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How does your committee function? What does the chairman see his role to be? If you map out the relationships, and consider how decisions are made, what will you see?

Eastern cultures lean towards the concept of the "benevolent dictator". In this model the chairman functions much like the king of the committee. He decides what will happen, and what will not. He decides who will do what. And other people in the committee merely function to support or obey the direction of the chairman.

In this diagram, notice how prominent the chairperson is, and how there are strong lines between him and the other members of the committee. However, those other members are much smaller, and the lines between them and the others are weaker. Yes, there are lots of people on the committee – but in reality, the only thing that matters is the will of the chairman.

However, note that this works both ways. Not only does the chairman expect this from the committee, the committee members generally expect to be led by the chairman. And so sometimes if something happens to make the chairman ineffective (eg. a crisis in his personal life, or if he gets too busy), the committee simply doesn’t do anything – because they are waiting for direction from the
chairman.

Sometimes however it is not just the chairman, but a small group of two, or maybe three people that essentially form a committee-within-a-committee.

In the diagram notice the two prominent members – and the strong link between the two of them. Together, they maintain relationships within the rest of the committee, who are much less prominent. And the relationship between the other committee members again is not as strong.

In practice, what really matters is what goes on between those two committee members. What really counts is the opinion and endorsement of those two special committee members, because they decide what will actually happen. The others might be given some selected information, or asked to approve a decision – but generally information is held back from them, generally they are not allowed to participate in the actual decision making process. There might be the opportunity for their opinions to be heard – but it don’t actually make a difference.

In more Western cultures, committees tend to function with the chairman being the facilitator of the committee. He sees his role as allowing others to say what they want to say, working out the intention and plan of the group, and basically serving the group. What tends to be prominent here is the group, not the chairman. Here you could have a chairman with no plan of his own of what he wants to do, yet the committee can still function well – because he is able to get out of the people what they think should happen.

Now these kinds of committees aren’t perfect. They have the danger of being hijacked by a group of vocal members, or of factions forming within the committee. This is why Western committees vote.

An Eastern committee chairman would never allow
such disharmony and traitorous disunity within their committees! And in
fact overly vocal committee members would be seen as a problem. And voting is unnecessary, because he has already spoken to the committee members individually before the meeting, and has already gotten consensus.

Both Eastern and Western models can work – although both have their own weaknesses. However you can see that in cross cultural situations, where more Eastern people are in the same committee as more Western people, there can be massive differences in the expectation of how the committee should function, how decisions are made, and how chairmen and members should behave!

Carefully analyse how relationships work in the committees you are in – whether at work, at school or in the community. Is there a difference between what is on paper, and what is reality? How does the chairman see himself in relation to others, and how do others see him? What happens when there is a difference of opinion to the chairman – is it tolerated, expected, even encouraged? Do people have the same voice at the table, or do some voices have more sway than others?

As you do that analysis you may discover that one cause of much frustration and tension in your committee are differences in expectations of how that committee would function! But many ABCs may also be surprised to discover how Eastern they actually tend to be when they work in committees… for all their Westernness, ABCs often tend to create committees around strong chairmen!

[ PS: how do we reflect theologically on how committees are run? ]