Chairing in the open
Managing the room and chairing public committees.
A focused three hours on chairing when the room is difficult and public: group dynamics, standing orders, quorum, interests, scrutiny and minutes.
- Level
- Focus
- Learning time
- 3 hours
- Where
- Chairing Meetings, Boards and Committees
- Price
- £69
When you step up to a higher level, what you paid in the last 12 months for lower-level courses inside the bigger course comes off its price, in proportion to how much of each is inside it, whichever topic it's from. Courses at the same or a lower level don't give credit against each other. A Focus course or above always costs at least £15. Read the full terms
Certificate of Completion, or Certificate of Completion and Assessment with a short assessment
Overview and Outcomes.
Who It's For
Chairs of boards, committees, scrutiny and public meetings in Wales and England
Overview
Every room holds two meetings: the agenda and the undercurrent. This programme turns to the harder, more public side of chairing. It begins with group dynamics, drawing on Bion's basic assumption groups and the chair as container, Janis on groupthink and Edmondson on psychological safety. It then maps the rules that keep a room fair in Wales and England, from quorum and standing orders to declarations of interest, before looking at scrutiny, planning and public meetings, including remote and hybrid working. After minutes, actions and reviewing your own chairing, it closes with three cases: Handforth Parish Council, HBOS and Attlee's Cabinet.
Aims
This programme aims to develop the steadiness and procedural confidence chairs need when the room is difficult, the business is public and the decision must be defensible. It is for chairs of boards, committees and public meetings who want to hold the whole room fairly, chair the behaviour rather than the person, and keep public business open by default.
In summary, you will be able to:
- Identify group patterns such as dependency, fight-flight and groupthink, and plan structured dissent so that silence is not mistaken for agreement.
- Apply standing orders, quorum rules and declarations of interest to give rulings that are fair, explained and defensible in committee, scrutiny and public meetings.
- Assess your own chairing through minutes, action logs, board evaluation and real cases, and plan changes that serve the decision the room must live with.
What you'll develop
Through this Focus course, you will build the ability to:
- Identify Bion's dependency, fight-flight and pairing patterns in a meeting and describe how a chair can act as a container.
- Recognise the symptoms of groupthink and plan structured dissent and practical checks so that silence is not mistaken for agreement.
- Identify where the rules for your meeting come from and check that it is quorate, including when members leave part way through.
- Distinguish how the chairing of audit, scrutiny, planning, remuneration and stakeholder committees should differ according to their purpose.
- Explain the four jobs that minutes do and identify what good minutes should contain, including brief evidence of challenge.
- Explain how unclear authority and process conflict caused the Handforth meeting to break down, and identify how settling who presides helps prevent this.
Built from 2 parts.
3 hours of learning.
- 01Holding the whole roomStanding orders, quorum and interestsBitesize2 modules
- 02Committees in the public eyeChairing committees, scrutiny and minutesBitesize3 modules
Keep going.
Part of the Chairing Meetings, Boards and Committees topic, also sold whole as In the chair.
Go deeper, and pay only the difference
- You are hereFocus, 3 hours, £69
- The whole topicExplore, In the chair, 5 hours 30 minutes, £129. Already own the Focus? You pay £60.
When you step up to a higher level, what you paid in the last 12 months for lower-level courses inside the bigger course comes off its price, in proportion to how much of each is inside it, whichever topic it's from. Courses at the same or a lower level don't give credit against each other. A Focus course or above always costs at least £15. Prices per person. Read the full terms
Also part of: Governing with confidence, Serving your community well