Delegates talk to each other. If two chairs give different answers to the same question, the house stops trusting both answers and starts shopping for the one it likes.
Agreeing an approach in advance is most of the work of chairing as a team.
Who runs the floor first, and when you swap.
Who reads amendments and decides which are debated.
Whether you will allow follow-up points of information, and in what circumstances.
How long you will give for reading time and for debate on a resolution.
What you say to a delegate who uses the wrong words for a point.
What you do when a delegate speaks over the chair.
Write the answers down. In the middle of a session, under pressure, nobody remembers what was agreed in a corridor months earlier.
If you are unsure whether something needs agreeing. If a delegate could ask two different chairs and get two different answers, agree it now.
The chair with the floor rules. That ruling stands for the moment, even if you think it is wrong.
Tell your co-chair quietly. Pass a note. Wait for the break. If the ruling was wrong and it matters, your co-chair corrects it themselves with "the chair stands corrected".
If your co-chair rules wrongly before a vote. Ask them to pause. Take thirty seconds together away from the microphone. Come back and let the chair on the floor give the corrected ruling. Do not take the floor from them.
Agree one quiet signal that means "stop and check with me". A hand on the table. A note pushed across. Anything the house will not read as disagreement.
The chair on the floor must be willing to use it. They must also be willing to tell the house that the chair will confirm something in a moment. Waiting ten seconds is always better than a wrong ruling.
When you swap, hand over more than the microphone.
Where you are. Which resolution, which clause, whether debate is open or closed.
How much debate time is left, and how much of it is time in favour and time against.
What has already been ruled today, and anything you promised the house you would come back to.
Which delegates have not yet spoken.
A resolution should be chaired from start to finish by the same person. Swap between items, not inside them. See The chairing team.
A chair on the floor cannot read messages, watch the clock, judge amendments and count placards at the same time. That is why there is more than one of you.
If you are not on the floor, you are working. Track who has spoken. Read the amendments as they arrive. Watch the room for the delegate who has had their placard up for five minutes and keeps being missed.
In MEDIMUN, everything the chairs share stays in MediBook. Documents are not sent by any other route. See Chair document handling.
In MEDIMUN, chairs communicate with each other in the committee chat in MediBook rather than through personal accounts. See Chair contact with delegates for the rules on contacting delegates.
Sometimes a chairing team does not click. One chair does more than their share. One chair contradicts the others. One chair disappears at every break.
Say it once, privately, plainly and early. If nothing changes, tell the secretariat. That is not telling on someone. A committee with an uneven chairing team is a committee that runs badly for every delegate in the room.
If you are unsure whether to escalate. If it has happened twice and you have already raised it once, escalate.