Whether you are new to serving on a lodge executive committee (LEC) or have served on your lodge’s for many years, you know that meetings of the LEC are crucial to the success of a lodge. Every lodge has events, communications, and inductions that without the LEC would not be possible. While there may be varying officer and committee chair roles across the nation, there is one important thing that applies across the board. The LEC is responsible for delivering the program that we love and cherish. Without the group of key members that make up the LEC, the lodge would cease to function.
When an LEC meets, it is crucial that they hold a constructive discussion that involves all members of the LEC. All too often, discussions can fly off the rails or the discussion is limited to a few. Occasionally, expectations can be unclear, sending meetings into further confusion. Fortunately, the LEC Toolkit was recently released in an effort to enable lodge leaders to combat these issues head-on!
The LEC Toolkit provides a brief overview on planning a meeting of the lodge executive committee. This toolkit can walk a new lodge chief through developing a location, date, and time, setting a meeting agenda, promoting the meeting, and sharing minutes and results with their lodge. Moreover, ten supplemental resources have been created to simplify the planning process for all lodges!
Before any meeting is held, setting expectations and making plans clear is vital. To aid in that process, the toolkit provides a one-page document of expectations that can be handed out to LEC members at the start of their term, along with a template for a calendar of upcoming LEC meetings. For any particular meeting, setting an agenda of topics to be covered is also mission critical - and writing an agenda can be difficult. To supplement this, a template for a meeting agenda, as well as an example of that template in use is included.
While setting the stage for success and preparing the topics of discussion, it is time to communicate with the members of the committee. Sending out proper communication is pivotal to individuals preparing and acknowledging the things that will be discussed. To this end, an LEC reminder email template and a phone call script are provided in the toolkit to help gather LEC members at meetings and make sure that all LEC members are on the same page!
- Once the meeting begins, it can be chaotic. If a discussion is productive or necessary, a meeting can run quite long. Moreover, members of the LEC may have occasional commitments within or outside of Scouting that they must prioritize, so having an efficient way of filling them in on what happened at LEC meetings with accurate information is crucial. Writing minutes can be very difficult and arduous for long meetings, but is a necessary struggle so that members of the lodge can refer to them after the fact. As with writing an agenda, the toolkit provides a template and an example of the template in use to help leaders summarize the latest LEC meeting.
Regular meetings of the lodge executive committee are vital to a lodge’s health, and strong LEC meetings set up high-performing lodges. Whoever your lodge’s LEC is composed of, running efficient and well-planned LEC meetings helps everyone!
For any feedback or inquiries regarding the LEC Toolkit, please contact the Local Support Team of the National Communications Committee (NCC) here.