15.1 The art of chairing

The aim is to get everyone involved in a really effective discussion, aiding the speaker and all participants at public lectures or academic seminars. ‘Effective’ in this context means a debate that is both critical and supportive. Any criticisms, of course, should be directed at the contents of the lecture or seminar paper, not the speaker. As has been already noted, players should sportingly kick the ball, not the opponent. Or the same point can be made another way, for those who don’t like or understand sporting metaphors. Viewpoints and ideas can be robustly challenged without demeaning fellow debaters. An idea is not shown to be right or wrong simply by reference to the person who expresses it. The arguments, not the argumentative individuals, are under scrutiny. And the chair, like a sporting referee or umpire, should facilitate fair play.

Fine: all that sounds tolerably easy. In fact, however, chairing is a considerable art that can, furthermore, be learned.¹ One good method when attending seminars and lectures is to analyse the various chairing styles. Which work? Which don’t? Does the chair keep things running to time? Play fair by all parties, protecting both the speaker and the questioners from over-the-top accusations? The ideal is to facilitate stimulating debates which involve and energize everyone in attendance. Watching and learning from chairing styles is a good way of keeping amused and interested throughout a lecture or seminar, whether the event is a success or otherwise.

At the same time, the acoustics and room layout, sometimes known as ‘room dynamics’, can either ease or complicate the chair’s task.² For a formal lecture it’s okay to have people seated in straight lines; but for an academic seminar, it’s best to place chairs around a table, or, if that is not possible, then at least to arrange the seating into semi-circles, focusing upon the central speaker, rather than rigid lines. These details have a subliminal effect. So it’s helpful if the chair can check the venue in advance – even five minutes in advance, if no more – to ensure an environment conducive to collective debate.

15.2 Opening the proceedings

Opening the proceedings calls for an open and genial manner, with a joke, or failing that, at least a humorous tone. Then the speaker can be introduced pithily, without notes. There’s no need for a lengthy recitation of everything that he or she has ever done. That tactic just makes audiences bored and drowsy. And it’s seriously unhelpful to announce in advance the key points that the speaker will be making. That manoeuvre falls doubly flat. It annoys and disconcerts the speaker, while it makes audiences bored and restive, wondering why they have to sit through something that they have already been told.

Instead, the chair’s task is to bond the meeting together. A constructive but unobtrusive way of doing that is to look, visibly and fairly slowly, all around the room. As already noted, a ‘lighthouse beam’ brings everyone together within an encompassing gaze. (See section 13.3 for the same advice to speakers.) It’s disastrous to stare intently at individuals. But a light rotating gaze indicates that the chair’s attention is directed to all quarters of the room. Throughout the presentation, whether good, bad or indifferent, the chair’s task is also to look alert and interested. Such an attitude encourages everyone. And it’s helpful to follow things closely, since upon occasions the speaker will suddenly appeal to the chair (perhaps to ask how much time is left). Actually, the need to concentrate is one good reason for agreeing to chair. It keeps one wide awake.

Ideally, speakers should have been briefed beforehand about the length of talk required. However, the chair should always confirm/reconfirm that information at the start, and then gently halt speakers who go on for too long. On a formal platform, it may be necessary to pass a pre-printed card saying TIME! to the speaker. But if people are sitting close together and able to detect body language, then an informal hand signal and a meaningful look will usually suffice. There’s always some leeway, but if the speaker is part of a panel then strict time-keeping is essential to be fair to all contributors. In other circumstances, however, it’s the chair’s judgement call.

15.3 Chairing the questions

While the speaker is talking, it’s helpful for the chair to make a mental (or scribbled) list of a number of key questions raised by the presentation. An attentive seminar or lecture audience will usually spot all or most of the points for discussion. But shrewd anticipation makes the chair’s task easier. Immediately after the presentation has ended, it’s essential to make some suitable preliminary response while people gather their thoughts. It’s always bad news when the chair just says abruptly: ‘Any questions?’ And even worse when there’s a great silence and the chair adds dolefully: ‘Well, I can see it’s going to be a difficult session’. Lead balloons all round.

Instead, the chair should briefly thank the speaker (nothing over the top) and note some issues raised by the paper (that’s helpful for non-experts in the audience). Then it’s best for the chair to ask an opening question, to get the discussion going. It should not be too heavy, but not a patsy either. As the speaker starts to answer, the chair then looks intently round the room, seeking signals from people who wish to ask a question. This technique is the really crucial bit. If at all possible, the chair should sit up, or semi-stand, leaning against a chair or table, to free the sightlines. Then the lighthouse beam can skim lightly round the room. Preferably with a smile. People usually give imperceptible signals – a nod or lift of the hand, rather like the sly nods and winks from buyers at an auction. Chairs therefore have to be very vigilant. They are trying to foster a sense of community – and newcomers in particular can feel distinctly rebuffed if their overly cautious signs go unnoticed. If in doubt, therefore, chairs should not hesitate to ask individuals if a passing gesture was actually a request to speak.

Usually, the questions are taken in the order that they come. It’s not unusual for the first moments of a discussion to be rather quiet. But momentum soon develops as the shape of the debate begins to emerge. The chair always has some leeway. If there’s a long list of keen people, it can be helpful to change the sequence to ensure that questions come from all different parts of the room. That practice draws everyone into the discussion. But it’s important not to leave anyone out. Overlooking would-be questioners generates bad feelings and accusations of bias. Allowing experienced figures to dominate the discussion is equally unhelpful. If time is running seriously short, the chair should advise the room of that fact, and urge the remaining questioners to be very brief.

Sometimes, either the questions or the speaker’s answers become too lengthy and risk turning into an alternative lecture. In those circumstances, the audience will be grateful for the chair to intervene. Often a hand signal can be used to break the flow, followed by a gentle reminder that time is running short. As already noted, it’s rare (in academic life) that questions are formulated or asked rudely. If it should happen, however, the chair should intervene, extracting the element within the question that can be answered and telling the speaker to ignore the rest. Or, if the question is completely out of order, the chair should simply say so.

Even more rarely, one or more individuals in the audience can go into a rant about some topical or emotional issue of the day. It’s again the task of the chair to intervene politely but firmly to halt the disruption. Often, the mood of the meeting will additionally make itself clear – usually on the side of the chair and against interruption. In the most extreme cases – which are very rare in the academic world – the chair should ask the disrupters to leave; and if order cannot be restored, then the chair should close the meeting, with apologies and a promise to reconvene. Such scenarios are highly unusual, but they do occur from time to time, usually when contentious topics are being discussed by contentious speakers. Hence it’s always worth being prepared.

More mundane difficulties can also occur if questions are poorly phrased or incomprehensible. The speaker is entitled to look to the chair for help. In such circumstances, the question should be paraphrased into something answerable. Very rarely, there are interventions which remain impenetrable. In such cases, either the chair or the speaker may invite the questioner to make the point in full afterwards, either in person or in writing.

Discreetly, then, the chair is conducting the debate, and should have a range of issues to raise if the questioning flags. Difficult questions (see section 14.2) can be used especially against the good and the great, who shouldn’t be let off too easily. First-timers, however, should not be given too hard a time – enough to test them, but not to destroy their confidence. If they are seriously floundering, then some supportive words from the chair will be appropriate. The seminar is intended as a high-powered exchange of views, not a blood-sport.

15.4 Sustaining camaraderie

These days, the preferred style of a public lecture or seminar is one of academic camaraderie. And most groups are delighted to engage accordingly. In the very old days, it was often the practice for questions to be asked by the academics in order of seniority of appointment. The most venerable professor would open the proceedings and the rest duly await their turn. But such hierarchic formality has generally disappeared, though there are still variations in questioning styles between different academic cultures, according to long-standing traditions.

Setting a more contemporary tone is the task of the chair, who should try to strike a genial balance. The aim is to be friendly, but not overly fulsome. A gushing style just sounds sycophantic. At the same time, the chair must be critical but not too sardonic. He or she should not try to steal the limelight, which properly belongs to the speaker. So the chair may try to be smart but should not become too sharp or polemical.

All members of the participating audience – and their questions – should be equally welcomed. It’s best to avoid calling people to speak by their academic titles and/or names or, even worse, by familiar nicknames. Such in-references make any group seem far too cliquey. Newcomers feel alienated, as they subliminally receive the message that only those known to the chair are really welcome. Calling questioners to speak can therefore be done by a mixture of looks, gestures and reference to room location: ‘Now a question from the back’, and so forth. (These conventions, however, are being updated for the world of video-conferencing. In that case, questions can be submitted in writing, allowing the chair to group and call them thematically.)

Having been given the floor, it’s customary for questioners to give their names briefly. Most do so, although some mumble pretty unintelligibly. But it’s not worth the chair intervening to insist on absolute clarity, since that halts the flow. It’s good practice in regular seminars, by the way, to invite all participants to identify themselves at the start of each academic cycle. In one-off meetings, that procedure is not always practical. Yet the principle remains clear in all circumstances that questioners should be ready to share their identities as part of a shared intellectual community.

Developing a sense of camaraderie is a process to which all seminar participants contribute. Only very rarely do audiences remain unhappy or restive. But in all cases it falls to the chair to give a significant lead, by fostering an atmosphere of friendly inclusivity. It’s particularly important to welcome occasional attendees as well as regulars. There is often a considerable turnover of people from one session to the next. Unless newcomers are made welcome, attendances will fall, draining the events of intellectual renewal and energy. One pleasant way to include everyone is to organize some informal sociability either before or after these academic sessions. And if that is done, it’s helpful for the chair, as host, to ensure unobtrusively that no-one is left standing miserably on the margins, without talking to anyone. Getting people to chat together in informal sessions helps to prepare the ground for high-powered but courteous discussion in the formal sessions. Indeed, as already noted, the best antidote to any potential feelings of intellectual isolation is research camaraderie.

15.5 Summary: an art that conceals art

After a lecture or seminar, it’s the paper or lecture that rightly gets remembered – and then, perhaps, the discussion. Big, complex issues are anyway not resolved easily. They often take many debates; plus more research; and then more debates.

Yet the art of constructive chairing makes a major contribution to scholarship, which relies upon reasoned debate. As researchers hope for their own presentations to be intelligently discussed, so when chairing they should do for others what they would like done for themselves.

Orchestrating a research debate is a task done in plain sight, but unobtrusively. At its best, therefore, it is an art that conceals art to produce gold-dust.

15.6 Coda: a historic example of great chairing in response to an unexpected heckle (personal testimony from PJC)

Once, unintentionally, I heckled the speakers at an academic conference. It was in the early 1970s, and my spontaneous outcry generated such a great response from the chair that it deserves to go onto the historical record. Two hundred or more academics were crowded within the University of London’s large Beveridge Hall, where two eminent historians, the established figure of Hugh Trevor-Roper³ and the younger up-and-coming Keith Thomas,⁴ had been invited for a special public debate. They had already jousted fiercely in print about seventeenth-century witchcraft, and this event was organized by the History Board of Studies of University of London so that the arguments could continue in public. It was a mark of how seriously the debates were being taken – and the packed hall paid testimony to the great scholarly interest. Yet face-to-face, as often happens among academics (not so much among politicians), the antagonists were very polite to each other and didn’t really engage with their differences. The occasion as a whole proved to be a damp squib.

There was, however, one moment of excitement. One of the speakers referred rather contemptuously to the characteristic victims of witchcraft accusations as ‘useless old women’. Without having intended to do so, I immediately cried out, firmly and clearly, ‘Shame!’ Everyone sitting around me recoiled. The speakers said nothing. After a moment of deep silence, however, the meeting’s chair, the historian Joel Hurstfield,⁵ responded with immense aplomb, by saying: ‘Madam, contain your just indignation!’

Brilliant! His old-fashioned courtesy effectively rebuked my uncouthness. Yet he upheld my complaint, accepting that the tone of the debate had been too dismissive of the women accused of witchcraft. Immediately, the people sitting around me smiled with relief and reversed their physical recoil. This intervention on my part produced a short flare of excitement, after which the fairly halting discussion was resumed. It is unlikely that anyone else recalls either the event or this exchange. Nonetheless, this tactic of affirmation-plus-rebuke should rank very high on the list of effective ways of coping with hecklers. A tip for chairs to remember, should meetings ever get rowdy.⁶

1. 1  See C. O’Connor, The View from the Chair: the Art of Chairing Meetings (Ballivor, Co. Meath, 1994), and many websites with online advice. The classic handbook on the 20th-century Labour movement was W. Citrine’s ABC of Chairmanship (London, 1939; frequently reprinted, most recently by the Fabian Society in 2016).

2. 2  D. Kantor, Reading the Room: Group Dynamics for Coaches and Leaders (San Francisco, Calif., 2012).

3. 3  H. R. Trevor-Roper, historian and polemicist, was author of, inter alia, Archbishop Laud, 1573–1645 (London, 1940); The Last Days of Hitler (London, 1947); The European Witch-Craze of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries and Other Essays (London, 1969); and The Invention of Scotland: Myth and History, ed. J. J. Carter (London, 2008). For critical appreciations, see A. Sisman, Hugh Trevor-Roper: the Biography (London, 2010); B. Worden (ed.), Hugh Trevor-Roper: the Historian (London, 2016).

4. 4  For his social-anthropological approach, sustained throughout his oeuvre, see K. Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic; Man and the Natural World; The Ends of Life; and In Pursuit of Civility.

5. 5  The Tudor specialist J. Hurstfield wrote on 16th-century England, including notably Freedom, Corruption and Government in Elizabethan England (London, 1973).

6. 6  In case of need, see also K. Fields, How to Handle Hecklers: the Complete Guide to Handling Every Performer’s Worst Nightmare (London, 2006, 2013): <https://www.howtohandlehecklers.com> [accessed 30 April 2021].