Resources

Suggestions for a Successful Meeting

Format and Structure

• Invite a variety of guest speakers to the group. Doing so encourages diversity, dialogue, and openness to other people's opinions and experiences. It also helps take pressure off of you to serve as an expert on all subjects. While self-help group facilitators can have impressive knowledge about tinnitus, many are not health care professionals. A professional perspective can deepen the dialogue.
  
• Encourage attendees to invite their family members, friends, colleagues, and neighbors. People with tinnitus need and deserve to be understood. Inviting those people closest to tinnitus patients can prove educational for tinnitus patients' supporters. Plus, by inviting people without the condition, you can discuss how to prevent tinnitus.
  
• Place sign-in sheets near the entrance to the meeting room so that you can collect contact information for people, which will help with promoting future meetings. Have space on the sign-in sheet for people to suggest topics they want to discuss.
  
• Talk to group participants about good meeting length. You want meetings to be long enough to give everyone, including guest speakers, an opportunity to contribute, but no so long that people will fade or lose interest.
  
• Have an agenda: doing so will keep you on task and use your time effectively. You can also track topics that come up but don't get discussed because of time, saving them for the next meeting.
  
  

Communication

• Establish group rules to help make the meeting a safe place to communicate and share. For example, you may decide as a group to set aside thirty minutes each meeting for general discussion, or to give each member of the group five minutes to speak. Work with your group to discover how to make all attendees comfortable communicating.
  
• Don't feel as though you need to be the full-time source of information. When asked for answers by a group member, say, "Let's ask the group."
  
• Speak in the first person—tell your story—and encourage other members to do so, if they feel comfortable.
  
• When group members are interrupted, step in immediately and ask the interrupters to allow the speakers to finish their thoughts.
  
• Turn complaints into a task for the group by asking for ideas or solutions. Let participants who complain know they are not alone, but also that there are solutions too.
  
• Encourage, but do not pressure, quiet members to speak.
  
• Notice when a topic has been finished and summarize it for the group.
  
• Repeat questions or main points for those who are hard of hearing, and occasionally ask the group if they are all able to follow the conversation.
  
  

Atmosphere

• Quickly take care of disturbances that bother others—like someone smoking, interruptions from people not attending the group, or a faulty sound system.
  
• Pay special attention to the needs of those in the group who are hearing-impaired.
  
• Choose a location that has good acoustics so that people aren't straining to hear the conversation.
  

Logistics

• Set up a group telephone or e-mail network so that people can contact each other between meetings.
  
• Promote your meetings in local community calendars, both online and newspaper-based. Invite local health reporters to attend.
  
• Make contact with a local psychologist or counseling hotline. Some participants may be distressed enough to need professional counseling. Have the therapist's name and number on hand to share with people in need.
  
• Have your next meeting's location, topic, and time ready to announce at each meeting.
  

For more information please contact: Lisa Freeman, Manager of Member Services, 1–800-634-8978 Ext. 219 or lisa@ata.org