A worker may have many different functions in a meeting. Among these
roles are:
Facilitator - The facilitator asks questions to help people focus on the
topic at hand, encourages people to speak, offers alterna-
tives, and generally tries to be helpful to the other attenders.
Moderator - The moderator is in charge of the meeting. She or he con-
trols who is allowed to speak, decides whether someone's
statement is on the topic, and requires the group to make
decisions. Sometimes this person is called the chair of
the meeting.
Contributor - This member of the group wants to influence the group to
go along with her or his opinion. She makes statements,
discusses, argues, persuades.
NOTE: It's hard to be a good moderator or facilititator, and contribute, too.
The meeting we have just observed made decisions by consensus,
strongly influenced by what the most powerful person present, the Council-
woman, wanted to do. Small meetings often do use consensus as their
method of deciding what to do.
Larger meetings may use a different mode: voting. Voting begins with a
"motion." The motion is a proposal that the group decide something, and it
begins, "I move...." For example, "I move that the advisory board meet on
Thursday nights."
For a motion to be voted on, another person must be in favor of voting on
it. The person says, "I second it." Then the motion must be discussed, and
afterward a vote is taken.
If the discussion shows that the group members are generally in favor, but
want to change the original motion, it can be amended by another motion,
which also requires a second.
If the discussion goes on too long in the opinion of some people, they
can move the previous question. This must be seconded, but because it is
going to limit the rights of some people to speak, it must also be approved by two-
thirds of the people voting. Most other votes are decided by a majority of
the votes that are cast.