Successful academic meetings: Part 2, chairing a meeting

In this second part of the 3-part blog on academic meetings, we focus on the actual process of chairing successful academic meetings.

By Patricia A. Maurice

31 October 2023 and DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.10035688

In Part 1 of this three-part blog on Successful Academic Meetings, we provided some tips on how to prepare for an academic meeting as a senior leader in STEMM.  Here, in Part 2, we focus on the process of chairing a meeting. Part 3 will deal with virtual meetings/video conferencing and hybrid meetings.

This template may be helpful in chairing Advisory Board Meetings, to help organize and facilitate report writing.

Starting a meeting off well

Start meetings on time.  This is against some university cultures, but eventually colleagues will get the idea that they need to arrive on time.  Begin the meeting with a few words of greeting/positive notes and refer directly to the agenda. Make sure everyone at the meeting knows one another; brief self-introductions are often best.

For lengthy meetings, make sure attendees know the location of nearby restrooms and water fountains.  Ask everyone to mute cell phones. If an administrative assistant will be taking notes, be sure the assistant is introduced, as well. If you can’t see everyone and they can’t see you, move chairs around now. If food and beverages are or will be available, invite attendees to partake either at the start of the meeting or at a given time.

Stick to the meeting agenda

While some deviations from the timeline can be expected, do your best to keep the meeting on track and to finish on time.  I’ve had some colleagues who insisted on the common business practice of everyone standing throughout, which always ensures a fast meeting. This can be an effective strategy but be mindful of potential unfairness to colleagues who are pregnant, elderly, or have disabilities. 

It is your responsibility as the senior leader to manage the flow of the meeting and to steer your colleagues back to the agenda whenever they stray too far.  If an important side issue is raised, it can be noted as the topic of a future meeting, either for the entire group or a subgroup.  Do so and move on.

Meeting objectives

It can be helpful to provide a bulleted list of tasks, objectives, and/or questions to be answered during the meeting. What is the charge to the committee for this particular meeting?  The charge can be presented at the start of the meeting, perhaps including a list of specific tasks or objectives and questions to be answered during the meeting. This approach is especially helpful for Advisory Board meetings.

If, over the course of the meeting, colleagues are assigned specific future tasks or subcommittee assignments, be sure these are spelled out so they are clearly understood, with due dates.

Engineers often think in terms of deliverables, so a list of expected meeting deliverables can be especially useful for a meeting in engineering.

Meeting rules

Know the sections of your university’s handbook that apply to rules of meetings, voting, etc., and make sure your meeting attendees know them, too.  It’s helpful to be aware of parliamentary procedures like Robert’s Rules [1] but use them in accordance with your university guidelines and don’t suddenly spring them on colleagues to impose your way in a meeting.

The most important ‘rules’ for a successful meeting are that it be: necessary, as short as possible, to the point, professional, collegial, and on time. 

All voices should be heard and respected

While many faculty members profess to hate meetings, some seem to thrive on the opportunity to enlighten their colleagues, especially those who are female or junior. If you are a senior woman in STEM, you have almost certainly had many experiences of either not being allowed to speak, being cut off, or watching junior colleagues being shut down.  Mansplaining happens. A good leader ensures that everyone has the opportunity to contribute to discussions and decision-making, because that’s the way to promote buy-in and effective teamwork.  While senior colleagues can offer long-term experience and often have more voting power, the future ultimately belongs to the young.  

Faculty who cannot avoid lengthy feuds can be invited to solve their differences outside the meeting, even asked to leave.  If an attendee becomes emotional, it’s a good time to call a pause and remind everyone of the importance of collegiality.

Resist the temptation to dominate the discussion at meetings. Good leaders spend time listening.  Set a tone of collegiality; there are few things more demoralizing than a senior ‘leader’ who ridicules colleagues or makes inappropriate comments.  Shut down any demeaning, disrespectful, inappropriate comments from colleagues immediately. Gossiping has no place in the conference room.  Although they may deny it, many men love to gossip.

Senior female leaders are still rare enough in STEM that you may encounter some colleagues who have never experienced a meeting led by a woman and who are confused, skeptical, or otherwise problematic.  Remember that you are the senior leader and do not allow another faculty member to condescend to you during a meeting or to hijack a meeting.  While you want faculty to buy in to your leadership, as a senior leader remember that you have power and your support is important to your colleagues.

Try to manage distractions

Academics are busy and therefore used to multi-tasking.  Unfortunately, it’s all too common to attend a meeting in which few members are paying attention to the discussion versus reading email, texting, etc.  Sometimes, a colleague is legitimately looking up something that will quickly answer a question raised during the meeting, allowing the meeting to progress more smoothly.  Occasionally, an outside event arises during a meeting that a participant absolutely must monitor. But, if necessary, ask at the start of the meeting that cell phones be put away and other electronics stowed unless being used specifically for meeting purposes (e.g., to ZOOM or take notes).  Otherwise, distractions are rude to everyone.  One prime example: a graduate student works years conducting research and deserves to have the full attention of her committee members during her dissertation defense.

Focus not on problems but on solutions

There is no more certain prescription for a lengthy and unproductive meeting than allowing everyone to sit around complaining for hours about some problem.  Allow discussion of a problem only long enough to define and understand it and then focus on solutions.  It can take time for colleagues to understand this solution-oriented approach to problem solving but eventually they will come to appreciate your leadership.

Taking notes during meetings

I cannot begin to count all the meetings I’ve attended where I was automatically expected to take the notes simply because I was a woman.  I almost wanted to yell, “Just because I’m a woman doesn’t mean I’m a secretary.”  

Some senior leaders are comfortable taking concise notes during a meeting while others prefer to focus on the conversation without the potential distraction of note taking. In the latter case, it’s helpful to have an administrative assistant serve as a note taker with some advance guidance.  However, given that a meeting should not happen unless it’s covering important content, you as chair should write down key points every now and then so that they are in your own words and won’t suffer from a different note-taker’s perspectives.  It’s okay to stop dialog for a minute to repeat a key point from your notes for everyone to hear and ensure you’re all on the same page.

Keep a record of all meetings, even just one-on-one or remote.  If you can’t write things down during the meeting, then write them down as sson as possible and certainly within 24 hours.  Even the most seemingly innocuous meeting can wind up having ramifications (including legal) years in the future. Contemporaneous notes can have legal importance.

Managing an interdisciplinary group

STEMM is broad, encompassing pure and applied scientists, engineers and medical professionals in many (sub)disciplines.  These different groups have distinct cultures and use different jargon.  The level of comfort with different types of diagrams, graphs, mathematical formulas, etc. varies.  Be aware of this and be ready to stop discussion for a minute to make sure people understand each other.

As mentioned in Part 1 of this blog series on successful academic meetings, be sure that all acronyms are defined.  If faculty are using jargon, ask them to stop for a minute and define the term. For example, a term like ‘kinetic’ can have a different meaning in biology versus chemistry versus physics versus geology. 

Many academics tend to view different disciplines as fitting within a status hierarchy. Over decades of interdisciplinary research and administration in both the federal government and academia, I often noticed that more ‘pure’ scientists tended to be skeptical of ‘applied’ scientists and ‘physical’ and ‘natural’ scientists tended to be skeptical of ‘social’ scientists.  Academics can sometimes have huge egos, and jealousies can encroach on meetings especially when funding is involved. There is no simple answer to how best to deal with these problems.  But as meeting chair, you set the tone and if you show equal respect for everyone, that respect can be contagious.

A good interdisciplinary meeting chair takes time to learn something about each discipline both from a strictly scientific and cultural standpoint. For example, computer scientists often want to publish fast in rapid online format because their field is evolving quickly whereas many natural scientist tend to prefer traditional journals with lengthy review times.  This is where senior women leaders in STEMM can bring their years of experience to bear to solve differences and ensure people understand and value one another.

Interdisciplinary groups often require more frequent meetings, at least at first, in order to learn one another’s languages and cultures and develop trust.  I’ve found that it’s especially important to put agreements or understandings explicitly in writing at the end of a meeting.  For example, if a team is going to produce a report or publication, the due date and venue should be agreed upon and specified in writing. 

Report writing

If the meeting is expected to result in a formal report, such as a committee or advisory board report, try to complete as much of the report as possible during the actual meeting. Even a detailed, bulleted outline of a report can be immensely helpful if not enough time is set aside for report writing. If the meeting is part of a series of meetings that will eventually result in a report, try to get a least one section completed (even if in outline form).  Reports don’t write themselves, so it’s important to write together when you can, and/or give specific writing assignments with due dates.

Ending a meeting

Manage meeting flow to allow for a brief summary/recap at the end of a meeting.  Go back to the agenda to ensure everything was covered (and, if not, that additional meetings are scheduled).  It’s great if bulleted tasks/objectives/questions can be presented on a white board or screen along with succinct responses so that everyone understands meeting outcomes and assignments before going their separate ways.  Numerical tallies of any votes should be included.

For a meeting that requires a written report, such as an External Advisory Board meeting or a hiring/promotion meeting, taking just a couple of minutes to organize in bulleted form at the end can make report writing a breeze. 

Be sure to thank everyone for their attendance and attention throughout the meeting.

Questions for further consideration

·       What is the worst academic meeting you’ve ever attended?  What made it so bad? What might have been done to make it better?

·       Who do you know who is particularly good at chairing meetings? What practice or practices contribute to their success?

·       How do you keep long-term records of meetings? Are they easy to find, organized, and written in a manner that would not be embarrassing or cause potential legal problems?

References cited and notes

[1] Robert, H.M. III, Honemann, D.H., Balch, T.J. Seabold, D.E., and Gerber, S. (2020). Robert's Rules of Order Newly Revised, 12th edition. Public Affairs. ISBN: 1541736699.

Note: At the top of this post is an AI-assisted illustration generated (June 4, 2023, P. Maurice) using Stable Diffusion v1.5 on the Draw Things app

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