Our current President has been great this past year! She has really dove in and taken on a lot of responsibility. She has done a great job, but over the past several months, I, as the VP have been hearing about new things that the PTO is doing, paying for, being involved in.... without any of the board members knowing. She has just been talking to random people, such as the principal, random parents and off and running with new ideas and making decisions without letting anyone know about it. This is really starting to bother me. Has anyone else had this happen, and what have you done about it.

There's always a danger when folks are put into positions of authority that they get the sense they have more power than they do or ought to have. I often find that there is no malintent at all, just the desire to make things happen and move quickly.

I think it would be a great idea to have a very relaxed discussion with the pres and let her know there seem to be a lot of commitments floating around for the group that you don't remember discussing. If you can do this gently and not in a threatening way (no small feat I know) then you can get the train back on track before more folks become irritated. I do seminars on effective feedback and one of the "best practices" we teach is giving non personal feedback where there are no statements that can be construed as personal attacks. Perhaps like this


When one person makes commitments for the group it makes us all feel a bit distanced from the decision making. We love to have buy in so we can support things with all of our energies and enthusiasm. How do you think we can work to communicate better on decisions so we can all feel good about the process?

That might get the ball rolling on a broader discussion on teamwork and team building. She seems to be working toward a great end for the group but we can all stand to hear some feedback from our peers when we're in charge.

d

Good concrete advice from dlh! Like the non-confrontational approach since you 'll continue to work together. Another thought is to go at it from a process angle: like say you have an idea on how to manage/keep track of all the projects you have going on so you can all be on the same page... you could suggest using something like google documents or PTO Manager to better manage your projects. Maybe by putting some type of system in place will reign her in a bit?

Also, here are some articles that you might find helpful:
How To Deal With Difficult People - PTOToday.com

Lisa