'm assuming when you say closed member only meeting, meaning no visitors because we're going to discuss things as a chapter like we did on the previous podcast I talked about with like new leadership teams, maybe you don't have a showcase presentation, you do a discussion on the goals, the strategies, etc, next maybe the chapter's having an issue they want to just have, hey, we need a no visitors because we're going to discuss xyz. Why wouldn't you want that experience in the room? And again, this is a person who's part of the chapter. They're going to be working with this chapter going forward. They're there to be that support piece. Why wouldn't you want them in the room? So should they? Yeah, I think they should be. Now, if this is a we don't like our director and they're trying to come into our meetings and we don't want them in our meetings, that's a different issue. And that requires the leadership team to converse with whomever is working with that director on the regional level to discuss why you might be feeling that way. Is it the right fit? Do we need to make a change? Because whoever's above that director, again, only succeeds if you succeed and wants to ensure your success. Needs to hear those things, needs to make sure they're lining up the right people in the right places. Not everybody gets along. Personalities can clash. Maybe the approach hasn't been right that they've been using, and maybe it's just a matter of they need to hear that and they need to change it or whatever. Your chapter will be held back if you do not work alongside your director, consultant, area director, managing director, whatever the title might be. It cannot be an us versus them situation. Nobody's winning in that. So hopefully that answers the question. I think it's a good question and I think it helps everybody realize. Again, probably the most least utilized resource you have access to in your membership is your regional director team. However they're set up. Reach out, learn individually as a member. Reach out, do one to ones. Learn how you can maximize your membership individually, as a chapter, as a leadership team, all of that. Utilize that resource, that experience. It's invaluable when you tap into it. Have a great day. SA.