Meeting Roles

On a baseball team, all the players know their position and the positions and responsibilities of all the other players. The most effective meetings are like a winning athletic team in this respect.

Engaged Participant

What group members know and do is critically important to group effectiveness.

In strong groups, engaged participants monitor their personal adherence to meeting standards. They notice and set aside comments they are about to make if they comment would violate the "one topic at a time" standard. They also monitor the group's adherence to standards with naive questions. Engaged participants use the seven norms of collaboration, seek and provide data, clarify decision-making processes and levels of authority, and perform gatekeeping functions for others.

Monitoring topics and process focus. Participants assume responsibility for clarity about processes and for seeing that meeting standards are met. For example, we sometimes hear a participant in first word last word strategy say, "Ooops. No comments when another person has floor." They speak up when it seems more than one topic is on the table at the time ("What topic are we on now?...or..."Have we finished with topic X"?...or..."I'm no longer sure which topic we are on."

Facilitator

A facilitator is a third party to a conversation and is responsible for process. As a director of process, the facilitator knows what kind of structures and strategies will be useful in helping the group do its work. When the facilitator asks the group to use certain procedures or intervenes with counterproductive behavior, it is on the basis of this process knowledge. A facilitator must be a person who is acceptable to all members of the group, who is substantively neutral, and who has no decision-making authority.

Recorder

As groups tire, auditory acuity is the first modality to fade. Because many meetings are long and so members begin to tire, or they are at the end of the school day and so members are already tired, public recording is critically important for the group's short-term memory. The later in the day the meeting or the more fatigued the participants, the more public recording is necessary. At the best of times, humans can manage seven items of information (plus or minus two) in their working memories. Public recording keeps key data in front of a group.

Recorders, like facilitators, occupy a position of purposeful neutrality. Their function is to support the group by maintaining a clear visual representation of important ideas and data and to support the facilitator in managing processes as effectively and efficiently as possible. The recorder and facilitator also serve as behind-the-scenes custodians, arranging displays, clearing out unnecessary data, and arranging the room for special activities.

Because you want the facilitator to direct the focus of the group, it is advisable that recorders look at the charts on which they are working, or at the facilitator, instead of at the group. Because members' eyes go in the direction of the leader's eyes, recorders looking at the group split the visual - and cognitive - focus of the group.

Role or Knowledge Authority

Leaders lead. Principals lead through modeling, and developing leadership in others is a critical attribute of improving schools. In the past, the principal has been expected to lead meetings, but this is changing. "Because of their positional authority and control over school resources, principals are in a strategic position to promote or inhibit the development of a teacher learning community in their school" (McLaughlin & Talbert, 2006).

By what name can we designate the leader of a group that does not run the meeting? The most descriptive term we've found so far is role authority or knowledge authority. The role authority might be the principal in a staff meeting or the superintendent in a district office meeting. The knowledge authority might be the literacy coach, at a task force dealing with the reading program or the science consultant in a committee addressing a science curriculum.

Problems exist when knowledge or role authority persons facilitate their own group. First, because this leader has to balance attention between process and content, there is less time for the leader's interaction with the content. Second, and perhaps more important, it is extremely rare what a leader can maintain the neutrality required of the facilitation process and still give content information to the group. For this reason, leaders become more influential and the group matures and makes better decisions when a person other than the role or knowledge authority facilitates the meeting.

In many ways, the role or knowledge authority functions like an engaged participant in the meeting, but he or she is also available to inform the group about constraints, resources, and values related to the topic. Like other group members, the role or knowledge authority can advocate one's own ideas as well as inquire about the ideas of others. The primary caution is to remember that until groups have attained a high state of interdependence, actions in the role will speak louder than words.

Specific Roles for Virtual Professional Learning Teams (VPLTs)

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