ThemeYou as facilitator
CardCard 35 of 60
Questions5 to explore

Rules & Guidelines

Which are the agreed rules of engagement?

The rules of engagement are the shared agreements that let a group do difficult work together without the work becoming difficult for the wrong reasons.

Rules and guidelines describe how the group will work together: what is in scope and out of scope, how people will treat each other, what happens with phones and laptops, whether what is said in the room stays in the room, and any other agreements that shape how the session operates. They are not the facilitator's rules; they are agreements the group makes together, or at minimum, agreements the group is asked to accept and can push back on.

Establishing guidelines early, often in the opening, sets a working culture for the day. A group that has agreed on how it will operate is more likely to self-correct when something drifts and less likely to need the facilitator to intervene. The process of agreeing them is itself a small act of trust-building: it tells participants that their comfort and working style matter.

Keep guidelines practical and specific rather than aspirational and vague. 'Respect each other' means little in the moment when someone speaks over someone else. 'One person speaks at a time' is something the room can actually use. The more concrete the agreement, the more likely it is to be followed and the easier it is to reference if something comes up.

Easy to missDecide before the workshop which guidelines are non-negotiable from your side and which you are genuinely willing to let the group shape, so you are not caught improvising when a participant proposes something that changes your plan.

How experienced facilitators handle it

The same building block, handled by people who have run a lot of workshops. Patterns and illustrations to react to, not rules to follow.

Co-create where possible

Experienced facilitators invite the group to add to or modify a starting list of guidelines, rather than simply presenting a completed set. This moves the rules from the facilitator's authority to the group's own.

Name the specific behaviours

They phrase guidelines as observable behaviours ('phones face-down, calls outside the room') rather than values ('be present'), because behaviours can be honoured and noticed while values are easy to agree with and immediately forget.

Reference them when needed

When the room drifts, they bring back a specific guideline the group agreed to ('we said we would give everyone space to finish their thought') rather than making a general plea for better behaviour.

Keep the list short

They rarely propose more than five or six guidelines. A long list signals distrust and overwhelms people before the work begins. The ones that matter most will do most of the work.

Questions to plan around

Use these on your own or in a group. There are no right answers, only better conversations.

Which guidelines are essential for this specific workshop, and which are generic ones you carry into every room regardless of context?
How will you introduce the guidelines, and will you give the group space to add, change or challenge them?
Are your guidelines written as specific behaviours rather than abstract values?
How will you return to a guideline if the group stops following it during the day, and have you thought through that moment?
Are there any guidelines that this particular group might find condescending or unnecessary, and how will you handle that?

Watch for

Presenting a long list of rules at the start of a workshop, before the group has warmed up, can make the facilitator seem mistrustful of the participants rather than setting a safe container.
Generic guidelines carried from workshop to workshop and read out without adjustment signal to experienced participants that the facilitator has not thought about this particular group.
A guideline the facilitator does not enforce when it is breached is worse than no guideline at all: it teaches the group that the agreements are decorative.