Chairing Meetings, Boards and Committees

This module sets out what chairing is for and why it is a craft rather than a seat. It introduces the four Ps of purpose, process, people and product, asks what any meeting genuinely needs to produce, and compares four traditions: Robert's Rules of Order, Citrine's ABC of Chairmanship, Quaker business method and the British Cabinet. It closes with Perlow and colleagues' evidence on unproductive meetings and Rogelberg's chair as steward of other people's time.

The chair and chief executive relationship is set outside the room and tested inside it. This module covers the chair's four part role, the elements of a positive relationship and what each side owes the other, then follows the partnership into the meeting itself. It sets out the meeting cycle, four core chairing skills, the principle of the room's best thinking over its loudest voice, and the common pitfalls that catch even experienced chairs.

Most meetings are won before they start. This module covers Patrick Lencioni's four meeting types and how mismatches show up in real diaries, designing the agenda by what the meeting must do with each item, the anatomy of a good agenda and cover sheet, and papers that offer assurance rather than reassurance. It then turns to the chair's brief and the principle of preparing the room, not the verdict, with a forty-eight hour checklist.

This module covers the live craft of helping a room think and decide. It sets out four elements of a good opening, five moves for every agenda item, Sam Kaner's Diamond of Participation and the difference between chairing and facilitating. It gives particular weight to the summary, then looks at decision rules, motions, amendments and the casting vote, Nancy Kline's Thinking Environment, closing well, and disagreeing in the room before standing together once decided.

Every room holds two meetings: the agenda and the undercurrent. This module draws on Wilfred Bion's basic assumption groups and his idea of the container, Irving Janis on groupthink and structured dissent, and Amy Edmondson on psychological safety to help you read and hold the room. It then looks at familiar behaviour patterns, handling conflict, and Eric Berne's transactional analysis, all anchored in chairing the behaviour, not the person.

Procedure is how a room stays fair. This module gives a working map of the rules in Wales and England: where they come from across councils, National Health Service bodies, charities and companies, quorum, standing orders, and why a chair's ruling must be fair as well as final. It covers what board committees are for and the limits of delegation, declarations and conflicts of interest, quasi-judicial meetings, and the principle that public business is open by default.

A committee is not a smaller board. This module looks at how purpose shapes the chairing of audit, scrutiny, planning, remuneration and stakeholder committees, with particular attention to the questioning discipline of scrutiny. It covers public participation and disruption, why the public are not an audience, and remote, hybrid and multi-location meetings, where Wales and England have taken different legal paths. It closes with the Pwyllgor of Mind Cymru as a Welsh example of devolved governance.

Much of a meeting's value is secured or lost once the room empties. This module covers what minutes are for and what good minutes contain, including evidence of challenge, then turns to the action log, handling slippage and closing actions on evidence, drawing on Kauffeld and Lehmann-Willenbrock and Steven Rogelberg. It finishes with the board evaluation cycle and practical ways to review your own chairing, because the best chairs ask how they did.

This capstone reads three real cases through the frameworks of the whole topic. Handforth Parish Council's 2020 Zoom meeting shows a fight about authority and process conflict; HBOS shows process without purpose and reassurance in place of assurance; and Clement Attlee's Cabinet of 1945 to 1951 shows a chair holding strong personalities together through committees, brevity and summing up. It closes with the principle of chairing for the decision the room will have to live with.