The spineless Chair likes to please people and hesitates to do anything that might offend anyone. He remains silent when vocal members dominate and others are left behind, together with their knowledge and ideas. He tolerates digressions, rambling, and nasty personal attacks on Board members and staff. When members make motions that are ill advised or out of order, he just states the motions and invites debate on them.
Potential Damage
This Chair’s overriding goal of pleasing people and avoiding hurt feelings and his reluctance to address unacceptable behaviours may damage the decision-making process. Unless Board members compensate for the Chair’s weakness and speak up when problems occur, nothing gets done and frustration rises. With no sense of order in meetings, quiet members may not be able to speak up, thereby depriving the Board of their knowledge. Meetings run late and are unproductive. Effective Board members may find excuses to miss meetings and may eventually resign from the Board.
If the Chair allows motions that are ill advised or out of order, the Board could make flawed decisions or ones that contravene the legislation, bylaws, or policies and could therefore be deemed to be invalid.
Intervention
Train your Chair to establish order, direction, and equal involvement at meetings. Teach him to deal with digressions, domination, verbal abuse, and other dysfunctions during meetings. Coach him to say no graciously but firmly, for the sake of a strong decision-making process.
Until the spineless Chair is trained to perform his duties effectively, Board members should not continue to suffer. Rather, they must act as co-owners of the process and speak up when the Chair does not address a damaging problem. They should not expect leadership to come solely from the Chair.
