Leading the way: How the meeting chair shapes the culture of online meetings

The GEiO project shines a light on how digital environments, including online meetings, can be used to support equitable relations at work. Our data reveals that meeting chairs play a pivotal role in encouraging fair interactions in online meetings.  

Depending on the context of the meeting, there is a great degree of flexibility in the way chairs carry out their role. Factors such as meeting purpose, topic, formality and participant relations all influence the approach of the chair.

In our (upcoming) course, we  outline some of the differences between participative and directive chairing approaches. Here’s a summary of some of the key differences:

Participative and directive chairing approaches

Participative chairing:

• Encourages participants to share their opinions and ideas  and give feedback
• Enables participants to take part in decision-making
• Negotiates meeting procedures
• Likely to support relational and social talk
• Likely to use humour to ‘ease’ social relations

The positive effects of participative chairing include positive meeting outcomes, increased employee engagement and satisfaction, enhanced job performance and mental well-being. Negative effects include a risk of lengthier decision-making processes and a potential for meetings to feel unfocused.

Directive chairing:

• Directs and controls the meeting procedures e.g.  who gets to speak and when
• Expects participant obedience and compliance
• Stifles discussion
• Doesn’t include participants in the decision-making process
• Does not seek out opinions or feedback

The positive effects of directive chairing include quicker decision-making processes and clearer task delineation. The negative effects include a lack of autonomy amongst employees leading to negative impact on employee performance.

The reality is that effective chairs draw on a combination of  different approaches and techniques depending on what is appropriate or required for a given meeting.

Although similar skills are required of chairs in online and offline meetings, our data suggests that online environments may intensify some chairing behaviours which might be perceived as hierarchical and rigid  and more aligned with the directive approach outlined above.

Read our next post on Online Chairing to discover observations from our research data