Keys to Effective Meeting Facilitation Part 1: Ground Rules
According to the Harvard Business Review, executives now spend nearly 23 hours a week in meetings — up from fewer than 10 hours in the 1960s. Yet research from UNC Charlotte’s Dr. Steven Rogelberg and Otter.aifound that about a third of those meetings are unnecessary, costing companies roughly $25,000 per employee per year.
What can you do as a leader to keep your meetings from becoming one of those statistics? The most important thing you can do as a meeting facilitator is to show your team that you value them. In this guest series for Livable Buckhead, I’ll share tips to help you do just that. Today’s topic: ground rules. I am talking about ground rules in the context of a project team.
Ground rules are shared guidelines a team agrees on for how members conduct themselves. I have found over the years that they make for more productive meetings and that they build more cohesive teams. There are two ways to set ground rules:
- Decide together as a team. Spend 5–10 minutes at the start of the meeting setting rules together. This is best for people / teams that have not worked together before.
- Proposed by facilitator. The facilitator brings a starter list with 4-5 ground rules on it, walks the team through it, and asks for feedback. I find that this works best with established teams that are used to working with each other already.
Here are the five ground rules I use most often:
- Start and End on Time. Starting on time isn’t always in your control, but ending on time always is. Sticking to it builds trust and rapport with your team.
- Everyone Contributes. Being put on the spot breeds anxiety. Everyone in the meeting was invited for a reason. By naming this ground rule up front, it makes your job as a facilitator easier. It signals you’ll draw out quiet voices and won’t let anyone dominate.
- One Conversation at a Time. Side conversations are distracting and disrespectful, and often contain something the whole group needs to hear. Naming this rule gives you permission to redirect sidebars, ideally with escalating, respectful language, such as “Andy has the floor — we’ll come to you next.”
- No Screens (or A Rule About Electronics). It’s important to know your audience here. Tailor this ground rule to the room and the situation:
- When meeting in person, the ideal ground rule is “No screens – phones silenced and laptops closed”. However, there may be people in roles that require them to always be available to others, like physicians and emergency response personnel. Or someone may be dealing with an urgent matter. In these cases, “Step out of the room to take calls” is a good ground rule.
- For virtual meetings, “Cameras on” is best. It doesn’t eliminate all opportunities for distraction, but it minimizes them.
- Vegas Rules — What’s Said in Here Stays in Here. This rule protects psychological safety, especially across authority levels. If something comes up that someone wants to share outside of the meeting, seek unanimous consent from the team before allowing it to be shared.
Not every meeting needs ground rules. An isolated 30-minute check-in probably doesn’t. But every team needs norms, and it’s worth setting ground rules together at least once, then posting them somewhere visible for reference. Once you explain and post them, the whole team helps enforce them. It’s not all on you as the facilitator.
Have ground rules that work well in your organization? I’d love to hear about them.
Thank you to Livable Buckhead for this opportunity — next month, I’ll share more facilitation tools to help with your team meetings.
Michelle Adzhemyan is the Founder and Principal of Second Season, a consulting firm specializing in meeting facilitation, business process improvement, customer insights, and professional coaching. If you have questions for Michelle or want to bring her in to work with your organization, please email michelle@yoursecondseason.com.
