If your meetings often bog down into a morass of arguments; if business is steamrollered through, by a few domineering members, without due regard to every member’s rights; if people are denigrating or leaving or suing your organization because of such shenanigans, it’s likely that your meetings aren’t using correct parliamentary procedure as set forth in Robert’s Rules of Order.

Knowing and using correct parliamentary procedure, and employing a trained parliamentarian (outsourced or insourced), is a requisite at any meeting that involves decision-making by more than a handful of people. If you, as an ordinary member, can demonstrate that you know correct parliamentary procedure, you will immediately gain respect at the meeting, and people will listen to you. If you, as presiding officer, fail to use proper parliamentary procedure, you’ll come off as either a tyrant or a wimp, and in either case unfit for your position.

An immediate objection to the idea of correct parliamentary procedure might be, “Why do we have to be so formal? Why can’t we just talk?” But that way, madness lies. Nancy Sylvester, professional parliamentarian and trainer (Rockford, Ill.) insists that while following correct parliamentary procedure might seem downright Victorian in our oh-so-informal world, it’s more crucial than ever to do so. If you don’t, you just might find yourself in court-perhaps hearing Sylvester herself testifying, as an expert witness, that the business conducted at your meeting was invalid because you didn’t follow proper procedure.

“Furthermore, correct parliamentary procedure empowers all members,” Sylvester adds. “Often, someone who knows just a little bit more parliamentary procedure than the other people in the room can misuse it to ram his agenda down people’s throats.”

A professional parliamentarian, Sylvester explains, can keep someone like that from making monkeys of the presiding officer and the rest of the assembly. She will often outline or script a meeting for the presiding officer, so that he can smoothly invoke parliamentary rules.

“Organizations need parliamentarians for various reasons.” says Carrie-Mae Blount, PRP, Albuquerque, N.M.-based president of the National Associations of Parliamentarians (NAP). “You might need help revising by-laws; to do that, you have to pay attention to statutes, and a parliamentarian can work with you on that. At the meeting itself, you often need help with procedure, with order of business. A parliamentarian can script the whole meeting for you, and figure out how to deal with tricky issues that are likely to arise.”

“You especially need a parliamentarian if you know a dispute is coming up; if you’re working on revision of bylaws; if you’re in litigation or a grievance procedure; or if you’re having an annual convention or board meeting and want to be sure that it’s legal and the officers look good,” says Jim Slaughter, CPP-Teacher, PRP, partner in the law firm of Floyd & Jacobs, in Greensboro, N.C. “You can be the best president 364 days of the year, but if, on that 365th day, you preside over a horrible convention that starts late and goes long, and where people feel they weren’t treated fairly, that can wreck the rest of it.”

Hoyt C. Suppes, executive vice president of the North Carolina Association of Realtors (Greensboro, N.C.) asserts that most organizations are better off hiring a professional parliamentarian, rather than giving the job to a staffer or member.

“Using someone from inside can cause conflicts if, for instance, a staffer has to rule against a member,” he points out. “By using a neutral party, all those conflicts are reduced and the ruling of the parliamentarian is subjected to a lot more trust and authority.

“A pro can also save you a lot of time. Before we hired Jim Slaughter, we had four board meetings a year, lasting up to eight hours each, because of lack of control and no understanding of procedure. Jim got us down to three meetings a year, lasting from one to three hours each.”

“We use Nancy Sylvester as an advisor, not an arbitrator,” explains Dr. Bruce W. Little, executive vice president of the American Veterinary Medical Association (Schaumburg, Ill.) “She gets us all reading off the same page. To the executive board, she talks mainly about constitution and bylaws issues. With the house of delegates she’s at a more elementary level, explaining what motion takes precedence over another motion; when a supermajority is required; how to introduce minority reports.

“You rarely see intentional misuse of parliamentary procedure,” notes Regina Y. Rose, CPA, president of the Chicago-based American Society of Women Accountants, and senior manager at KPMG Peat Marwick LLP in Birmingham, Ala. “It’s usually a matter of people being ignorant of parliamentary procedure or of our by-laws-and a professional parliamentarian can advise them on how to avoid mistakes.”

“I’ve seen many attempts at nefarious use of procedure,” Jim Slaughter disagrees,” but that’s often why a parliamentarian is brought in. You’ll always have one or two members who know enough to embarrass the president or show off their knowledge of parliamentary procedure; I’m brought in to protect against that kind of thing.”

What are some of the worst, or most common, abuses of parliamentary procedure, by the chair or by members of the assembly? Most authorities are agreed on which are the biggies.

Jon Ericson, the Ellis and Nell Levitt Professor of Rhetoric and Communications Studies at Drake University (Des Moines, Iowa) and author of “Notes and Comments On Robert’s Rules,” asserts that ignorance of “order of precedence”-the matter of what kind of motion is proper at what time-is the biggest obstacle to being an effective representative.

“A delegate will often fail in his duty because he doesn’t know whether his motion will be in order or not, so he doesn’t introduce it at all,” he explains. “Once you know order of precedence, you can cause all the trouble you want to cause.” [For more on order of precedence, see box, page TK.]

Other popular myths, misconceptions and mistakes include:

• The “motion to table” as a means of killing a main motion. “The motion to table, being undebatable, is a means of killing debate by brownshirt tactics,” Ericson states. “If you use it, you should have your mouth washed out with Clorox.”

“It’s much better to kill a motion by letting the debate take its course, then voting it down,” adds Jim Slaughter. “If for some reason you need to kill it without voting it down-perhaps because actually voting against it would cause embarrassment-you can move to postpone it indefinitely.”

• “Previous question.” “You’ll see this one all the time,” says Nancy Sylvester. “Someone in the back of the room hollers out ‘previous question!’ and the chair jumps as though God had spoken, and says, ‘The question has been called; we have to vote.’ But the guy who hollered ‘question’ was out of order. A person can ‘move the previous question’ (move to close debate) only when he has the floor, and a two-thirds vote is required to close debate.”

• Debating without a motion on the floor. “That’s always why meetings go on too long,” says Ericson. “Complain all you like about the football coach, but not until you’ve made a motion to fire him. Otherwise, you’re not at a board meeting; you’re at a group therapy session.”

• The Myth of the Tie Vote. There is no such thing. Most motions require a simple majority (more than half the votes cast) for passage. If exactly half the votes cast were in favor of the motion, it fails for lack of a majority.

• The idea that the chair votes only to break a tie. In fact, the chair votes whenever it will affect the outcome: to create or deny a majority or supermajority.

• Not properly adopting the essential committee reports-credentials, rules, agenda-at the beginning of a meeting. “Not doing so can invalidate the meeting,” Slaughter warns.

• Absence of a quorum. “Ordinarily, a quorum is a majority of your membership,” Sylvester explains, “but some organizations will never see a majority of members in one place. So, you could provide, in your by-laws, that a lesser number constitutes a quorum.”

• Making up voting rules as you go. “If you have Robert’s as your authority, and three people are running for one position, you can’t drop the lowest candidate after the first ballot unless that’s in your by-laws,” says Carrie-Mae Blount. “Counting ballots is an issue too. If your by-laws say ‘vote for five,’ the rule is ‘up to five.’ You can’t throw out ballots that are marked for, say, only two candidates.”

• The view of parliamentary procedure itself. “Worst of all is the notion that parliamentary procedure is a pedantic, officious, picayune, unfair and technical system that steps on the rights of the individual,” Ericson insists. “In fact it’s the rules of the game of democracy.

Those rules, generally, are simple, and are based on simple principles, although Robert’s Rules of Order explains them in excruciating detail. Ann Warner, Wilmington, Del.-based executive director of the American Institute of Parliamentarians (AIP), explains that Robert’s Rules Of Order Newly Revised is the authority for about 85% of all organizations in the U.S.A., and is AIP’s authority, but the organization also encourages the use of other recognized authorities, such as Sturgis Standard Code of Procedure.

“Sturgis is a simpler, less detailed text,” Warner explains. “Sturgis took some of Robert’s’ more obscure or misused motions and reworked them.”

The fundamental principles of parliamentary law, as stated by Sturgis, are these:

• All members have equal rights, privileges, and obligations.
• The majority vote decides.
• The rights of the minority must be protected.
• Full and free discussion of every proposition presented for decision is an established right of members.
• Every member has the right to know the meaning of the question before the assembly and what its effect will be.
• All meetings must be characterized by fairness and by good faith.

For a presiding officer to hew to these principles, says Nancy Sylvester, it’s important to ensure that everyone knows where they are in the processing of a motion [see sidebar, HOW ARE MOTIONS MADE AND PROCESSED?], and that they know who “owns” the motion in question.

“Lots of ‘Can I do that?’ questions revolve around ‘Who owns the motion?’” she explains. “Once the chair has re-stated the motion and debate has commenced, the maker of the motion no longer owns it. He can’t withdraw it or amend it except by majority vote.”

Re-stating of the motion by the chair is crucial, Sylvester says-both prior to start of debate, and immediately prior to the vote-to remind the members what page they’re on.

“And announcing the results makes you look great,” she adds, “including who prevailed, what the effect of the vote is, and the next business in order. When you properly announce the results, especially if it’s been a controversial issue, people are more able to let go of it and move on: ‘On this motion the ayes are 13 and the nays are 12; we will be buying a new computer; the next order of business is the report of the by-laws committee.’ You’re giving closure and guiding people to the next item.”

Parliamentarians aren’t just there to make the chair look good, though. They’re also there to help individual delegates to be effective.

“I work closely with individual members of organizations, attending social events so they can ask me questions,” Sylvester says. “If I have a hint that something controversial’s coming up, I’ll offer to help a member write a motion or an amendment. I ensure that it’s in proper form, and I ask if it’s okay if I show it to the presiding officer so he’ll know how to deal with it.”

“During the convention, I’m a reference for all members,” Jim Slaughter agrees. “‘How do I get X accomplished?’ is the standard question.”

Like most professional parliamentarians, Slaughter became familiar with parliamentary procedure by being a member of organizations where it was used improperly-which determined him to learn enough to protect his rights.

Anyone can learn parliamentary procedure, through college courses, or through courses offered by the AIP or the NAP. Brian D. Palmer, president of the National Speakers Bureau (Libertyville, Ill.), admits that he took a course in parliamentary procedure, in college, much against his own wishes, “But my advisor told me I’d thank him many times over for making me take it, and he was right,” he admits today. “Rarely am I the smartest guy at a meeting, but because I know procedure, I increase the likelihood of being heard, and of accomplishing what I set out to do at that meeting.”

Ericson concurs-both wholeheartedly and lightheartedly. “You may be a wimp now,” he jokes, “but learn parliamentary procedure and you’ll be as ugly as your personality will allow you to be.”

STANDARD ORDER OF BUSINESS
(Barring exceptions provided for in the by-laws, meetings should ordinarily stick to the following order.)

1. Establishing a quorum.
2. Calling the meeting to order.
3. Reading and approval of minutes.
4. Reports of officers, boards, and standing committees.
5. Reports of special committees.
6. Unfinished business from previous meetings.
7. New business.

HOW ARE MOTIONS MADE AND PROCESSED?

A “motion” is a formal statement of a proposal or question to an assembly for consideration and action. A motion is brought before the assembly and resolved in six steps.