When the Chair Is a Bully: III

Continuing our exploration of the tactics of bully chairs, we now turn to techniques that depend on the chair's abuse of the form of the meeting itself. See "When the Chair Is a Bully: I," Point Lookout for June 20, 2012, for more.

Abusing the executive session

The executive session, either formal or informal, is perhaps the most extreme form of participation control. It is especially tempting when the executive session attendees are trusted allies of the chair. When there are customs or bylaws that specify executive session attendees, the chair's ability to abuse this form is limited to overuse. That is, the chair allocates to executive sessions decisions regarding issues for which executive sessions aren't required. But when there is no definition of the reasons for convening executive sessions, any use at all potentially constitutes abuse.

Excluding members of a team that otherwise meets regularly as a whole should be a rare event. Frequent use might indicate intentional exclusion of disfavored attendees. Logging dates and times of all incidents is useful, but unfortunately it is possible only if the executive sessions themselves aren't secret.

Abusing the one-on-one

Some chairs feel that the "entire meeting is against me." Some distrust nearly all attendees. Others feel powerless to oppose the influence of disfavored attendees. To these bully chairs, the one-on-one provides control. They meet privately with each attendee, so as to eliminate open discussion altogether, and enhance their ability to control — or misrepresent — what the "attendees" can say to each other.

Since open discussion is an effective means of ensuring informed and sound decisions, chairs who adopt the serial one-on-one tactic are placing their organizations at risk. Log the frequency of open meetings and note trends in that frequency.

Limiting what the meeting can discuss or decide

It's typical for chairs to determine what is appropriate for discussion at meetings, or at what meetings particular topics can be discussed. This power is abused by chairs who schedule topics for meetings that disfavored attendees cannot attend, or who sequence agendas so as to schedule certain topics for portions of meetings in which disfavored attendees will be absent. Some chairs schedule topics so that disfavored attendees might be attending by means of a disadvantaged medium, such as telephone or video, when they usually attend in person. Some chairs decide that some topics won't be discussed at all.

Log all Excluding members of a team
that otherwise meets regularly
as a whole should be
a rare eventdecisions that appear to have been taken outside the meeting context, or when disfavored attendees are absent or disadvantaged. This information can be helpful in demonstrating a pattern of abuse.

Chairs are powerful. Bully chairs abuse that power. Proof of abuse requires both an unambiguous demonstration of a pattern of abuse, and an open-minded supervisor who is willing to examine the proof.   First issue in this series   Top    Next Issue

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More articles on Workplace Bullying:

When the Chair Is a Bully: I

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See also Workplace Bullying for more related articles.

Forthcoming issues of Point Lookout

Coming September 3: Contributions in Team Meetings: Advocating

An agenda in the form of an ordered list of topics might not provide an appropriate framework for a given meeting. For example, if A depends on B, and B depends on A, we must find a way to discuss A and B together in some orderly fashion. Here are some alternatives to linear, ordered agendas. Available here and by RSS on September 3.

And on September 10: Contributions in Team Meetings: Scoping

Some meetings focus on solving specific problems. We call them "working sessions." More often, we delegate problem solving to task teams, while meetings wrestle with the difficult task of identifying or "scoping" problems rather than solving them. Scoping discussions can be perilous. Available here and by RSS on September 10.

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