Core Team meetings are one of the main structures of the ACI model, where cross-sector teams come together twice per month to move their community further toward meeting their overall goal of ending youth and young adult homelessness by the end of 2022.
These are working meetings - members should be making decisions and answering questions that they need to answer together to take action between meetings. During the Reducing Phase, Core Teams should be using meetings to discuss what changes need to happen to reach the milestones in ending youth and young adult homelessness in their communities, including: increasing housing placements, decreasing unsheltered homelessness, reducing disproportionality, reducing length of time, and reducing inflow.
Your meetings are probably going pretty well if:
People are excited to come and leave energized
A lot of people speak up in meetings, not the same few every time
The meeting results in clear action steps
Most people leave with action steps, not just one or two people
Almost all of the time is spent on work that is moving your community’s current reducing goal forward
Every person is clear and can repeat what your community’s current reducing goal is
People on the team can clearly articulate the problems they are working to solve and the changes they are making to the system
When a barrier or challenge comes up in the group, participants usually lean into problem solving
Every person can explain what their role on the Core Team is and have similar expectations of what is supposed to be accomplished in Core Team meetings
Common Challenges:
The Update Meeting: If you notice that any significant amount of meeting time is being spent on updates, test out a new way to share those updates!
The Meeting that Doesn’t Result in any Tasks: You may occasionally have meetings that need to happen that don't result in tasks, but the vast majority of your meetings should. This is an indicator that your meeting has too many updates and not enough substance.
The Meeting Where No One Says Anything: This could indicate many things, including that people:
Aren’t clear on their role in the meeting or group,
Aren’t clear on what question they are supposed to be discussing,
Don’t think this agenda item is important but aren’t saying that,
Are used to being in meetings where they aren't asked to play an active role,
Are uncomfortable or
Are experiencing burn-out
Don’t jump to assumptions about which of these is happening, but lean into curiosity around it. The group may need more clarity, some re-socialization into a new style of meeting, and/or more targeted call-ins for their perspective.
The Off-Topic Meeting: Maybe participants are engaged, but keep getting off topic and/or are spending a lot of time on issues not related to the core purpose of the meeting. This usually happens because participants aren't clear on which pieces of the agenda are the most important. This can often be remedied by clear framing and time-based agendas.
Easy Strategies for Improving Core Team Meetings:
Your reducing goal should be front and center at all times: Write it down at the top of every agenda, make it the first slide for every meeting, write it at the end of every email - never let the team forget where we are aiming!
Identify and communicate the purpose of every meeting: Every Core Team meeting should focus on answering the questions, making the decisions, and level-setting on the key information the group needs to move forward toward their goal.
When you set the agenda, you should be able to clearly say the decisions the group needs to make during this meeting or the questions the group needs to answer - if you can't, or the agenda items mostly aren't questions or decision points, reevaluate.
Include times for your agenda items, and ensure most of the time is spent on the most important thing.
Send people the clear questions or decision points ahead of time, including young people!
Frame the beginning of each meeting with the key questions and decision points.
Use Facilitative Strategies to invite people to talk: Get folks speaking early on to increase participation throughout the meeting. Use breakouts! Go around the room and ask each person to share their thoughts! Ask for three people to respond to your question and wait until they do! Specifically ask for individual’s perspectives on the topic at hand, especially young people! This is incredibly useful for figuring out why people aren’t talking - if the issue is clarity, people will often say that when prompted, giving you the opportunity to clarify.
Pass around a Red Ball: At the end of each meeting, create space for each person on the team to say what their tasks are, including people who have no tasks. This sets an expectation that 1) Core Team meetings should result in tasks, and 2) everyone has a role to play in ending youth homelessness. This process also highlights where individuals may not be clear in their role and where tasks are being unevenly distributed, creating opportunities to address it.
Get Specific: Ask them when they will do X task by!
Pro-tip: This is the most critical information to send to the team afterward, so make sure you are taking notes during this share-out - even if it's the only time you take notes.
Send notes! Meeting minutes are long and often people have to dig for the most important information. Instead, just send out the answers to the questions at the core of the meeting and the decisions that were made along with who agreed to do what tasks. Try to send them out as close to immediately as possible so people are crystal clear about what they committed to and don't forget over the week that they don’t have the notes.