Team meeting - rotating chair

[KimGa]

I am part-time (only 16 hours a week). I do admin to fit around school hours. I am the lowest paid, most part-time member of a team of about 35, local government.

We have a regular team meeting which happens to fall at a time I work. I’m of course happy to attend. However, they rotate who chairs the meeting and who minute takes every time, so everyone apparently has to have a turn regardless of seniority.

AIBU to think this is unfair? I don’t object to the minute taking because admin is what I’m paid to do but as I absolutely hate presenting/public speaking of any kind having to chair when it’s my turn causes me so much stress and anxiety.

Surely this is a senior leadership team task and their pay reflects that kind of responsibility.

It’s perfectly fair and OP it’s good for you to do it - Chairing isn’t presenting, it’s just going through a format. Just pay attention to other people and how they do it.

Our team do this and like you I am very junior. I use it as a chance to practice - I've put it on my cv as a skill. Before the meeting I make sure I'm confident with the agenda and timings then I just go for it. There are other more senior people who also dislike chairing but we all just get on with it.

It’s not.

Chairing isn’t ‘responsibility’ or hard, it’s just a routine task. If I’m in a meeting it doesn’t make any odds to me if I chair or not.

In the OP’s case is is clearly development she needs.

Ask for training OP. Good luck.

You’re allowed to dislike it, OP, but it’s not ‘unfair’. It’s part of the role you are paid to do. If you do not like your role then move on.

Perfectly normal in my experience and as others say it gives you experience. Plus these are your team mates so the best people to practice any “public speaking”

This is so standard in fact that anyone who thought they shouldn’t do it wouldn’t be looked on too favourably

In my experience it’s great because every meeting is a little bit different because whoever is in the chair brings their style and personality to it. Rather than it being the same voice over and over again

What comes under reasonable development in your eyes?

We do this in our much smaller team - I introduced it as a training opportunity for everyone to have a chance to do the chair and get more comfortable doing it for when they need to chair bigger meetings with external stakeholders.

It means we get different styles of meetings, different things on the agenda as the chair sets that (asks for items but they set it), I purposely make a mess of things occasionally when I'm running it (I've asked 1 person to give me a hard time occasionally too to model dealing with a tricky person), so they see that's ok too and how to deal with it...

It was great when I was junior in a different team, and a few of us used to talk as a smaller group on how to handle when it was our turn. But it was really beneficial when we started having to manage our own meetings later on. And I can see that being more important now as stakeholder engagement is much more important than it used to be, and some of the attendees are getting trickier so knowing how to handle them is important.

My current team has a lot of people who joined during Covid or who were back office type functions in previous roles. So building their confidence and ability to work together as a team are both important.

If it's a team of 35, you will only need to do it a max of twice a year.

@Didimum I should have expanded. I’ve replied to a PP the same.

My manager will ask us to chair meetings or run training sessions etc that should be headed up by them because I’ve came to realise she doesn’t understand our job. If you ask her to check over work or anything specific to the job she will get another team member involved jn the conversation.
We all sort of fell into these new roles after covid an our company had big shake ups with roles etc so she didn’t have to apply or be interviewed for her role.
I don’t mind doing stuff if it’s for development but i begrudge doing it because my manager doesn’t understand the material that needs to be delivered.

In my last place of work we would take turns chairing and I loved it as I could keep the whole thing snappy. I'd pick a room with no chairs, so we would stand for about 10 mins and whizz through the general updates, quick AOB and on your way.

I was the least senior too, and just thought "everyone here has more important stuff to do than attend this pointless meeting"

Fair enough. That’s a tough frustration. Although it seems like more of an organised thing in OP’s case but she just doesn’t like doing it.

It's totally fair. Just suck it up and give it your best shot OP. You might even enjoy it!

Being scared to do it would be exactly why I'd do it.

I used to do this as a manager as it was a good chance for people to practice their chairing skills. If someone came to me and said they hated it though I would absolutely have let them off the hook! I always saw it as me doing a favour to them so it wouldn’t have bothered me at all if someone said “thanks but no thanks”.

We did this at my last place of work. It was my job to schedule the meetings, get someone to chair and take the minutes. . A lot of people simply refused or suddenly found they had a more important meeting to go to. It was a nightmare.

Whereas I don't agree entirely. Maybe to opt out once or twice but you should be working towards being able to doing it if its part of the role for everyone.

Being anxious about speaking in public is relatively normal purely because most of us don't do it very often, so practice in a fairly safe space like this is an opportunity. We do exactly the same rotating chair in our team meetings so I've seen it really help people overcome some of their nervousness about it.

Even with a formal diagnosis of anxiety, most therapy involves learning not to run away from the things that make you anxious as that's not the right way to deal with it - it's about developing tools to manage that fear, because usually its irrational.

I thought this thread was going to be about someone spinning on their chair in meetings.

Maybe the company could address this by putting forward staff development ideas.

I appreciate everyone’s thoughts. I agree that for junior staff at the start of their career and wanting to progress it’s potentially a great developmental opportunity.

For me who has purposefully chosen a low-paid, low stress, part-time role to fit around my children I’m quite frankly not wanting to push myself right now. Therefore when it’s my turn I just resent the stress it causes me, but I now won’t object to my manager as the general consensus seems to be that it’s a reasonable request. I didn’t know whether it was commonplace in other offices.

Part of the reason I find it so anxiety- inducing is because I work closely with about three of the team members but as we are mainly remote, I don’t know the wider team and I don’t understand the things they add to the agenda for discussion which I have to introduce, so when I’ve done it in the past I just always feel hugely out of my depth.

In our meeting, part of the chair’s responsibilities include running an ice breaker at the start which I find painful and also a 10 min slot sharing some recent learnings. My admin role is the same week in week out so it just feels a struggle to try and dress it up and say anything that’s even remotely of interest to others. Obviously when senior team members do this they talk about learning from recent projects which is not something I can do. I basically speak to customers by phone and email and input stuff onto databases and spreadsheets.

Some people are skilled at being a leader (generally managers) which is why I mention the pay grades. I am not and I’m not the only one, a couple of others on the team who are lower in the hierarchy generally mumble their way through their turns at being chair too and everyone can sense discomfort - I just think it’s a bit mean.

Some people have minimised the experience of chairing OP. Of course its not just a question of announcing the agenda item and letting discussion commence. There's also the introduction of that item, with a bit of background.

I thought you were going to say that you'd been told off for spinning on your chair 😳🤦

Apart from having an icebreaker(ugh) the way it is done seems very good. There are plenty of people who are useless at chairing meetings, and at least you are not stuck with them every time.

This!!!

I'm going to suggest it for our team meetings. What a great idea!

OP please come back and update when you have chaired your first meeting. Love to know how you got on.

Also when I suggest it to our SMT, I'll make sure we'll look at ways to make it less "scary".

If you're Chair, you can drop the icebreaker!

Sorry to quote you AGAIN kris

But OP if you're brave enough do this!! EVERYONE will silently thank you!!!