Committees are formed to work for a host of needs and reasons to help their organization.
The key word is work. The reason that many committees break down is that committee members don’t realize that there is real work, hard work, to be done. Committee meetings are not social occasions. They are not just gatherings of comfort for peer groups or people who all think the same way.
A committee is not a forum for passionate opinion.
A committee is a small working collective of volunteers who are recruited to meet a challenge or find a solution to a problem that the organization they belong to is facing. That challenge could be fighting government legislation, or defining professional conduct for members or deciding what flowers should be planted in front of the office or any one of hundreds of other problems that an organization may have.
The challenge is not the issue. The issue is meeting the challenge.
A good working committee meets its challenge by providing thoughtful, timely recommendations to its board of directors. The final decision on what action to take is not a committee function. But a good board of directors will rely on committee recommendations to make the right decision.
If you are thinking about joining a committee that is going to deal with something that you have a passionate opinion about, you have a decision to make. You must decide to keep your opinion in check while you perform objective work. If you cannot do that, you should just stay away from the committee. If you believe in your heart that you already have the best solution and you do not need to go through the steps of time-consuming research, objective review of facts, and thoughtful dialogue, you are doing a great disservice to your entire organization, because you could be wrong. And if you are, you could hurt people in your industry. You could hurt the people you work with.
Committees make recommendations that are critical to the working life of people in their organization. Those recommendations must be based on objective reason. Good committee work cannot be done when it is blinded by passionate opinion.
Good committee work is also thankless work. But it could bring great self satisfaction. A recommendation that a committee brings forward can make a positive difference to the lives of people who work in your industry.
Think about it. How many people do you know who’s lives are dominated by their work? How many people bring home heartache caused by their working day? How many people can literally be eaten up by circumstances in their profession? Probably more than we realize.
How would you feel if you worked on a committee that improved the working life of people you know? Pretty self-satisfied, I bet. But the real question is, how would you feel if you worked on a committee that made the lives of your peers better and you got no credit for it? Would you feel self-satisfied if no one ever knew that you did the hard work that made someone else’s life better?
If your answer truly is yes, I urge you to join a committee. Please come out and help your organization, your industry, and most of all, your fellow professionals.
If your answer is yes, you are desperately needed on committee. Because my friend, you have true passion.
Heino Molls is publisher of REM. Email [email protected]
By: Heino Molls
[email protected]
