I have had the opportunity to serve in a number of leadership roles throughout my life and I estimate that I have run more than 1,000 meetings and programs to date! I know parliamentary procedure very well. In fact, I consider myself an expert on it as it relates to student leadership. Yet, no single moment of chairing meetings has stuck with me like The Magically, Mysterious, Disappearing Motion!
I served as Circle K International President during my senior year of college. (Circle K is a collegiate community service and leadership development organization sponsored by Kiwanis International.) I led an 11-member board of students from colleges and universities throughout the U.S., Canada, and the Caribbean. We had four board meetings per year, which were held at the international office in Indianapolis. They would last for four to five days and we conducted our business in a big, beautiful board room.
During our final board meeting of the year, we were trying to finish up all of the business we could. So, there we were: in the office after midnight on a Saturday night, the last night of a five-day meeting. I no longer remember the topic, but we had a motion on the floor to do something. That motion had been amended and then the amendment had been amended. The amendment to the amendment had been amended, and so on until we were six amendments down on this one motion.
People were tired. Nerves were frayed. We were hungry. But, we needed to resolve this issue before recessing for the night because everyone had flights to return home the next day. We were not making any progress in our debate until one of my board members said, “You know I don’t think we should do any of that at all. Here is what I suggest we do…” And the words that came from his mouth were pure gold!
Everyone loved Jim’s idea and nodded in agreement that it was what we should do. I turned to my parliamentarian, Pete, and asked him what we needed to do to get rid of the motion on the floor to replace it with Jim’s idea. Pete told us that we had two options. We could either systematically vote down each amendment and then the main motion or each maker and seconder could withdraw their motions and seconds. No matter what we did, it would require recording each vote in the minutes, which would open us up to more debate.
“Aaaargh” or something like that came out of my mouth. Then an idea came to me. “We don’t want to do any of this motion anymore, right?” I asked the board.
“Right,” was their reply.
“We want to do what Jim said, instead?” I queried.
“Yes” was the unanimous response.
I turned to the International Secretary and said “Glen, just tear that page out of your minutes book and throw it away.”
Pete let out a loud gasp.
I told him, “It will be OK. Thor is not coming down from Asgard to pummel us with his hammer because we violated the continuum of Robert’s Rules.”
I decided not to let the rules of procedure get in the way of us accomplishing the business we had to complete; however, I would never have done it without unanimous consent. I have since learned that we could have simply had the maker of the original motion withdraw his motion, with consent of the board. That is kind of what I did, but in a much more dramatic fashion!
Would you like to have your students become pros at parli-pro? My sessions on parliamentary procedure for student government leaders and student organization leaders will get everyone on an even footing and make learning the rules easy and fun with stories and examples like the one above. It is my most popular topic and one that I love because of the questions students ask challenge me to be better! Email me at DaveKelly@GonzoSpeaks.com or call me at 770-552-6592 to learn how you can bring me to your campus!
Booking me will not break the bank – check out my Affordable Pricing Model for a quote! I look forward to serving your students!