The Role of the Chair

How to be a more effective state or local Chair

The Chair needs organizational and administrative skills, diplomacy, sales ability, people skills -- while understanding what Libertarianism is all about. The Chair needs patience, self control, and an ego capable of dealing with criticism and abuse without resentment.

Beyond this, the Chair needs to have good judgment and be an effective listener. It takes creativity to deal with grossly inadequate finances and far too few effective volunteers. The Chair should get as much help as possible.

This combination of traits is rare.

It is easy to get frustrated. Inevitably, the Chair discovers the job has far more responsibility than authority. The Chair's real "power" comes from the personal respect he/she receives from the members and the Board or Committee. This respect must be earned.

One key role of the Chair is to resolve conflict and find ways to get people to work together effectively. In many cases, this means mediating disputes. In other cases, it means finding ways to work with the Chair's critics to find reasonable solutions. In all cases, it means staying calm and making sure people focus on the issues and not on personality clashes.

The Chair has the responsibility to make the first move when a problem comes up, and be willing to admit he/she may be wrong.

The Chair must be thoughtful and avoid acting rashly. Proposals should be well thought out prior to presentation and implementation. This mean talking ideas over with as many people as possible and listening to what they have to say. It means being flexible enough to change the plan when good suggestions are made.

The Chair should encourage participation and seek the input of others before decisions are made. People work harder for proposals they helped to develop.

The Chair needs to understand the "business" of running the organization. This includes fund-raising, budgets and finance, database management, inquiry processing, newsletter publishing, etc. These "details" can destroy the organization if they are not handled correctly. And beyond all of this, the Chair must understand libertarians.

TIPS ON BEING A BETTER STATE/LOCAL CHAIR

• Like most people, Libertarians want courtesy and respect.
• Libertarians want to know "why" something has to be done.
• Libertarians resist "taking orders" and always respond better to being asked to do something than being ordered to do something.
• Libertarians are very independent and may require being "sold" on the worth of the activity. Libertarians need to feel that their efforts are appreciated and their ideas valued.
• Libertarians respond better to encouragement and recognition than to criticism and "guilt trips."
• Since there is no patronage and little money, success will come only from the energy and creativity of the volunteers. The Chair's role is to find ways to make it easier for people to be more effective. This means finding ways to make activism fun and rewarding.
• The job of Chair is not suited to "prima donnas." The effective Chair does not seek recognition, but instead seeks to recognize the accomplishments of others. The Chair will accept the blame for failures, even those of others. Loyalty starts from the top.
• No one is perfect, so it makes sense to make effective use of many different kinds of people. The Chair needs to know his/her strengths and weaknesses, and recruit people with complementary skills.
• Finally, the Chair needs a sense of humor. Without it, the job will drive him/her crazy.

Few people are ideally suited to being Chair, but most people can be effective if they understand what needs to be done and what being Chair means.

[By George O'Brien]