Designing Effective Meeting Agreements
Teams need to create their own agreements and in doing so, they create the environment for meeting.
Picture you’re in your living room with five friends playing Scattergories. There are rules of the game that everyone is following—having to use the correct letter, collecting points for only the unique words that you come up with. We follow the rules because the game can’t be played without them.
Just like in a game, in meetings, there are rules, or what we like to call agreements. Meeting agreements are (1) ground rules for adhering to preferred meeting etiquette and (2) a support system for keeping conflict constructive, not destructive.
So what’s the difference between etiquette and agreements. In her book The Art of Gathering, Priya Parker talks about how the concept of etiquette in gatherings is like having unspoken rules established by a privileged few that we all somehow still blindly follow. For example, no one ever made an explicit rule that emotions shouldn’t be expressed in the workplace, and yet, the work environment is still one of the hardest places to be our full selves.
Parker talks about how rules are what create the environment for the meeting. But these aren’t the same for all teams and they may even not be the same for all the meetings. Teams need to create their own agreements and in doing so, they create the environment for meeting.
Take our Meeting Agreements Matching resource to help you select agreements that align to the needs of the group.
Identifying Meeting Agreements
A meeting agreement can be a ground rule, metaphor, or principle that will help a group understand the expectations of behavior during a meeting. To pick the best meeting agreement for your team, start by identifying the challenges the group tends to face when working on a project or having a discussion.
Some of the most common are:
Accountability
Acknowledging different perspectives
Actively participating
Arguing sides
Blaming each other
Communication
Dealing with change
Decision-making
Empathy
Getting too in the weeds
Group think
Inappropriate comments
Interrupting/talking over each other
Listening
Reactive behavior
Taking risks
Thinking outside of the box
Create a Meeting Agreement Library
Facilitators collect Meeting Agreements like a geologist collects rocks. We recommend creating a list of your favorite agreements to quickly choose from as you plan your meeting.
Here are a few of our favorites…
We are “they.” No one else will make this happen. There is no “they.” It’s up to the people in this room. Credit to Sarah Dewitt.
Lighthouse. We may be in different boats, but we’re all aiming for the same lighthouse. Focus on our shared goal and acknowledge unique perspectives.
Set Your Intention. Set an intention for how you want to show up and write it down. What is one thing you can do to support the conversation
Seek to Understand. Seek to understand before being understood.
Assume Positive Intent. Look for ways for people to be right, not wrong. How would you react if you know they mean well?
Inquiry Over Advocacy. We are programmed for answers, but communication requires curiosity. Try questions instead of or alongside your comments.
What if > What is? Anxiety sounds like a “what if.” By focusing on “what is” instead, we can reduce worry and focus on possibilities. Credit: The Worry Trick by David Carbonell.
Circle of Control. What’s inside our circle that we can control or influence? What’s outside? Let’s focus on what we can do. but communication requires curiosity. Try questions instead of or with your comments.
Oops Ouch. Say “ouch” if someone says something that hurts. Say “oops” and genuinely apologize for the ways your intention did not match your impact. Credit to Annaliese Griffin [https://forge.medium.com/three-words-you-need-for-your-next-hard-conversation-a3e2090d043d]
“GEPO.” Good enough, press on.
Below the Line.This can be used as a reaction and warning to other participants when comments are considered inappropriate.
W.A.I.T. Why am I talking?
Take a Breath First. Our breath deactivates our “fight or flight” reflex, allowing us to respond more clearly.
This is a Lab. Think of this as a lab; don’t be afraid to experiment and fail.
Osborn’s Rules of Brainstorming:
Suspend Judgment
Be freewheeling
Go for quantity
Build on others’ ideas
Creating Team Meeting Agreements
Duration: 30-90 Minutes
Number of Participants: 10 or fewer (if you have a larger team, use breakouts of subteams)
In Person Meeting Materials:
Flipchart
Sticky notes
Flipchart markers
Voting dots
Online Meeting Materials:
Shared workspace, such as MURAL or Google Docs
Instructions:
Introduce the idea of meeting agreements:
Script: Meeting agreements are ground rules that we as a team agree will help us reach out goals. Think of them like rules of the game; they help create the unique environment we need to do our best work.
Invite a few minutes of silent brainstorming to think about patterns of meeting behavior that we see a lot and jot down a few notes. For example:
Not starting on time
Not being prepared
Getting off track/losing focus or not having a focus/agenda
Interrupting
Same people talk all the time
Little or no follow-through on actions
Invite team members to share what they wrote down.
TIP: When one person introduces a pattern, ask, “Who else wrote down something similar?”
Use probing questions to deepen the discussion:
What else? What are we missing?
Who else has an idea?
Can you say more about that?
What’s important about that?
Invite team members to envision what meetings would look like if they were going well and ask them to share what comes to mind.
After a few minutes of discussion, ask, “What agreements should we put into place to ensure this happens?” If it’s helpful, offer these examples, and invite team members to vote on which they like the most.
Arrive early so we can start on time
Meeting leader should send an agenda with enough time to the team to review/prepare
Use a parking lot for discussions that should happen later
Don’t interrupt
Listen for understanding
Invite others to speak after you speak
Camera’s on as much as possible
Have a volunteer timekeeper each meeting
Have a volunteer notetaker each meeting to capture next steps
Always capture and review next steps in the final 2-5 minutes
To make sure you have a really solid list, invite the group to consider additional questions, like:
How will we decide what topics to discuss?
How will we ensure we stay on topic?
How will we ensure everyone has a say?
What will we do when we don’t agree?
If you have more than 10 agreements, invite the group to combine a few similar ones to get to a top 10. If you can’t combine them, give each team member three voting dots or a virtual polling tool, such as Mentimeter.
Let the group know that the most important thing about this exercise is making sure the agreements stick. First, ask the team where and when they would like to remind themselves of their agreements.
TIP: An easy suggestion is to make sure that meeting agreements are on a slide and used as the first slide in every meeting. Some teams may even like to have their agreements designed in a way that can be printed and posted near their workspace or even used as a desktop. You could even design a mug or a mousepad!
Finally ask how the group to design accountability guidelines.
Script: holding each other accountable can be very difficult, because it requires each of us as individuals to take a risk, but without this important action, our meeting agreements will not stick. So how will we like to hold each other accountable when we see an agreement not being held? For example, when a meeting agreement is broken, we will say “ouch” (verbally or in chat) to indicate that we a meeting agreement has been broken and give the person a chance to acknowledge and apologize (if needed). What are your thoughts?
As team members offer suggestions, write them down.
To close the meeting, share that you will take the next step of consolidating the agreements and accountability guidelines in a synthesized document and invite anyone who would like to help with this process to join them.
If time, ask the group for feedback on the process.
Close with a round of “one-word checkouts.” In other words, have each person share one word that represents the mood or feeling with which they are leaving the session.
After the meeting:
Consolidate the meeting agreements and accountability guidelines into a synthesized document or slide and share with the team in an appreciative email that includes a request for feedback.
Script: Thank you for attending our meeting agreements session. I appreciate the time you took out of our day-to-day activities to come together as a team. I know this time will benefit us in our meetings going forward. Attached you will find our synthesized meeting agreements and accountability guidelines. Please take a look and if you have any final feedback, please let me know. If you have more time, I’d love to hear any feedback (positive or constructive) about how this process went for you.
Revisiting/checking in: To make sure that meeting agreements truly stick, do a one-month follow up survey via email to ask the team how well they think they are doing with the agreements. It’s a good idea to also redesign meeting agreement twice a year, or at least once a year as part of your normal team-building activities.
