Meeting Rules

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Everyone who has sat in a meeting knows the ways time gets wasted. Through trial and error TeamTrainers has developed a set of rules for effective meetings proven to prevent those behaviors and create results. Not all will apply to all meetings, but here are some critical ones that work in most:

  • Silence equals consensus—If you do not speak up during the meeting, the group can assume you support the decision. To accommodate introverts, tell the group anyone may ask for time to think about a decision before final approval. If someone does, postpone approval to later in the meeting, or to the next meeting if possible.
  • No side conversations—The facilitator will politely interrupt any conversations not involving the whole group, no matter how short, to prevent distractions and ensure full participation.
  • No phone calls, e-mailing, texting, or instant messaging—Other attendees deserve your full attention and energy, and good decision-making requires it.
  • One subject at a time:
    • Do not jump ahead on the agenda.
    • If a new subject comes up, write it down for later in the meeting, and at that time discuss how and when to address it.
    • If the new item is urgent, complete the immediate topic first, and decide as a team what priority the new one should have relative to remaining topics. The lowest priority item may need to be postponed to a later meeting.
  • No backtracking—Once a decision is made, do not let someone go back to it unless there is a compelling reason such as a new fact.
  • No decision without an action—Every decision must result in an action item.

Have someone facilitate who is willing to politely but firmly enforce the rules. That "someone" might not be the team's manager. To add power to the rules, get everyone to openly agree to follow them as shown below. For team meeting rules, do all of the following steps, and for other meetings, at least do steps 1 and 2:

  1. Ask if all attendees can agree to follow the rules above.
  2. If there are major objections, negotiate a change that will make the rule acceptable.
  3. Ask if there are other time-wasting behaviors attendees would like to prevent.
  4. If so, create a rule for each.
  5. For every rule, negotiate steps everyone agrees the facilitator can take to enforce the rule.

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