The Art of Chairing

Less than two weeks ago I made a verbal promise to the rest of Tribal Council. The promise was basically that I would devise some guidelines for our meetings, particularly in terms of speaking order. That probably won’t mean much to the general public, but when your job involves a regular series of meetings on seemingly infinite topics, many of them resulting in major directives to staff, then making sure these sessions are run efficiently and yield clear decisions is kind of like ensuring that all the machinery in a line factory is functioning properly.
A large portion of Tribal Council time is spent in chambers conversing with one another and certain employees in an effort to churn out decisions. That may seem like a pretty simple way of doing work, and prior to being elected I certainly underestimated how hard it was. But now that one of my duties is to actually chair the meetings (meaning run them), I’ve come to the conclusion that having to maintain order in meetings, especially in a civilized manner, is one of the harder tasks you’re likely to be faced with.
As many people probably know, the Tribe like most organizations uses the legendary and universally embraced Robert’s Rules of Order to run meetings. I can’t claim to have ever read any of the numerous books on the rules all the way through, but one of the cornerstones of parliamentary procedure isn’t tough to understand: raise your hand and speak when called on by the person presiding as chair over a meeting.
Of course it gets more complicated and perhaps unclear than that, and was really evidenced by the sadly unfriendly exchange between myself and another Council member at a recent Wednesday night meeting. That incident would be revisited the following morning in a very lengthy discussion in which my now looming promise was made. The reason for the exchange, we were all informed, stemmed from a misunderstanding which in all honesty I feel was never an issue before. Some Council members feel that when a question is posed during a public meeting, I should call on Council before calling on staff, which was contrary to what a number of us understood. A number of us, myself included, think and have always run the meetings under the rule that the chair calls people in the order that they raise their hand. The notion of there being a ranking among speakers wasn’t really something I considered. Thus, my dilemma of developing or finding a system that will work. Keeping order isn’t easy, which I know I’ve already said before but will readily say again, for emphasis.
In addition I must note that the speaking order isn’t ironclad, since some situations almost force people to speak out of order, like a question being posed to somebody which demands a response. However, discussions that go really long require me to keep a list of speakers on a pad of paper. Not everybody agrees with the order in which I call people, and frankly sometimes I forget to mark someone down on my list. You can guess then what it must be like to chair Wednesday night meetings, or General Council meetings, especially when people just start yelling from the audience.
The word “order” in this case also has dual meaning, as I must also not only maintain the proper speaking order, but technically also make sure we stay on topic. Once again that is a notable challenge, since so many topics are related, and people can get caught up in the really sensitive subjects, not just in Council work sessions but public meetings as well. Nobody likes to come off as being rude or insensitive, but then again part of the job of being a Council member, especially the chair, is to ensure efficiency and fairness.
I guess the best way to keep my promise then is to actually sit down and actually read, cover to cover, one of those books on Roberts Rules. I can’t be the first person in this kind of situation, and at the very least, it’ll provide some ideas and more importantly, another book review for my blog here.