Making Meetings Work

The Art of Chairing

Richard Hooper

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000377569
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Meetings & Presentations
• Index: Business

This short, accessible book on the art of chairing is an indispensable guide to help Chairs and meetings (of all types) to work more effectively. There are millions of meetings every day in public and private organisations. A poor Chair can lead to unproductive meetings, weak outcomes, unclear actions and even major fallouts. Many types of meeting within business settings and beyond are covered in this short book – from regular meetings to company board meetings, conferences and senior level regulatory meetings. It covers both physical meetings and virtual chairing.

Using a light-hearted approach and written by a globally recognised Chairperson of leading technology, media and communications businesses and regulatory bodies during times of great change, the book offers a practical, jargon-free approach that covers many types of meeting. It will be of use to Chairs in the business environment, the public sector at local, regional and national levels, and in many types of communities and gatherings. It is interspersed with anecdotes and examples that bring the text to life and give powerful stories that everyone can learn from. As a result, meetings of all sorts will be more productive, and, importantly, more fun. As a result, people will become better chairs.

The book is a perfect quick reference tool for anyone currently involved in chairing meetings and is wanting to hone their skills, or anyone new to the art of chairing meetings and wants to get quickly up to speed.

1

Chairing a meeting

The first thing that needs to be thought about is whether a meeting requires a chair. If the meeting is going to last more than a few minutes, handle issues of potential complexity and involve more than a few people, then it is worth having a chair.

There are three types of preparation that the chair needs to spend time on – the first is, for want of a better word, strategic; the second is technical; the third is being clear about meeting discipline.

Preparing to chair – strategic issues

The role of a chair in any meeting is, above all, to try and establish what needs to be discussed and what needs to be decided. Of course, there are meetings where the purpose appears to be, intentionally or unintentionally, to conceal or evade these two questions, leading to frustration, annoyance and railing against all meetings. The chair needs to develop in his or her mind an idea of what a successful meeting looks and feels like. So many meetings go on interminably because no-one is really sure what they are about. As a result, to misquote the first sentence of C. Northcote Parkinson’s Parkinson’s Law, meetings expand so as to fill the time available for their completion.¹

The chair’s tasks are the same generically for all types of meeting:

• to be clear what the meeting is about, what it is for and who it is for,
• to allow everyone attending (including the chair him or herself) a reasonable chance to give their views,
• to promote a sensible conversation or debate,
• to keep the meeting on track avoiding too many diversions,
• to keep track of time,
• to make, on behalf of the meeting, the necessary decisions without too much prevarication,
• to summarise what has been discussed and agreed,
• to emphasise the next steps,
• to finish the meeting as promptly and as early as possible,
• to ensure that, if appropriate, a record is kept of what was discussed and agreed; and who is responsible for the actions that have been agreed.

Above all else, the chair needs to be clear for whom and for what the meeting should work. The meeting should obviously work for those attending including the chair. But it also must work for the organisation, its goals and strategy and its responsibilities within the law towards a wide range of stakeholders – for example staff, shareholders, suppliers, customers, academics, local citizens, parents, club members, local communities. This is critical to the work of company Boards, as set out in Chapter 3.

The chair should also, where appropriate, try and ensure that the meeting has a warmth about it, and is enjoyable. Possibly even, for at least short periods, fun. One of the most successful Boards I served on was known for occasional howls of laughter emanating from the boardroom, to the quizzical amusement of staff sitting within earshot. As a result, staff invited to attend the Board for specific agenda items were less apprehensive and looked forward to coming.

People will come back willingly to subsequent meetings you chair if it has not just been a drudge. More importantly, people who are enjoying themselves, relax, and are more likely to trust each other and be honest with each other.

Who should come to the meeting? If we know what the meeting is for, it still can be spoilt by not having the right people in attendance. The chair must prepare by getting the right people to attend. If a key person is missing, either the meeting fails and/or you have to repeat it when that key person is available – not a very productive use of time.

Chapter 5 looks at the “right people” along the dimension of diversity – a major concern today for chairs in the make-up of teams, workforces and meetings. And a central concern for organisations is to ensure the diversity of chairs themselves. The word “diversity” in this book means a “good mix of genders, younger people, people from different ethnic and social class backgrounds, people with disabilities, people with different sexual preferences” (Chapter 5).

Preparing to chair – technical matters

In preparation for a meeting, it is important to ensure that any technology required to enhance audibility and visibility is actually working. Too much time is still wasted in meetings when the PowerPoint presentation is not properly set up, for example, or the person presenting a topic is not sure which buttons to press. If there are going to be slides at the meeting, check, or get your team to check, that they are charged up and ready to go, before the meeting starts. It is so obvious yet technology problems occur far too regularly. Technology time-wasters.

Before the meeting begins, the chair needs to visit the space where the meeting is to be held and decide where he or she is going to sit. The meeting room and its layout should not come as a surprise if you are chairing the meeting. Check it out beforehand. Take the time. Prepare.

The chair should choose to sit at the centre point of the table, with his or her back to any available south-facing window (north-facing in the southern hemisphere, e.g. Australia). The chair should be able, and willing, to command the space – and from time to time surprise people.

Table shapes

The ideal table for chairing is oval. This is the table shape that Thomas Jefferson chose for The Rotunda he designed at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, completed in 1826.

But many meetings use long, thin tables which can cause people to be too far away from the chair, with audibility becoming a problem as a result. A civil servant told me that in 10 Downing Street, the table used by the Cabinet, chaired by the British Prime Minister, “is coffin-shaped. Everyone can see everyone.”

If you as chair sit in the middle of a long, thin table, it is not easy to see people on either side of you to left and right. Seeing people and their body language is important. More reticent, less experienced members of meetings, whose wisdom may be in inverse relationship to their quantity of words and willingness to offer them, do not necessarily indicate they want to speak but their body language can indicate that is the case. Bringing out the more reticent members of meetings, getting them to speak and offer views, is a theme that runs through the whole of this book.

In the dining room at the National Trust’s Coughton Court near Shakespeare’s Stratford-upon-Avon, an historic long, thin table can be seen. It is five metres long and one metre wide, formed of one single board of solid oak, resting on a frame. At the end of a meal, the board was lifted up and turned over, allowing the underside to be used at the next meal (having been presumably licked clean by the dogs). From this historic refectory table design come the words ‘board table’, ‘board of directors’, ‘board chair’ (and the expression ‘turning the tables’).

Those who do not like long, thin tables and have no access to oval or round tables often use modular tables Their great advantage is that they can be made smaller or larger depending upon meeting numbers and the sizes of meeting rooms. They are best arranged in a U-shape with the chair and secretariat at the bottom of the U, members on two sides and the screen across the top of the U. I personally find the gap between modular tables can push people apart and can reduce audibility in some rooms. The single table surface with people across from each other on both sides brings people together more. Meetings are about bringing people together – in every sense.

Audibility

Audibility is key to successful meetings. It is very important that each person can hear every other person clearly. Choosing the right room for meetings obviously affects audibility. In many meetings the acoustics of the architecture are not very good, and some people have a tendency to mumble, looking down into their papers or their tablets and smartphones. The chair should feel no embarrassment in asking participants to look up and speak up and/or to ask people (in the larger meeting) whether they can hear properly. It is a matter of keeping the chin up and projecting the voice which everyone can do, if gently reminded to do so.

At a recent university meeting cum seminar the illustrious chair had obviously not thought about audibility for himself or other main speakers, so interested and engrossed was he in the topic of discussion. There were no mikes (it was quite a big room, long and thin) and people at the back were really struggling, especially to understand those who were not native English speakers. When you are chairing, imagine you are sitting in the back-most row and ask and ensure at the start of meetings whether the people there can hear the proceedings. If there are audibility concerns, then ensure mikes are in place (and that they work!).

Microphones

Managing microphones to ensure audibility for larger meetings is part of the chair’s art. I personally find hand-held mikes a bit clumsy and would urge the use, where possible, of neck mikes or fixed mikes on stands, on the rostrum. Don’t believe the oft-heard cry that this room does not need mikes – it usually does. Hand-held mikes reduce the chances of audibility if they are not held correctly (not easy even for pros). They also stop people having two hands free (when they are using notes or speeches that are written out).

In conferences it is a good idea to get your speakers to take time to talk to the audio-visual technician about how to use the mikes. It is easy to stand at the rostrum and be too close to the fixed mike, causing irritating bumping. And it is easy to turn left or right away from the fixed mike at the rostrum in order to look at the screen or talk to a fellow panellist, and go off mike without knowing it.

Audio and video conferencing BC (Before Covid)

It is worth having rules about audio conferencing such as no phoning in from noisy spaces (the nearby coffee shop); and those meeting in real life (IRL) being required to speak up. IRL is an apt expression that a colleague uses in her contributions to Chapter 9 on virtual chairing.

It is frustrating to phone in to a meeting via audio conference and find oneself unable to hear half of what is being said in the physical meeting room. Also, it is easy for the chair to forget the invisible people phoning in to the audio conference and just pay attention to those physically in the room sitting IRL with the chair. Those phoning in rightly get upset. Thank them especially at the end of meetings (if they have not already silently dematerialised).

Traditional-style video conferencing is usually better than audio conferencing (but historically much more expensive). Well designed, it can ape a normal physical meeting fairly exactly. Board members need to remember they are on camera. Nose-picking spotted at the other end of a video conference Board meeting I was chairing caused juvenile amusement at my end, which had to be quelled.

But audio and video conferencing, having been a side show in physical meetings over many years, and a useful adjunct to the traditional physical meeting, have now come centre stage.

In 2020, with the Covid pandemic striking the world, new-style audio and video conferencing platforms such as Zoom and Microsoft Teams came to prominence. They have become the drivers of meetings – virtual as distinct from physical meetings. Meetings running over low-cost broadband networks, not high-cost phone and video circuits. The last chapter of the book looks at chairing in a virtual world, and the lessons being learnt from virtual chairing amidst a plethora of new meeting technologies/platforms.

However, whether chairing meetings physically or virtually, it seems that the concerns of the chair appear to remain remarkably consistent. Such as audibility!

Preparing to chair – meeting discipline

In addition to clarity about strategic and technical matters, the chair needs also to be clear about meeting discipline.

Introductions

At the start of the meeting ensure that all participants know each other and are introduced or introduce themselves – name and, where appropriate, role. It does take a bit of time but it is worth it. It is even more important in virtual meetings. Don’t assume that everyone knows everyone else – there is always likely to be a newcomer in the room. If you have an outside visitor to speak at your meeting, introductions round the table are courteous.

The chair should try and know and remember everyone’s name, but this is not easy with bigger meetings. The London-based Broadband Stakeholder Group (BSG), which I chaired until recently, has anything up to 20 members attending, often with new faces. B...