The member everybody works around

Two years is the usual answer, and it is not weakness.

Every move available costs more than you can pay this month. The person does more than anybody. They were at the first meeting. They know whose mother is ill. So you carry it, three newer people quietly stop coming, and none of them ever tells you that is why.

You are allowed to act on this. No policy to point at, no vote to hold, nobody whose agreement you need. You are also allowed to have been fond of the person the entire time.

Read the four cases before you pick a move. From the chair they look identical. Three of the four are made worse by the move most people reach for first.

Four problems that look like one

Volume. Talks through every item, rings on a Sunday, forwards fourteen articles a week. Nobody has left over it and nothing they say would embarrass you in public. That is a load on you rather than a risk to the group, and running a meeting handles most of it.

Newcomers. Somebody came twice and there was no third time. New people are the only currency a small group has, and this is the case that actually ends groups.

Drift. What they say has moved somewhere the group cannot carry. Dealt with below, because the flinch and the overreach both cost.

Somebody who is unwell. The behaviour changed, it does not look like the same person, and what they say has stopped tracking the world. There is no governance answer here and reaching for one causes harm.

Which one you have

Three questions, in this order.

1. Has anybody stopped coming, and did they meet this person? Ask whoever brought them, privately, not at a meeting.
2. Would you be content for the last thing they wrote in public to be read out at your next event, with the group’s name underneath?
3. Has this changed in the past year, and does it look like the same person?

A yes to the third outranks the other two.

When it is not a governance problem

Somebody who is unwell has not committed a breach. A warning, a role change or a vote lands as a group they gave years to turning on them, at the worst moment they have had.

What is available is small and it is not a procedure. Say what you have noticed, once, in plain words. Ask who else they are talking to. Ring one family member if you know one, telling them first that you are ringing.

“I’ve known you four years and this last month hasn’t seemed like you. Who else have you talked to about it?”

Where the room cannot hold it, you are allowed to say the meeting is not the place and still keep the person. Those are separate things.

And the honest limit. You are a volunteer chair and you are not equipped for this. The useful move is getting somebody closer to them involved, so you stop being the only one holding it.

Where the line sits on drift

One member’s post can be quoted against a group on this subject for years, with your name attached. Say that plainly to yourself before you decide anything.

The overreach costs as much. A movement that removes people for views it finds coarse has no movement left, and this cause needs far more people than it has.

So the line is not what somebody believes, it is what a stranger could fairly attach to the group. Three questions, and one yes makes it yours.

• Does it carry the group’s name, banner, account or platform?
• Is this person publicly identified with the group, so a reader takes them for it?
• Was it said in your room, on your stall, or to a newcomer?

Three noes and it is their opinion. You are entitled to dislike it and it is not your business.

Do not go looking. Reading a member’s timeline on a hunch ends one way, and done to everybody it finds something on everybody.

One case does not wait for the three questions. Somebody talking about Arabs or Muslims as such, or wanting civilians made to suffer, is saying the thing your opponents claim you already think. In your room that is behaviour, and it is answered at the time rather than filed for later.

Five moves, cheapest first

The private word. One behaviour, named once, in person, framed as a request and not a review of the person.

“One thing and then I’ll leave it alone. When somebody new comes, give them ten minutes before you go over. I’m asking you because they listen to you.”

It costs an awkward twenty minutes. When it fails it costs a year. They now know they are a problem, cannot tell how large a one, and every conversation after it starts from there.

The job that absorbs them. Give the volume somewhere useful to go. The equipment, the flags, the archive, ringing the twelve members who never open an email. Real work, away from the door and off the floor of the meeting.

This buys eighteen months and it makes them senior. When it fails you are removing somebody from a role, not asking for one habit to change. That is a larger conversation than the one you avoided.

The change that names nobody. A greeting rota, so the door is not theirs. Two minutes each on every item. Rotating who chairs.

No confrontation, and it fixes the room rather than the person. It fails in a specific way: the rule is followed by everybody except the person it was written for. Use it as cover for the next move, not instead of it.

The direct conversation. Four parts. What happens, what it causes, what changes from now, and what follows if it does not.

“Three people who came in the spring haven’t come back. Two of them told me it was how the meeting goes when you’re in it.”

“I’m not asking you to change what you think. I’m asking you not to put it out under the group’s name.”

“If it carries on, I’ll ask you to step back from meetings for a term. I’d rather say that now than spring it on you in June.”

Go alone. If a second person is there it is because of what happened last time, not so the decision has two owners.

Asking them to leave. One sentence, a date, no argument, and you are the one who says it. They will get their version out first. They will have supporters. Some will go with them, and in a small community you will see them on Saturday morning for the next decade.

That is the price. It is sometimes worth paying and it is never small.

Four ways it gets done wrong

By message. Anything sent is screenshotted, forwarded and read aloud in the worst available voice, and you handed them the document.

In front of people. That turns the group into an audience and the person into a defendant, and everybody watching learns what happens to members here.

By committee, so nobody owns it. A decision minuted collectively has no author, and every member of that committee gets to say privately that they were not really for it.

And the common one. At twenty to ten, by the coats, because you had not planned to say anything and it came out.

What you say to everybody else

One sentence, said the same way to everybody, including the two people you trust most. A different version told to a friend comes back within a fortnight, and the difference becomes the story.

“David isn’t at meetings for a while. That’s between David and me and I’m not going to say more than that.”

“I’m not going to discuss it. If somebody tells you a version of it, send them to me.”

Then the part people skip. Ring whoever stopped coming.

“Some things are run differently now. Would you come on the 12th and see?”

One name, one behaviour, one date

Fill in the blanks135 words

Two answers from memory. Which of the four problems do you have, and what are the three questions that decide whether a post is yours to act on?

Then write these down.

If it is before the next committee meeting, then I will ring the two people who came twice and stopped, and ask what the room was like when they were in it.

If I have decided on a private word, then I will do it face to face within seven days, name one behaviour, and stop talking after I have said it.

And the obstacle, because it is always the same one. If I find myself writing it as a message at eleven at night, then I will save it unsent and say it in person on the date already in my diary.