Academic representative Committee CHAIR training Role and Responsibilities

What we will cover: Topics: 1. What makes a good committee chair? Congratulations on becoming a chair for your Student Staff Committee meeting or wider meetings within your department or Faculty! Being asked to chair or co-chair a meeting with several students and staff can feel quite intimidating. This training is help you think through the basic steps of running a successful meeting and give you the confidence to take on the role! Topics: 1. What makes a good committee chair? 2. What does a committee chair need to do? 3. Running a meeting & dealing with challenges 4. Wider support and guidance

What makes a good committee chair? What do you think are the skills that a committee chair needs to create a successful meeting? Previous academic reps have said… Able to delegate to others Able to lead others during a meeting Be trustworthy and reliable Strong communication skills Effective time management Be confident and assertive Passionate about what they do Organised Approachable A team player That’s a bit of a long list! You will naturally have many of these skills already and a successful meeting is not reliant on all of them. Think about which of the skills above you are naturally good at and how you could translate them to your role.

What does a committee chair need to do? Role Purpose: SSC Chairs help co-ordinate fellow academic reps and university staff during SSC meetings or similar meetings as requested. They ensure relevant matters are addressed throughout the meeting and that any agreed action points are followed up. Responsibilities: Enable both students and staff have their voice heard during SSCs by facilitating discussion. Encourage students and staff to work together in SSCs to develop the student experience. Work with staff to create an agenda for each SSC meeting and prepare to speak on each agenda topic. Agree action points at the meeting and delegate these to members accordingly. Follow up on agreed action points prior to the following SSC meeting so that updates may be provided.

What does that mean in reality? To fulfil your responsibilities for your meeting, there a few things you will need to do for each Student Staff Committee meeting: Call meetings, start on time and end on time Draw up an agenda in partnership with the SSC secretary Direct committee conversation through the agenda Support committee members to make comments (i.e: encouragement, open questions etc…) Ensure minutes are shared to prepare for the next committee meeting How do I call meetings and draw up agendas? Most of your departments will have fixed Student Staff Committee meetings each year, usually about 2 per semester. You will want to speak to the Staff convener of your SSC to help in planning out the meeting and to support you in discussing particular topics. The secretary, usually a staff member will draw up an agenda but as chair you will need to understand the items and main areas for discussion. You can also add items if you deem relevant. Although an agenda might seem formal, it helps keep a meeting on track so that key points are covered and everyone knows what was agreed.

What to do during a meeting to get through the Agenda: The main part of your role is to keeping the committee meeting running effectively: How do I do this? Make sure everyone is involved and are able to have their say. This can be done through open questions (“what does everyone think about this?”) and asking everyone to introduce themselves at the start of the meeting so that everyone feels more relaxed and has names to faces. Use the agenda to focus discussion, if a debate goes off topic, suggest bringing the discussion back to the agenda so it stays relevant. At the end of each agenda item, reflect on the agreed action points so that it is clear who is responsible for what. If one person is dominating the conversation suggest that others should be welcomed to share their thoughts. As chair you are the one who can control the pace of the meeting. Keep the agenda timed. Ensure that the discussions are limited (i.e 20 mins per topic), if you have allocated 20 minutes to a topic, perhaps provide a 5 minute warning and summarise discussion if you are nearly out of time.

Other tips to be a successful chair: Get everyone to introduce themselves – people rarely contribute to a room full of strangers. Think about the purpose of the meeting – look over the agenda before the meeting and identify key decisions. Re-cap the agenda – make sure you identify the objectives for the meeting. Be clear about how long the meeting will last – what needs doing by the end of the meeting? Summarise the discussion regularly – check that others in the meeting understand what has been agreed, usually after each agenda point. Regularly invite views from quiet participants – so that everyone gets a say on the topics being discussed. Thank people – for their ideas and recognise their contributions. Remember: There is no fixed way to be a chair, you need to bring your own approach and personality to the role. You can always ask attendees after the meeting on how you could improve the way your meetings are run so you have feedback to work on!

Dealing with challenges and debate in a meeting: One of the main concerns for committee chairs is how to deal with conflict, debate or disruption in a meeting. Whilst it’s very rare that discussions can become tense, the following tips can help: No matter what, people are going to disagree on some topics. Most of the time, conflict and debate is needed to help create new decisions, find middle ground and create new outcomes. Keep calm, as chair you can dictate the tone of the meeting, by keeping relaxed this will influence others as well. Focus on the decisions that need to be made. If you explain this to others in the meeting it will keep the conversations on topic. If people start talking in small groups or make hostile contributions, don’t hesitate to put a stop to it. ‘Can we have one discussion please’ is a helpful phrase to stop people talking over one another. If a debate goes on for too long without a decision being made, you should summarise both sides of the argument and potentially ask people to vote on a course of action.

Further guides and support: 1. Chair planning cheat sheet: The template will be shared with you separately, but to help you plan through an upcoming SSC meeting, you can answer the following questions on a piece of paper to help you direct the meeting: What date is the next meeting your chairing? In one sentence, state the purpose of the meeting? Will anything be decided at this meeting? If so, what? What will all the attendees know and understand by the end of the meeting? What problems may arise during the meeting? What will happen as a result of the meeting? How will you know that this meeting was a success? 2. “Seeds for change” – Facilitating meetings guidance: If you want a few more tips on how best to improve your chairing technique for meetings, seeds for change provide some great suggestions that you could incorporate! A link can be found here.

We hope you found the training useful! If you have any questions or would like further advice in how to be an effective chair, get in touch with the Students’ Union at: academicreps@sheffield.ac.uk