Chairing A Meeting
Apr. 8th, 2024 11:03 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
poliphilo I must have chaired meetings when I was a vicar but I have no memories of it.
So when it fell on my shoulders (at short notice) to chair the Premises Committee meeting it was essentially a new experience.
I did think of starting with an apology along the lines of "Please be indulgent because I haven't done this before" but then I thought that this would be a great way of creating a mood of hesitancy and uncertainty and I should fake a bold brassy front so everybody would have confidence in me.
It's what politicians do, it's what CEOs and commanding officers do. They blag it.
Pretend you're in charge and you will be....
There's a particular etiquette to Quaker Meetings for business. People are supposed to speak through the chair, speak one at a time, not interrupt one another, not argue. I'm afraid I didn't even try to maintain that kind of discipline. I think it's over-prescriptive anyway.
And a recipe for dragging things out interminably- something Quakers are notorious for....
But we did what we had to do and were finished in three quarters of an hour.
So when it fell on my shoulders (at short notice) to chair the Premises Committee meeting it was essentially a new experience.
I did think of starting with an apology along the lines of "Please be indulgent because I haven't done this before" but then I thought that this would be a great way of creating a mood of hesitancy and uncertainty and I should fake a bold brassy front so everybody would have confidence in me.
It's what politicians do, it's what CEOs and commanding officers do. They blag it.
Pretend you're in charge and you will be....
There's a particular etiquette to Quaker Meetings for business. People are supposed to speak through the chair, speak one at a time, not interrupt one another, not argue. I'm afraid I didn't even try to maintain that kind of discipline. I think it's over-prescriptive anyway.
And a recipe for dragging things out interminably- something Quakers are notorious for....
But we did what we had to do and were finished in three quarters of an hour.
