Part: chairing meetings Business Benchmark helps students get ahead fast with their Business English vocabulary and skills and gives them grammar practice in business contexts. It also helps students prepare for an internationally recognised Cambridge ESOL Business English exam, using real exam papers from Cambridge ESOL. Teachers can choose from the BEC edition or the BULATS edition at the right level for their students. | Chairing meetings Getting started Discuss these questions in small groups. What is the function of the chair or chairperson at a meeting What personal qualities should a good chair have What things should a chair do to make sure a meeting achieves its aims Does every meeting need a chair Chairing a meeting means ensuring that a meeting 1 its aims. The meeting should have been 2 .for a specific purpose and all discussion at the meeting must be conducted to this end. These are some of the skills required A chairman should ensure that all participants have an opportunity to express their point of view. Advice for chairs Assertiveness Reading You will read some advice for people chairing meetings. The advice comes under four headings impartiality assertiveness staying on course and summarising. 1 Before you read discuss in small groups what advice would you give about these four aspects of being a chair 2 Read this advice for chairing meetings ignore the gaps for the moment . Was the advice the same as yours or different Ensuring that everyone gets a n almost certainly involve stopping someone from dominating the more issue the more likely you are to require firmness although phrases such as I think we should hear from Ms. Smith on this or Can we have some comments from the engineering department on this should be sufficient in most cases. Once you provide this opening however you need to ensure that there are no interruptions while the next speaker has their 6. Staying on course A chair must importance of each item on the agenda and to each topic as required. If one issue begins to dominate the chair must take control. You might further meeting to discuss the issue at a later date or that the main parties concerned could continue the discussion at the end of the meeting. Summarising Summarising can be used at the end of a meeting to ensure that everyone has a clear what took place or what action is now required. It is a skill
