These rules help ensure a productive meeting

There's so much information on how to run effective meetings, but Kelley Eskridge's advice below may be all you need. Thanks to Bob Sutton for pointing this out for us:

One tool that has always helped me facilitate meetings-- my own, and those fun times when I am the facilitator for the 35 300-pound-gorilla executives in the room--is Ground Rules.

I pre-publish a prepared list of ground rules to attendees, and also bring it on a flip chart into the meeting and hang it on the wall. The rules typically include:

--Start/end the meeting on time
--No interruptions
--No side conversations
--No phone calls/email in the meeting
--Everyone participates in brainstorming
--In dealing with conflict, we focus on the business choices, not on the people arguing for or against them
--We use a "parking lot" to capture ideas that are important to pursue, but not relevant to the work of this meeting.
--We leave the room with a clear record of decisions made and who is accountable for follow-up.

At the start of the meeting, ask if there is anyone who is not willing to work by these rules, and if there are additional ground rules needed.

And then when the EVP of Bananas starts steamrolling the conversation, cut her off; point to the flip chart; and say, "Cheetah, we have a rule about no interruptions. I'd like Tarzan to finish what he was saying and then I'll turn it over to you."

Cheetah won't like it. But 95% of the time, she'll do it. The other 5% of the time, you have to be willing to enlist the group's help to enforce the rules. That goes something like: "Okay, we all agreed to these rules. Cheetah has just said that she doesn't want to be bound by them. Does the rest of the group agree that these rules should be ditched? In my experience as a facilitator, if you're not willing to have rules for meetings, you'll have less effective meetings. That's up to you. What would you like to do?"

And then abide by the group's decision. Which will usually be "well... I think we should have rules... " (with covert looks at Cheetah, who will be pissed but basically powerless, unless she is real asshole).

I can already hear the howls of disbelieving laughter from folks, along the lines of "if only"... but I've done this plenty of times, always with success and never with any kind of retribution beyond the occasional "oh, right, PROCESS!" sneers.

The thing is, people will generally follow the most effective behavior that's modeled for them. Ground rules help you model the behavior and give you an objective reference point for calling out rudeness/ineffective behavior.

Most workplace assholes get away with it because no one stops them. Having an objective tool agreed on by the group can really help.