How To Choose An Event

There are two ways of addressing this question. Either you, or your committee, chooses the event and tells the attendees what they will be doing or you can try to choose by consensus, by sending out a questionnaire.

We would always advise people to make as much of the decision as possible amongst the smallest group of people. However, some companies need to work with consensus and have a culture of sharing decisions.

If you need to take a consensus view then control the way in which questions are asked. If you give everyone a list of activities and ask them to choose then some people are going to be satisfied and some are not. It’s possible for that to turn into a loaded situation in which people take decisions personally or question why decisions were made and whether everyone’s wish carried the same weight.

You can involve everyone to the degree of asking if anyone has any injuries or fears that would make certain activities difficult for them. Obviously this is a confidential process.

It can be easier to put together an event schedule over the course of a year rather than to organise events on a one by one basis. When doing this you can include various choices, so if someone's first choice isn't the next event it can be the one after that.

The thing to remember is that the old adage, you can't please all of the people all of the time, is true. You can only do your best.