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21. WORKING WITH ADVISORY GROUPS and ensuring that the group focuses on the issues. You won't be able to do this at the same time you ardently advocate a fixed position. Here are a few suggestions: • Develop agendas in advance and check them with the group before proceeding at any meeting. Change agendas to meet emergent needs only after gaining approval of the group. • Have a common set of rules or procedures. • Agree on who shall speak for the group to outside parties, especially to the media. • Arrange for regular minutes that distinguish records of discussion from decisions. • From time to time, review the mission and objectives of the group to assess progress. If necessary, remind the participants of the time constraints. • If you must speak for an interest (and you are playing the facilitation role), vacate the chair for a brief period, handing it over to someone else while you make your comments. • If you feel a personal conflict of interest arising, state the problem clearly to the group and ask for guidance. Maintaining group confidence of your impartiality is essential to continued progress. • If, as chairperson, you have reacted to an outside request for information or attended a meeting in which the group's work was discussed, report this to the group at the next available opportunity. --� Getting Consensus in an Advisory Group A decision reached by consensus is an agreement where all parties accept a balance of gains and losses to achieve a workable result. Consensus - seeking may take much longer than a simpler "majority rules" approach. The results, however, are more likely to be politically acceptable and more durable in practice. Chapter 28 provides guidelines for developing a consensus, but here are a few suggestions that apply specifically to advisory groups: • Take time in the beginning of the group's life for members to meet other members as colleagues, rather than as antagonists across a 175