I recently attended a memorably good board meeting. It began on time, it ended a bit early, we covered more material than we had anticipated and the board chair masterfully facilitated the discussion.
However, the success of the meeting had to do with more than that. In fact, what made the meeting so successful was that every participant managed him/herself optimally. There was an unstated, subtle, but yet remarkable “choreography” to the meeting that really worked.
What does it mean to “manage oneself optimally” in a meeting? What happens when a group manages itself optimally?
It’s helpful if all of the participants and the chair are experienced board members, for example, and that was true of the meeting mentioned above. Interestingly, however, as a board, we have never explicitly articulated ground rules for our discussions. I believe such ground rules do, implicitly, exist and that we routinely put them into practice.
What are those ground rules, why are they important and how can one use them, particularly in meetings that we, as lawyers, often attend?