DC HOSA Leadership Hub
Domain

Governance

Running meetings, and understanding how the organization works.

Lead Yourself

What do I do?

The Five Moves

Lead YourselfGovernanceBUILD20 minCE: Organizational Leadership · Parliamentary Procedure · 24%

Almost everything a chapter decides can be handled with five moves. Learn those five, use them on one real decision at every meeting, and you can function in any deliberative body — including the ILC Business Session — without ever memorising the rest of the book.

1Move it 2Second it 3Debate it 4Amend it 5Vote it an amendment is voted before the motion it changes
The five, in order
  • Move it — “I move that…” One sentence, stated as the thing you want the chapter to do.
  • Second it — a second means one other person thinks it is worth discussing. It is not agreement.
  • Debate it — the chair recognises speakers; each speaker addresses the chair; nobody speaks twice until everyone who wants to has spoken once.
  • Amend it — insert words, strike words, or strike and insert. An amendment is voted on before the motion it changes.
  • Vote it — a voice vote first. If the result is in doubt, anyone may call for a division, which is a show of hands or standing count.
What each move is for

The test asks purpose, not vocabulary. A move you can name but cannot place is not yet learned.

  • A motion exists so the chapter debates one clear proposal rather than a topic.
  • A second exists so one person cannot consume the meeting alone.
  • Debate rules exist so the quietest member gets a turn before the loudest gets a second one.
  • Amendment exists so a nearly-right proposal gets fixed instead of killed.
  • Division exists so a close vote is counted rather than guessed.
Do this
  1. At the next chapter meeting, take one decision the chapter genuinely needs to make and run it using only these five moves. Not a simulation — a real decision.
  2. Print the card. Keep it at the officer table for the first three meetings, then take it away.
  3. Once a month, ask a member at random to name the five moves in order. Spacing, not review, is what makes it stick.

Where it shows up: Every chapter business meeting. You will already be ready for the Parliamentary Procedure band of Organizational Leadership, and for the floor at ILC.

Coach note
The instinct is to teach the whole procedure in September. Do not. Five moves, retrieved monthly on real business, outperforms one comprehensive workshop that nobody retains by October. If a member asks about a motion not on this card, that is the signal to move them to Lead a Team, not to expand this card.
Grounded in
RRobert’s Rules of Order Newly Revised, 12th edition; RONR In Brief, 3rd edition
RONR 12th ed. (effective 1 September 2020; a revised printing issued June 2026 is the same edition). The tiered, spaced-retrieval design follows Dunlosky et al. (2013), Psychological Science in the Public Interest — practice testing and distributed practice rated high utility; massed single-session instruction rated low.
DC HOSA Leadership Hub  ·  leadership.dchosa.org/governance.html#governance-five-moves  ·  Lead Yourself  ·  Governance

Quorum and the Order of Business

Lead YourselfGovernanceBUILD15 minCE: Organizational Leadership · Parliamentary Procedure · 24%

Two things decide whether a meeting can act at all and what it does first. A chapter that skips them makes decisions that can be challenged later, and wastes the first twenty minutes every time.

Quorum

The minimum number of members who must be present for the chapter to conduct business. It is set in the chapter’s bylaws — if yours do not say, the default under RONR is a majority of members. Without quorum a meeting can hear reports and set a next date; it cannot decide anything.

  • The chair confirms quorum at the start, out loud, and the secretary records it.
  • If members leave and quorum is lost, business stops. Anything decided after that point can be challenged.
  • Know your number. If your chapter has never checked its bylaws for this, that is the first action.
The standard order of business

RONR’s default sequence. A chapter may adopt its own, but this is what an unfamiliar chair should reach for.

  • Reading and approval of minutes
  • Reports of officers, boards and standing committees
  • Reports of special committees
  • Special orders — business previously scheduled for this meeting
  • Unfinished business and general orders — anything carried over
  • New business
Do this
  1. Find the quorum number in your chapter bylaws. If there is no bylaws document, that is a Lead Beyond problem — flag it to your advisor now.
  2. Put the six-line order of business at the top of the next agenda, verbatim.
  3. Have the chair state quorum before the first item, every meeting, until it is a habit.

Where it shows up: The first two minutes of every meeting. Also a direct test item in the Organizational Leadership parliamentary band.

Coach note
Chapters that ‘never seem to get through the agenda’ almost always lack an order of business, not time. Ask to see the last three agendas before offering any other advice.
Grounded in
RRONR In Brief, 3rd edition — quorum; standard order of business
Robert’s Rules of Order Newly Revised In Brief, 3rd ed.; RONR 12th ed. §3 (quorum), §41 (order of business).
DC HOSA Leadership Hub  ·  leadership.dchosa.org/governance.html#governance-quorum-and-order  ·  Lead Yourself  ·  Governance

Who Governs What

Lead YourselfGovernanceBUILD20 minCE: Organizational Leadership · HOSA Inc. + Structure · 28%

‘HOSA says’ is not a sentence. There are four levels, each decides different things, and most of the confusion in a chapter — who to ask, who can change a rule, why a deadline in DC differs from the one on hosa.org — comes from not holding the map. This card is the map.

LevelDecides HOSA Inc.Board of Directors · Headquarters staffevent guidelines · Bylaws · ILC International Executive Councilelected student officersrepresents members · runs the business session Chartered Association — DC HOSAState Advisor · state staff · SECcalendar · SLC · cut scores · DC deadlines Local Chapteradvisor · chapter officers · membersmeetings · projects · events entered
The four levels
  • HOSA Inc. — the corporate entity. A Board of Directors and a Headquarters staff. Sets the competitive event guidelines, the Bylaws, affiliation, and ILC. Not a student body.
  • International Executive Council — the elected student officers of International HOSA. Represent members, run the ILC business session, do not set policy on their own.
  • Chartered Association — DC HOSA. The State Advisor, state staff, and the State Executive Council. Runs the state calendar, SLC, cut scores, the DC internal ILC deadline, and any DC divergence from the international model.
  • Local Chapter — your school. The chapter advisor, chapter officers, and members. Decides its own meetings, projects, events entered, and whether it affiliates.
What each cannot decide

The part that prevents most mistakes.

  • A Local Chapter cannot change a competitive event rule or a state deadline. Ask; do not assume.
  • The State Executive Council cannot change the DC HOSA Bylaws or Standing Rules on its own — those change by the process written into them.
  • The International Executive Council does not write the event guidelines. HOSA Inc. does.
  • DC HOSA can set an earlier deadline than International HOSA, and does — the DC internal ILC deadline is earlier than the international one so the State Advisor can review every submission while problems are still fixable.
The words

Precision here is not pedantry; it is how you know which level you are talking to.

  • International HOSA, never “national HOSA” or “nationals”.
  • ILC — International Leadership Conference. There is no NLC.
  • Chartered Association, not “state chapter”. Local Chapter, not “club”.
  • State Executive Council or SEC, not “state board”.
Do this
  1. Take the last three questions your chapter sent up the chain. For each, name the level that actually decides it.
  2. Put the four-level map on the wall at your next officer meeting and leave it there.
  3. Before the next “can we…” question leaves the chapter, check which level owns it.

Where it shows up: Every time a question leaves the chapter. It is also the HOSA Inc. and Organizational Structure bands of Organizational Leadership together — 28% of that test.

Coach note
When an officer uses “nationals” or “HOSA said”, do not correct the word — ask which of the four levels they mean. The word fixes itself once the map is held.
Grounded in
RHOSA organisational structure — HOSA Handbook Sections A–C; HOSA Bylaws
HOSA Handbook Sections A, B and C; HOSA Bylaws (current edition at hosa.org). DC divergences per DC-FACTS.md. Structure drawn from the hosa.org website is volatile — date anything taken from it.
Specific office names and board composition change. Verify against hosa.org before each affiliation year rather than trusting this card’s wording.
DC HOSA Leadership Hub  ·  leadership.dchosa.org/governance.html#governance-who-governs-what  ·  Lead Yourself  ·  Governance

Lead a Team

How do I get a group to do it?

Chair a Meeting That Ends on Time

Lead a TeamGovernanceBUILD30 min

Most chapter meetings are not too long because there is too much to do. They are too long because the agenda is a list of nouns, nobody knows what a decision looks like, and the first two minutes were lost. All three are fixable before the meeting starts.

Agenda as questions

Rewrite every agenda line from a topic into the question the chapter has to answer.

  • “Fundraiser” becomes “Do we commit to a February fundraiser, and who leads it?”
  • “SLC” becomes “Which events are we entering, and by when do we need names?”
  • If a line cannot be turned into a question, it is an announcement. It goes in an email, not on the agenda. This one conversion removes about a third of most chapter agendas.
The first two minutes

How the chair opens sets the whole meeting. Research on workplace meetings finds the chair’s opening behaviour has a disproportionate effect on what follows.

  • Start at the stated time, even if the room is half full. The people who are on time are the ones you are rewarding.
  • State quorum, state the end time, state what the meeting must decide today.
  • Say one specific thing that went well since the last meeting, with a name attached.
The parking lot

A visible list for things raised that are not today’s question. Revisited before adjournment, never silently dropped.

  • Write it where everyone can see it, not in the chair’s notes.
  • In the last three minutes, read it aloud and assign each item to a date or a person.
  • An item parked three meetings running is a decision the chapter is avoiding. Name that.
Do this
  1. Take your next agenda and rewrite every line as a question. Delete the ones that cannot be.
  2. Write the opening — quorum, end time, the decisions — on the top of the page and read it.
  3. Put a parking lot on the whiteboard before anyone arrives.

Where it shows up: Every chapter meeting you chair. The written script is also what a chair uses in the Parliamentary Procedure team event.

Coach note
Watch the opening, not the middle. If a chair drifts into the first item without stating quorum, end time and today’s decisions, the meeting is already lost and no amount of agenda discipline recovers it.
Grounded in
RMeeting science — Rogelberg
Rogelberg, The Surprising Science of Meetings (2019) and the underlying organisational-psychology research programme. Most of it was conducted on adult workplace meetings; label it as such.
Evidence base is adult workplace meetings, not student organisations. The mechanisms transfer; the effect sizes may not.
DC HOSA Leadership Hub  ·  leadership.dchosa.org/governance.html#governance-chair-a-meeting  ·  Lead a Team  ·  Governance

One Motion a Month

Lead a TeamGovernanceBUILD15 minCE: Organizational Leadership · Parliamentary Procedure · 24%

Officers need more than the Five Moves, but they do not need all of it in September. One new motion class each month, used on real business that month, and by February the officer team can run any meeting the chapter will ever hold.

The drip

Each month adds one thing and uses it on one real item. An advisor can drop this into a chapter calendar unmodified.

  • September — the order of business; the chair’s written script; the quorum call. An officer chairs from the script.
  • October — Amend (including amending an amendment); Refer to committee. Refer one real decision to a committee.
  • November — Postpone to a certain time; Previous Question, which closes debate. Close debate properly on one item.
  • December — Minutes to RONR standard; the treasurer’s report. The secretary drafts minutes in competition format.
  • January — Precedence: why motions rank, and how to read the ladder. The chair handles a motion made out of order.
  • February — Committee reports, and the difference between a report and a recommendation. A committee reports and moves adoption.
What each motion is for

The Organizational Leadership test asks purpose. So does real life.

  • Amend — the proposal is nearly right. Fix it rather than kill it.
  • Refer to committee — the chapter does not have enough information to decide today. Send it to people who will get the information.
  • Postpone to a certain time — the chapter has the information but not the right people or moment. Name the meeting it comes back to.
  • Previous Question — everyone has been heard and the debate is now repeating. Requires two-thirds, because ending debate early is a serious thing to do to a minority.
  • Postpone Indefinitely — dispose of a motion the chapter does not want to vote on directly. The polite kill.
The cold-call

At the top of each officer meeting, four questions on the material from two months ago. Not last month. Two months. That gap is the intervention.

Do this
  1. Print the six-month table and put it in the chapter calendar today.
  2. Assign one officer to chair each month’s meeting from the script — rotate, so nobody hides behind the president.
  3. Start the cold-call in November. Four questions, October material. Keep it under three minutes.

Where it shows up: Officer meetings, September to February. By March the secretary’s December minutes are already a Parliamentary Procedure competition asset.

Coach note
The temptation is to skip ahead when a keen officer asks. Resist it — the schedule is the point. If they want more, point them at Precedence in Lead Beyond and let them read ahead on their own time.
Grounded in
RRONR 12th ed. subsidiary motions; spaced retrieval
RONR 12th ed. §§10–17 (subsidiary motions); Dunlosky et al. (2013) on distributed practice and practice testing.
DC HOSA Leadership Hub  ·  leadership.dchosa.org/governance.html#governance-one-motion-a-month  ·  Lead a Team  ·  Governance

Minutes, and the Decision Log

Lead a TeamGovernanceBUILD20 minCE: Parliamentary Procedure

Minutes and a decision log are two different documents that chapters keep trying to make into one. Minutes are the governance record — formal, RONR-shaped, and what the Parliamentary Procedure event asks you to produce. The decision log is working memory. Combining them produces minutes nobody reads and decisions nobody can find.

Minutes — what goes in

RONR minutes record what was done, not what was said.

  • Kind of meeting, name of the body, date, time, place; whether the chair and secretary were present; whether the previous minutes were approved.
  • Every main motion, exactly as adopted or as it stood when disposed of, with the name of the mover and the result.
  • Points of order and appeals, with the chair’s ruling.
  • Not: who said what in debate, the secretary’s opinion, or a summary of the discussion.
The decision log — one line each

Lives beside the minutes. Date, decision, who decided, why, and the date it should be revisited.

  • “14 Oct — February fundraiser is a bake sale, not a fun run. Officer team. Fun run needs a permit we cannot get by then. Revisit 1 Dec.”
  • Anyone can search it. Nobody has to read a whole meeting’s minutes to find out why the chapter stopped doing something in 2024.
  • The revisit date is what makes it a log rather than a list. A decision with no revisit date is a decision the chapter will relitigate.
Do this
  1. Split your current record into two files today, if it is one.
  2. For the next meeting, have the secretary produce minutes in the RONR format on the printed template.
  3. Start the decision log with the last five decisions you can remember. Add revisit dates.

Where it shows up: Every meeting. The December minutes from One Motion a Month are the same document the Parliamentary Procedure team brings to the prep room.

Coach note
Ask to see the decision log before asking about the chapter’s problems. A chapter with no log will describe the same three arguments every year and call them new.
Grounded in
RRONR 12th ed. — minutes; decision records as organisational memory
RONR 12th ed. §48 (minutes and reports of officers). The separate decision-log practice is a practitioner convention; label it as such.
DC HOSA Leadership Hub  ·  leadership.dchosa.org/governance.html#governance-minutes-and-decision-log  ·  Lead a Team  ·  Governance

Virtual Meetings That Do Not Exhaust People

Lead a TeamGovernanceBUILD10 min

Video-call fatigue is not a character flaw and it is not solved by telling people to focus. It has four identified causes, and every one of them has a mechanical fix in the meeting settings. This is rare among wellbeing topics — the advice is technical rather than exhortative.

Four causes, four fixes
  • Excessive close-up eye contact → use speaker view rather than gallery for groups over eight, and let people sit back from the camera.
  • The load of watching yourself constantly → hide self-view. This one setting does more than any other.
  • Reduced mobility → forty-five minute cap with a hard stop; audio-only segments for discussion-heavy blocks so people can move.
  • Constantly performing attentiveness → the chair asks questions by name, so members are not signalling engagement to the whole grid at once.
The six-line norms card

Post it once. Enforce it by the chair’s behaviour, not by announcement.

  • Self-view hidden.
  • Speaker view for groups above eight.
  • Forty-five minutes, hard stop.
  • Camera-optional windows named in the agenda, not granted ad hoc.
  • Audio-only for discussion blocks.
  • Chair calls on people by name.
Do this
  1. Change your own settings first — self-view off, speaker view on.
  2. Put the end time in the meeting title.
  3. Mark the camera-optional segment on the agenda before sending it.

Where it shows up: Any virtual chapter or SEC meeting. Particularly the affiliate-wide calls where people are attending from home after school.

Coach note
If a virtual meeting is flagging, do not add an icebreaker. Check whether the four settings are in place. They almost never are.
Grounded in
RFour mechanisms of videoconference fatigue — Bailenson
Bailenson (2021), Technology, Mind, and Behavior — theoretically derived, followed by the validated Zoom Exhaustion and Fatigue (ZEF) Scale.
DC HOSA Leadership Hub  ·  leadership.dchosa.org/governance.html#governance-virtual-meetings  ·  Lead a Team  ·  Governance

The Backwards-Planned Year

Lead a TeamGovernanceBUILD45 min

A chapter calendar built forward from September is a list of hopes. One built backward from the dates that are fixed — the testing window, the registration deadline, the conference — is a set of derived deadlines nobody had to argue about. The year has two peaks in DC, not one, and a chapter that plans for March has already missed the first.

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SeptJune recruit and affiliate raise the reserve practice starts events chosen Round One window SLC DC ILC deadline count backward from the fixed dates to derive every other one filled = fixed by the DC HOSA calendar, confirmed every year · open = derived by counting back no date is chosen; every date is derived
Fix the anchors first

Take every date from the current DC HOSA Calendar of Events and the state deadlines. Confirm them annually — they move. The 2026–27 shape:

  • Round One testing runs in a window in late January to early February, not at the conference. This is the first peak.
  • Competitive event registration closes in mid-January. Count back from there to when you need names.
  • Round Two runs at pre-SLC offsite locations and on SLC Day 1. Offsite rounds are separate trips on separate dates.
  • The DC internal ILC deadline is earlier than the international one, for both registration and uploads.
  • Voting delegates logged by mid-November; the Standards of Excellence deadline at the end of June.
Derive everything else

From each anchor, count back.

  • Event selection → two weeks before registration closes, so there is time to fix a mismatch.
  • Practice runway → at least eight weeks before the testing window opens. That means a December start, not a January one.
  • Recruitment push → before affiliation, because affiliation numbers set what the chapter can enter.
  • Fundraising → autumn, and hold the reserve for the one genuinely large cost, which is ILC travel. Raise in autumn, allocate in March.
  • Every chapter event → four weeks out, one week out, day of, forty-eight hours after. The four-phase checklist lives on the printed sheet.
Do this
  1. Get this year’s DC HOSA Calendar of Events. Write the anchors on the printed sheet, with the source and date.
  2. Derive the chapter deadlines by counting back. Do not choose any date; derive it.
  3. Put the derived calendar and the One Motion a Month drip on the same page. They are the same year.

Where it shows up: The first officer meeting of the year, and again in January when the second peak is visible.

Coach note
Ask which dates on the chapter calendar were derived and which were chosen. Chosen dates are the ones that slip. If the advisor cannot name the DC testing window from memory, start there — it is the anchor everything else hangs on.
Grounded in
PBackward design; DC HOSA competition calendar
Backward planning as a practitioner convention. Every date must come from the current DC HOSA Calendar of Events and DC-FACTS.md §1 and §12 — this card gives the shape, never the dates.
Dates change every year and were amended mid-year in 2026–27. Nothing on this card is a date; it is a method for deriving them.
DC HOSA Leadership Hub  ·  leadership.dchosa.org/governance.html#governance-backwards-planned-year  ·  Lead a Team  ·  Governance

Lead Beyond

How do I change something outside this room?

Precedence — Why Motions Rank

Lead BeyondGovernanceBUILD30 minCE: Parliamentary Procedure

When two motions are on the floor at once, one of them has to be handled first. The ranking is not arbitrary — each motion outranks the one below it because it asks a more urgent question. Read the ladder as a set of reasons and it becomes memorable; read it as a list and it never will be.

Privilegedabout the assembly itself, not the businessadjourn · recess · question of privilege · orders of the day Subsidiaryabout the main motion — highest firstlay on the table · previous question · limit debatepostpone to a time · refer to committee · amendpostpone indefinitely Main motionthe proposal — everything above exists to handle it higher outranks lower incidental motionshave no rank —decided as they arise
The ladder, top to bottom

Higher outranks lower. A motion can be made while a lower one is pending; not while a higher one is.

  • Privileged motions — about the assembly itself, not the business: fix the time to adjourn, adjourn, recess, question of privilege, call for the orders of the day.
  • Subsidiary motions — about the main motion: lay on the table, previous question, limit or extend debate, postpone to a certain time, refer to committee, amend, postpone indefinitely.
  • The main motion — the actual proposal. Lowest, because everything else exists to handle it.
Why the order is what it is
  • Adjourn outranks everything because a body that has to leave cannot keep debating.
  • Previous Question outranks Amend because ‘stop talking and vote’ is a more urgent question than ‘change a word’.
  • Postpone Indefinitely is the lowest subsidiary because it is the least urgent thing you can do to a motion — decline to decide it.
  • Incidental motions — point of order, appeal, division, parliamentary inquiry — have no rank. They arise from whatever is happening and are decided immediately.
Reading a real situation

A main motion is pending. Someone moves to amend. Someone else moves the previous question. Amend is pending; previous question outranks it, so it is in order and is voted first. If it passes, debate ends on the amendment and the chapter votes the amendment, then the main motion.

Do this
  1. Draw the ladder from memory, then check it against the card.
  2. At the next meeting where an amendment is pending, deliberately move the previous question and walk the room through what happens next.
  3. Keep a running list of motions made out of order and what the chair should have said.

Where it shows up: January of One Motion a Month, and the Parliamentary Procedure team event, where the full ladder is tested.

Coach note
Nobody learns precedence from the table. They learn it from the first time a motion is ruled out of order and the chair can say why. Manufacture that moment on purpose.
Grounded in
RRONR 12th ed. — order of precedence of motions
RONR 12th ed. §5 and the chart of motions; RONR In Brief 3rd ed.
DC HOSA Leadership Hub  ·  leadership.dchosa.org/governance.html#governance-precedence  ·  Lead Beyond  ·  Governance

Bylaws and Standing Rules

Lead BeyondGovernanceBUILD20 min

Two documents govern DC HOSA, and they change by different processes. Knowing which one a rule lives in tells you how hard it is to change and who can do it. Officers who do not know this try to fix a bylaw problem with a motion, or wait a year to fix a standing-rule problem that could have been fixed at the next meeting.

The difference
  • Bylaws — the constitution of the affiliate. Who is a member, what the officers are, how they are elected, how the bylaws themselves change. Amending them requires prior notice and a supermajority, and the process is written into the bylaws.
  • Standing rules — the operating details. Deadlines, forms, the calendar, recognition programme details. Can be adopted or amended by a majority at a meeting where they are in order, without prior notice unless the standing rules say otherwise.
  • Where a standing rule contradicts a bylaw, the bylaw wins. Where practice contradicts a standing rule, the standing rule is what needs amending — practice is not a rule.
The DC situation

DC HOSA runs several things differently from the international model and from its own Standing Rules as currently written — competition delivery, the ILC internal deadline, several calendar dates, the Standards of Excellence deadline. Those divergences are settled decisions within the State Advisor’s authority, and they are on the list to be written into the Standing Rules. Until they are, an officer reading only the Standing Rules will be wrong about the calendar.

  • Read the current Calendar of Events alongside the Standing Rules, not instead of them.
  • If a rule and the calendar disagree, ask the State Advisor which is current. Do not pick.
  • When you find one, log it — that list is how the amendment gets written.
Do this
  1. Read the DC HOSA Bylaws and Standing Rules once, start to finish. It takes under an hour.
  2. List every place where what the affiliate actually does differs from what the Standing Rules say.
  3. Bring the list to the State Advisor. That is a contribution, not a complaint.

Where it shows up: State Executive Council orientation. Any time an officer proposes changing ‘how we do things’.

Coach note
An SEC that has read the governing documents asks better questions all year. Assign the reading in the first month and check it was done — it is the highest-return hour in the officer calendar.
Grounded in
RRONR — bylaws and rules of order; DC HOSA Bylaws and Standing Rules
RONR 12th ed. §2 (rules of an assembly) and §56–57 (bylaws; amending). DC HOSA Bylaws and Standing Rules v2.2; divergences per DC-FACTS.md §12 and OPEN-ITEMS.md.
The Standing Rules amendment for the DC divergences is outstanding. This card describes the situation as of September 2026; check whether the amendment has been adopted.
DC HOSA Leadership Hub  ·  leadership.dchosa.org/governance.html#governance-bylaws-and-standing-rules  ·  Lead Beyond  ·  Governance

The Voting Delegate

Lead BeyondGovernanceADVANCE30 minCE: Organizational Leadership · Voting Delegate · 24%

A voting delegate represents the Chartered Association at the ILC business session — electing the International Executive Council and voting on anything put to the assembly. It is the most direct governance role a member can hold, and the preparation is specific, dated, and mostly done before arriving.

How delegates are chosen and how many
  • Selection is at Chartered Association level — the State Advisor’s discretion, or as set out in the DC HOSA Bylaws or Policies and Procedures. DC HOSA has not yet written a selection method into its Standing Rules; until it does, the method is the State Advisor’s call each year.
  • The number is set by the division membership formula in Article V, Section 2 of the HOSA Bylaws — it steps up with membership. Confirm the current formula against the Bylaws at hosa.org each year rather than trusting a remembered figure.
  • Delegates are logged with International HOSA by a mid-November deadline in DC. Late is not eligible.
Sixty days out

The State Advisor receives the Voting Delegate Packet from HOSA Headquarters about sixty days before ILC.

  • Read the packet, all of it.
  • Read every International Executive Council candidate’s resume and watch their videos on hosa.org.
  • Complete the Candidate Evaluation Rubric before the conference, so you meet candidates with criteria already written.
At ILC

Five things, in order.

  • Voting Delegate Orientation.
  • Meet the Candidates Breakfast.
  • Chartered Association Caucus — optional, and this is where the delegation decides whether it votes as a block.
  • Business Session — the vote.
  • Recognition Session — ribbon, certificate and pin.
After

Report back to the Chartered Association on how the delegation voted and why. A delegate who does not report has not finished the job.

Do this
  1. Confirm with the State Advisor how DC selects its delegates this year and by what date.
  2. Put the three dated triggers in your calendar the day you are named.
  3. Draft the report-back before you leave the conference, while the reasoning is fresh.

Where it shows up: ILC. Also the largest band of Organizational Leadership — 24% of the test is this role.

Coach note
The delegate role is the cheapest real governance experience the affiliate has and most chapters treat it as a perk. Make it an application, with the rubric as part of it.
Grounded in
RHOSA Voting Delegate process — HOSA Bylaws Article V; Organizational Leadership guideline 2026–27
Organizational Leadership ILC Guidelines, September 2026 (2026–27), hosa.org; HOSA Bylaws Article V, Section 2; HOSA Handbook Section B.
The delegate-count formula and packet timing are as published in the 2026–27 guideline. Re-pull before SLC and before ILC; HOSA revises guideline files mid-season.
DC HOSA Leadership Hub  ·  leadership.dchosa.org/governance.html#governance-delegate-role  ·  Lead Beyond  ·  Governance

Evaluate a Candidate

Lead BeyondGovernanceADVANCE20 minCE: Organizational Leadership · Voting Delegate · 24%

Every election is decided either against criteria written beforehand or against charisma in the moment. Writing four or five criteria before meeting anyone is the whole skill, and it transfers directly — to chapter elections, to choosing a committee chair, to hiring later in life.

Write the criteria first

Before reading a single resume. Four or five, no more.

  • What has this person actually run — not joined, run — and what happened?
  • Can they say what the office is accountable for, in their own words, without reading it?
  • Do their stated plans fit what the office can decide, or are they promising things the office cannot deliver? (See Who Governs What.)
  • How do they talk about the people they have led? Credit given, or credit taken?
  • Optional fifth, chosen by the delegation: the one thing DC HOSA specifically needs from this office this year.
Then apply them, in writing

One row per candidate, one column per criterion, a mark and a line of evidence in each cell. The evidence line is what stops the mark from being a feeling.

  • Score from the resume and video before the Meet the Candidates Breakfast.
  • Adjust after meeting them, and write down what changed your mind. If nothing did, the criteria worked.
  • A delegation that shares a rubric can caucus in ten minutes instead of an hour.
Representative, not individual

A delegate votes for the Chartered Association, not for themselves. The rubric is what makes that real — it is the delegation’s judgement written down, applied by one person at the ballot.

Do this
  1. Write your four criteria now, on the printed rubric, before opening hosa.org.
  2. Score every candidate from the published materials.
  3. Bring the completed rubric to the caucus.

Where it shows up: ILC elections. Chapter officer elections in spring. Any time the chapter is choosing a person for a role.

Coach note
Ask a delegate to show you their criteria before they show you their preferred candidate. If the criteria arrive second, they were written to justify the choice.
Grounded in
PStructured evaluation against pre-specified criteria
Practitioner convention, consistent with the structured-interview and decision-hygiene literature; the specific rubric is a DC HOSA construction. Pairs with the Representation Boundaries card at Voice · Lead Beyond.
DC HOSA Leadership Hub  ·  leadership.dchosa.org/governance.html#governance-evaluate-a-candidate  ·  Lead Beyond  ·  Governance

Office Duties, Three Levels

Lead BeyondGovernanceBUILD20 minCE: Organizational Leadership · Executive Council Positions · 8%

A chapter secretary and an International HOSA officer hold offices with the same name and overlapping duties three levels apart. Seeing them side by side does two things: it makes each office’s accountability concrete, and it shows a first-year officer that the ladder they are on goes all the way up.

Local Chapter

The standard officer set from HOSA Handbook Section C. Chapters may vary it in their bylaws.

  • President — chairs meetings, holds the calendar, is the chapter’s face to the school and the affiliate.
  • Vice President — programme and committees; chairs in the president’s absence.
  • Secretary — minutes to RONR standard, the decision log, correspondence, the roster.
  • Treasurer — the budget one-pager, dues, the reserve for ILC, the report at every business meeting.
  • Reporter or Historian — the chapter’s record and its public voice.
  • Parliamentarian — advises the chair on procedure; the Precedence card is this office’s job.
DC HOSA State Executive Council

The 2026–27 positions. Titles are set in the DC HOSA Bylaws.

  • President — chairs the SEC, represents the affiliate, holds the portfolio charters together.
  • President-Elect — succession; shadows the President and takes the office the following year.
  • Vice President of Membership — chapter growth, retention, the affiliation push.
  • Vice President of Community Outreach — partners, service, the community-facing calendar.
  • Vice President of Public Relations — affiliate communications, the newsletter, the health literacy column.
  • Vice President of Middle School Development — the MS division and its pipeline into secondary chapters.
International Executive Council

Elected at ILC by the voting delegates. The exact set of offices and regional structure is published at hosa.org and should be confirmed there each year rather than copied from this card.

  • President and President-Elect — the same succession pattern as DC.
  • Vice Presidents by region and by division — representation of Chartered Associations and of the postsecondary/collegiate membership.
  • What they do: represent members, run the ILC business session, serve on committees. What they do not do: write the competitive event guidelines or the Bylaws.
Do this
  1. Find your office in the first column. Read the same office two columns over.
  2. Write, in one sentence each, what your office is accountable for at your level and what the office above you is accountable for at theirs.
  3. Bring that to your Portfolio Charter or your Transition Packet.

Where it shows up: Officer orientation at chapter and state level. It is also the Executive Council band of Organizational Leadership.

Coach note
The recruitment argument is sitting in this table. A chapter secretary who can see that the same office exists at ILC is a chapter secretary who might run for it. Point at it.
Grounded in
RHOSA officer structure — Handbook Section C; DC HOSA Bylaws; hosa.org
HOSA Handbook Section C (chapter management); DC HOSA Bylaws v2.2 (SEC offices); International Executive Council structure at hosa.org.
International Executive Council office titles and regional structure change. The IEC column deliberately describes the pattern rather than listing current titles — verify at hosa.org each affiliation year and update the card.
DC HOSA Leadership Hub  ·  leadership.dchosa.org/governance.html#governance-office-duties  ·  Lead Beyond  ·  Governance

Double-Loop Learning

Lead BeyondGovernanceBUILD15 min

A problem can be fixed twice. Once by fixing the instance — a chapter missed a deadline, so extend it. And once by asking why this kind of problem keeps appearing and changing the thing that produces it. State-level roles are the only ones that see the pattern across every chapter, and that view is wasted if every recurrence gets the first kind of fix.

Assumptionhow the system is set up Actionwhat we do about it Resultthe problem, again single loop — fix the instance, keep the assumption double loop — ask what produced it, change that the third time the same issue arrives from a different chapter, switch loops
Single loop

Detect the error, fix it, carry on under the same assumptions. Fast, often necessary, and it guarantees the same problem in a different form next term.

  • A chapter misses the registration deadline → the deadline is extended for them. Solved, this once.
Double loop

Detect the error and examine the assumption that produced it. Slower, and it removes the category.

  • A chapter misses the registration deadline → ask why chapters keep missing this particular deadline. The form is confusing, or the date collides with a predictable school event. Fix the form or move the date. Solved, for everyone, permanently.
The trigger

The third time the same type of issue arrives from a different chapter, stop fixing instances. That is the signal. Log every issue resolved; the log is what makes the third time visible.

Do this
  1. Start the pattern log — date, chapter, issue type, instance count. One line per resolved issue.
  2. When any issue type reaches three, write one sentence stating the assumption behind the system that produced it.
  3. Change the system once. Then watch the log for whether the category stops.

Where it shows up: State staff and SEC work across chapters. Any role that hears the same complaint from more than one place.

Coach note
Most people in a support role measure themselves by how fast they resolve things. This card asks them to measure how many things they made impossible to recur. Those are different numbers and the second is the one that matters.
Grounded in
RSingle-loop and double-loop learning — Argyris & Schön
Argyris & Schön (1978), Organizational Learning: A Theory of Action Perspective.
DC HOSA Leadership Hub  ·  leadership.dchosa.org/governance.html#governance-double-loop  ·  Lead Beyond  ·  Governance

Early Adopters First

Lead BeyondGovernanceCONNECT20 min

A statewide initiative launched to every chapter at once with equal effort wastes attention on chapters that are not ready and under-supports the ones that are. Adoption follows a curve, and the curve is a plan: launch with the few who will move fast, make their success visible, and let that do the persuading.

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innovators early adopters early majority late majority laggards launch here — two or three chapters the rest move oncesomeone else hasvisibly done it
Find the two or three
  • Chapters with a strong advisor–SEC relationship — they respond and they trust the ask.
  • Chapters with a proactive officer team that has adopted a previous initiative quickly.
  • Not the biggest chapters. The readiest ones.
The sequence
  • Week one — the early adopters get the ask, concentrated support, and a named SEC contact.
  • Weeks two to three — their early result is made visible to everyone else. Specifically: ‘this chapter is already doing it, and here is what happened’.
  • Then the wider rollout, which now carries social proof. The remaining chapters adopt faster because someone else has taken the risk.
  • Ongoing — recognition for every chapter that engages, in public and by name of chapter.
Sort the rest by relationship, not by size

Before any affiliate-wide message, sort chapters into strong, developing, and strained relationships. A blanket email works for the first and fails for the other two — those need a call, and sometimes they need state staff to bridge before an SEC ask will land.

Do this
  1. Name your two or three early adopters for the next initiative and write down why each one.
  2. Write the week-two visibility message before you launch, so you know what success has to look like.
  3. Sort every other chapter into the three relationship tiers on the tracker.

Where it shows up: Any SEC or state-staff initiative that has to move more than a few chapters. Spark One recruitment, a service campaign, a new event push.

Coach note
When an initiative stalls, the SEC’s instinct is to send a louder message to everyone. Ask instead which two chapters are already doing it and whether anyone has said so out loud.
Grounded in
RDiffusion of Innovations — Rogers
Rogers (1962; 5th ed. 2003), Diffusion of Innovations — the adoption curve and the role of early adopters and observability.
DC HOSA Leadership Hub  ·  leadership.dchosa.org/governance.html#governance-early-adopters  ·  Lead Beyond  ·  Governance