How to chair effectively

Justin Reyes
Phi Delta Theta

If you are just serving as president of your fraternity or sorority, or if you ever had to chair a committee meeting for social events or recruitment, there are certain actions you can take to make sure that meetings that are facilitated by you run smoothly and show to the others within your group that you are fair and balanced.

It is important that when you are the presiding officer of your chapter or chair of a committee that you not dictate, but instead facilitate. Often times presiding officers will deny that they dictate, yet many still believe that as chairs that they have the right to close discussion and to not call on someone if they don’t want to. However, this has often been misguided, instead it is the role of the presiding officer to facilitate meetings to make things easier and less confusing.

So there are certain techniques you can use to facilitate meetings and improve your skills as a chair or presiding officer.  It is important that you share ownership with your brothers or sisters. By doing this you are establishing the mindset that the meeting belongs to the chapter. With this mindset and approach, brothers or sisters within the chapter will share the responsibility with you in running the meeting. This will often lead to brothers or sisters keeping each other accountable through peer pressure during a meeting.

Aside from sharing the ownership it is also equally important that you reduce the confusion for others during the meeting. If you're going through the agenda of the meeting and your chapter normally follows basic Roberts’s rules of order, you can take these steps to move meetings and to keep the confusion out.

Step 1: State the motion

Stating the motion before engaging in discussion will keep the discussion focused and eliminate discussion that move away from the topic.

Step 2: Restate motion and put it to a vote

Reminding the chapter what it's voting on before they vote makes the whole process of voting less confusing. especially to brothers or sisters who have been day dreaming.

Step 3: Announce the results of the vote

It helps the chapter to know who won, the implications of the vote, and what is next on the agenda. Following this will reduce a lot of confusion during any meeting that you are presiding or chairing.

Lastly it is important for chairs or presiding officers to reduce extraneous debate and to call members out of order as politely as possible.  Reducing extraneous debate will help the meeting move on more quickly and reduce redundancy in chapter debate. One way you can do this is by recognizing alternate sides or by bringing the discussion back to the original topic.  Also, when calling your brother or sister out of order, it is important that you explain why the comments were out of order and what steps he/she can take to stay in order.

Following these techniques will solidify you as a effective, fair and balanced chair or presiding officer.

Justin is a senior studying political science.  You may contact him at justinr@olympiamediagroup.com.