Leader, Facilitator, and Team Builder for the Committee

Committees of the National Academies have distinct characteristics that will be novel for many first-time members. These pose challenges to the chair and staff. The institution's study committees are multi-disciplinary. Members are invited to serve because they possess personal expertise--not because they represent specific institutional or constituency interests. Further, the study process aspires to develop a consensus product. This consensus process must not only modulate diverse viewpoints, but blend diverse expertise to achieve new insights or interpretations of relevant scientific evidence. This requires active participation by all members of the committee. To achieve this goal, the chair must encourage contributions from all committee members and guide the deliberations. In this role, the chair serves both as the leader of the committee and as the skillful facilitator of discussion. At later stages of the process, the chair must also be a team-builder in order to achieve consensus on key issues.

Many members will be new to our committee process. Therefore the chair must model the behavior expected of members. A chair helps to frame the issues and sets the tone for the committee's discussions. At the first meeting, which is vitally important to the entire process, a chair sets expectations about the contributions expected from committee members. A chair who is committed and serious will elicit similar levels of commitment and seriousness from the committee. The responsibility that a chair brings to the analysis of issues and the drafting of a report will determine how the rest of the committee approaches the task. The aim should be an ambitious one: to produce a novel consensus report, one that goes well beyond conventional wisdom and could not have been written by a small subset of the committee members alone.

At the first meeting the chair must guide the committee to agree on a work plan and, if possible, on a report architecture. It also is essential for the committee to decide at the outset who the principal audience for its report will be . But first the chair must ensure that the committee clearly understands why it was constituted, its charge, and what is expected of it by the institution and by the sponsors of the study. This discussion should not be shortchanged. Members will bring to the study personal interests that extend beyond the charge to the committee and may desire to reframe the issues. It is important to invite sponsors to talk with the committee at its first meeting and to spend as much time as necessary ensuring that the focus and boundaries of the charge are well understood. If the committee considers it essential to modify its charge, it can do so only with the formal approval of the institution.

The chair must encourage the expression and constructive discussion of diverse viewpoints. At every meeting, each committee member should feel that he or she has had a full opportunity to express opinions and otherwise contribute to the study process.

The chair, in partnership with the study director, must keep the committee members actively engaged in the study process. Volunteers must always feel that their time is being used productively, which requires careful planning of each meeting agenda and of work assignments between meetings by both the chair and the staff. The first meeting should set the example. All members should be encouraged to draft one or more sections of the report--with the understanding that there is no exclusive ownership of specific issues. First-time committee members may incorrectly assume that they have the same prerogatives as they have when writing a chapter in an edited textbook--where there is deference to the author's language. Thus, while it is important for members to write portions of the report, it is also crucial for them to understand that their writing--and even some of their conclusions--will undergo extensive modification through the committee's deliberative process.

As the study nears completion, the chair should ensure that the entire committee takes full ownership of the report that it has produced and signs off on the report's findings, conclusions, and recommendations. This is much easier if most committee members have contributed text and engaged in the process of reviewing and revising the draft versions of the report. At this stage it is also extremely important the committee understands the nature of the institution's report review process. Committees are sometimes unprepared to justify their work in a rigorous review. Under these circumstances, they may resent the fact that the review may produce demands for significant changes to the findings and recommendations in the report. The chair and study director should remind the committee of this step throughout the deliberative process--particularly if the committee begins to endorse findings and recommendations that are not based strongly on evidence.

Committees have a diverse composition--this both adds to its strength and complicates the process of reaching consensus. The chair therefore must always be concerned with the committee's progress toward consensus. A complicating factor is that standards of evidence can be quite varied among different professional disciplines, making the process of determining when a finding has an acceptable evidence base contentious. Fairness and flexibility are required to move beyond initial differences that sometimes can be considerable, to achieving a group consensus that goes well beyond the obvious, and yet move the issues forward. However, when consensus is not possible or if reaching consensus would skew an important majority position of the committee, it is better to expose the lack of consensus than to obscure it completely through compromise.