There a couple of things we haven't discussed that can be particularly helpful especially for longer and more formal meetings such as face-to-faces, meetings with many attendees or meetings that run many hours in length. These two items are expectations and ground rules that are set towards the beginning of a meeting. One might think of them as one and the same, and depending upon how you want to manage your meetings, they could be.
Personally I see them as similar but coming from different directions. Whereas expectations often come from the facilitator to the attendees, ground rules are often more democratic and are created through audience participation and involvement.
Let's first tackle expectations. These are the habits or maybe even rules, that the facilitator is going to apply to the meeting and can come in the form of say, everyone arrives on time to the meeting, the meeting is to end on time or early and that meeting minutes will be posted within 24 hours. These expectations form the foundation for the meeting and are generally top down in nature.
Ground rules on the other hand, are most often created collectively, through a time allotment in an agenda item. The facilitator shepherds the conversation through audience participation to determine what rules and ways of working together are important to meeting participants. These could be things along the lines of only one person speaks at a time, everyone gets an opportunity to speak, all questions are valid, etc.
As the ground rules are created as a group, there are generally a couple of phases to the process. The first is a brainstorm of potential items followed by a review and discussion prior to ratification. If there are disagreements over a certain rule, it should quickly be modified to reach a compromise or the ground rule should not be ratified and should be discarded.
It's helpful to write down and make the expectations and ground rules available to be seen as a reminder to the attendees within the meeting. For in person meetings this means writing them down on the conference room white board or paper on a room easel pad. For virtual meetings it's more helpful to have this in electronic form whether it's a page in your favorite word processor or notes app that is shared during the meeting. Alternatively, if you're capturing the meeting notes and minutes as you go, and for effective meetings you should be, the expectations and ground rules are simply listed under that particular agenda item and visually shared throughout the meeting.
By setting expectations and ground rules, you set up the guard rails for your meeting so that things go more smoothly and can be as productive as possible. These items are a "living document" in that you can add, remove or change them as necessary during the meeting.
For larger or more formal meetings, setting expectations and creating ground rules, helps your meeting to start off on the right foot. It's a great way to get everyone engaged in the meeting and thinking about meeting success. If you're not using these techniques today, considering adding them to your meeting toolkit for use within future meetings.