Youth Work Meetings - Youth Workin' It

How Can I Stop Forgetting Important Tasks?

November 20, 2012 By Stephen Pepper Leave a Comment

Youth work reminders — Planning it old skool

Q: I keep finding myself forgetting to do important tasks and have missed the occasional meeting at work. What would you recommend for forgetful youth workers like me?!

A: Personally, I ‘d recommend using Google Calendar. It’s a great tool to keep track of your schedule, no matter where you are.

I find it to be far more useful and effective than using a paper-format weekly planner; here are 7 reasons why:

1. Unlimited Space

In a regular planner, you have a finite amount of space to enter tasks, meetings, etc. With Google Calendar, you can add as many entries as you need.

2. Time-based

You can add entries throughout each day and specify times for each task or meeting. This makes it far easier when scheduling everything you need to do, as you can see any available spaces in your schedule at a quick glance and ensure nothing overlaps.

3. Reminders

This is the feature that I find most useful. Google Calendar allows you to set up reminders by email or to pop-up for whenever you need them. These can be specified for x amount of minutes, hours, days or weeks before the event or task is due. If you have a smartphone, you’ll also get scheduled pop-ups on your phone if your Google account is connected.

You can set up as many reminders as you like, so for things like birthdays, I set a reminder for two weeks before and then another for two days before just in case.

4. Recurring Tasks & Meetings

With a regular weekly planner, you have to handwrite each entry, even if it’s the same entry each week. With Google Calendar, all you need to do is add an entry once and select “Repeat”. You can then specify when and for how often this task should be repeated.

For example, if your organization has a team meeting at 9:30 every Monday morning, just set this up once and select repeat. This will give you many options to tailor the recurrence, although in this particular scenario there shouldn’t be any change needed.

5. Intelligent Entry

If you add an entry that says “Meeting at work at 9:30am”, Google will automatically set the time of the meeting to 9:30am and the location as “Work” without you needing to adjust those fields.

(n.b. For further useful – but slightly creepy – intelligence by Google, try sending an email from your Gmail account that includes the phrase “I’ve attached”)

6. Invite Others

Google Calendar has an option to invite others to the meeting or task. If they have a Gmail account as well, this will automatically add it to their Calendar if they accept the meeting/task.

7. Accessible Anywhere

Google Calendar is available anywhere that you have an internet connection, meaning you don’t have to carry around a weekly planner. This makes it far easier to check your diary when you’re on the go and to add entries no matter where you are, particularly if you have a smartphone.

Question: What tools do you use as a youth worker to stop yourself from forgetting tasks or meetings? Let us know in the comments below.

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How To Have Productive Youth Work Meetings

June 6, 2012 By Shae Pepper Leave a Comment

Meetings, like super powers, have great potential for good but can also be used to drain the life out of everyone.

We recently discussed how you can avoid over-attending and under-attending youth work meetings. Today, we’re going to cover how to make sure that the meetings you have to attend are as productive as possible. Some of these might be easier if you’re the one facilitating the meeting, but there are still things you can do to make any meeting more productive.

Use an Agenda

When facilitating a meeting, create a list of the things you plan to cover during the meeting and ask for any input from other attendees on items that they would like to see included.

If you’re attending a meeting, ask about the agenda about a week beforehand. You’ve now created the expectation of an agenda, even if the facilitator hadn’t thought about it. This needs to be requested in a professional manner, but if you’re new to a meeting group it provides the perfect opportunity to use your ignorance as an excuse and work off the expectation that they always provide an agenda.

If you already attend a meeting group that doesn’t use an agenda, bring it up at the meeting and focus on the benefits of being able to get more done when everyone can be prepared beforehand for the meeting.

Come Prepared

Don’t just turn up at a meeting planning to listen, unless that is solely your reason for attending. Most meetings are held to work towards a project, funding opportunity or to provide an update. In all of these cases you can prepare ahead of time.

Check the agenda for items that you’ve made progress on. Create a document that provides your ideas, feedback or updates and make enough copies for everyone in the meeting. If you have action points from a previous meeting to report on, make sure you outline the outcomes and barriers you experienced.

Focus on Action

Don’t let the meeting become a big discussion about every point. Create focus by identifying action points and requesting action points for each item. Document all the action points that you’re responsible for and schedule time to accomplish them. Ensure that there is time for feedback in the next meeting agenda. Then create a report or make notes on your meeting minutes about your outcomes and barriers to share at the next youth work meeting.

As you can see, these steps are cyclical. You create the plan, prepare the work, do the work then plan to feedback on the work, so you can plan the next work, prepare it and do it… and so on.

Your youth work meetings will be much more effective when you can feel a sense of accomplishment at the end of each one. Any partners attending meetings will also feel as if they aren’t having their time wasted, which can only serve to improve your relationships with them as well.

Question: What would you suggest to make youth work meetings more productive? Share your ideas in the comments below.

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Youth Work Meetings – How Much Is Too Much?

May 23, 2012 By Shae Pepper Leave a Comment

Youth work meetings. Everyone has them. Some have more than others but they’re pretty standard in professional youth work today.

When it comes to attending meetings, youth workers can easily fall into one of two patterns. They’re either always in them or they never attend any. Both can lead people to ask ‘What do you do all day?’ and neither will do much to enhance your reputation. Today’s post is about helping you try to find the balance, while in a couple of weeks we’ll show you how to make youth work meetings more productive when you do have them.

Too Many Youth Work Meetings

If you look for a sign-in sheet when you sit down to have dinner with your family each night, you might attend too many meetings.

Some meetings can’t be avoided, like those mandated by your supervisor or organization. However, it’s very easy to find yourself in a lot of meetings that aren’t necessary to your work which might end up negatively impacting your youth.

How you ask? You might be in so many meetings that you don’t have time to adequately prepare for youth sessions, you’re missing out on attending youth activities or aren’t having the necessary time to plan strategically for upcoming programming.

Here are three tips for spending less time in meetings and more time meeting the needs of your youth:

Prioritize – Is it really necessary for you to attend every meeting that comes into your inbox? Even the fun ones like youth worker networking events should be reviewed. Determine which non-essential meetings are the most productive and attend those first.
Delegate – Are you the only person who can attend a meeting? There might be an eager intern, volunteer or assistant youth worker that would jump at the chance to attend a meeting or two, make some contacts and be given some ownership within the program. Identify a meeting that you don’t have to attend as a trial run. Give your replacement any information they may need to be aware of, as well as any expectations you have for speaking in the meeting or reporting back. If it’s successful, consider other meetings that could be delegated.
Speak Up – Do you need to meet with your supervisor or line manager so they can help you prioritize and delegate your meetings? Once you’ve done all you can and you still feel like there are too many meetings, spend some time going over your schedule with your supervisor or manager. Sometimes others can see things we can’t. You might be too invested in the reason of each meeting to effectively prioritize and/or delegate them.

Too Few Youth Work Meetings

If your professional colleagues look at the website and ask who the new guy is when you’ve been at your organization for five years, you might be attending too few meetings.

While some meetings are mandatory and some are unproductive and therefore easily skipped, some meetings provide a valuable time for networking, building partnerships within the community and gaining important information about developments in youth work. By skipping most meetings, you might be missing out on information that can only improve your youth work.

For example, one meeting I attended recently informed me that young people in the local area are generally using hand signals to indicate what level of sexual interaction they’re looking to have with someone else. The one receiving the signal gives another signal to approve or disapprove of the request and so on. Without attending that meeting I might have been missing – quite literally – the signs in front of my face about youth sexual health and sexual activity.

Here are three things to think about when considering whether or not to attend a ‘non-essential’ meeting:

Youth – Will the content of this meeting significantly impact my direct work with youth? There may be programs, new projects and fundraising ideas shared at a meeting. Those are the kinds of things you don’t want to miss out on, that can help your youth work be more inclusive, offer more services and be better resourced.
Organization – Will the content of this meeting significantly impact my organization? Networking and opportunities for partnerships can be a great asset, particularly to small organizations that need support from larger organizations and for large organizations that need to be more involved at a local level. Don’t just think how you personally will benefit, but also consider the betterment of your whole organization. Still not sure? Use the three tips above and delegate some of these meetings out until you’re sure they will be worth the investment of your time.
Practice – Will the content of this meeting significantly impact my practice and professional development? You might learn new tips for best practice, about new regulations coming down the pipeline or about a new training program. These can only serve to improve your praxis as a youth work practitioner.

Don’t be too quick to avoid meetings, nor too quick to join them. Manage your time and workload effectively so you can best serve your youth, your organization and your own professional practice.

Question: What kinds of meetings do you attend? What tips would you give for knowing when to join in and when to get out? Let us know in the comments below.

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Don’t Become A Pillar Of Salt

September 23, 2011 By Shae Pepper Leave a Comment

In the Bible, Lot’s wife was turned into a pillar of salt because she was unwilling to keep focused on what laid ahead. In the Qu’ran she stayed behind in the city and it was destroyed.

No matter which way you tell the story, her death was because she kept longing for the life she had. She was being called to something new but kept looking back to the past.

One of my least favorite phrases to hear in any youth work meeting is ‘well…. historically speaking we’ve done….’ Fill in the blank with an idea, a method, a program that worked well any number of years ago, but now might not be the most efficient, most relevant or most productive way of working.

That’s not to say that we can’t learn anything from history, or that long running programs are by default irrelevant or inefficient. If you have evidence continuing to support your program outcomes or methods for working then keep it up!

What I’m saying is that simply because that’s how it’s always been done, doesn’t mean it’s the best program or method. Programs, people and methods need to change and evolve with time, technology and culture.

Seth Godin talks about this in a blog post about defending the status-quo. He gives a list of warning signs that you might not be as revolutionary as you once were, or as you might like to think you are. I can see many on this list that are very applicable to youth work programs and organizations but I’ll just highlight three:

1) Do you undercut the credibility, authority or experience of people behind the change?

Most young professionals and youth workers can identify with this. Don’t let your agency, manager or board of directors ignore your ideas simply because of your youth. Listen to critiques they may have (they have been doing this longer than you) but also come in well prepared and with evidence to support your idea.

Leaders: Don’t steamroll the idea simply because it’s coming from a new staff member, a younger youth worker or A YOUTH.

2) Do you focus on short-term costs instead of long-term benefits, because the short-term is more vivid for you?

In youth work, we all know that money is tight, resources are tight, time is tight. However, we need to think strategically about the long term goals of our programs. We’re often so far behind in our planning for the week that we don’t have time to think about where we want to take our work in 6 months, let alone 3 years.

Strategic planning is critical to resource, staff and time management though and will create more effective and sustainable programs in the long run.

3) Do you slow implementation and decision making down instead of speeding it up?

Don’t meet just to meet. Often the meetings that I most hear ‘historically speaking’ in are the ones that rarely accomplish anything. The agenda is the same week after week. Use an action plan in your meetings, give clear direction to your team and expectations. Use monitoring and evaluation to ensure that you’re moving forward on new ideas.

I would review all the warning signs listed in Seth’s post. Use it to help you and your organization move beyond what has worked historically and begin to craft a new history by shaping it with ideas that will change the future.

Question: How are you going to fight against the status-quo today? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

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