A sheet on meeting roles from the University of Delaware’s Biden School says the facilitator “Acts as a traffic cop during meeting” and “Keeps the meeting on track.” The timekeeper “Reminds group when time is not used as planned.”
A guide from the University of North Carolina advises: “Assign the role of timekeeper to help the facilitator move the group through the agenda.” It explains: “Telling someone that their time has expired is always hard to do.”
The federal pattern criminal jury instructions used in Massachusetts tell jurors: “You shall permit your foreperson to preside over your deliberations, and your foreperson will speak for you here in court.”
A Massachusetts model instruction tells the foreperson: “it is your job to facilitate the deliberations among your fellow jurors.” The foreperson “should see that all jurors have a chance to participate in the discussion.” The same instruction adds that the foreperson does “not have a greater voice or vote than any of your fellow jurors.”
In Reginald Rose’s Twelve Angry Men, the foreman of the jury tries to run the deliberation. He sets the rule: “This has to be a twelve-to-nothing vote either way. That’s the law.” Juror No. 7 is in a hurry: “This better be fast. I get tickets to a ball game tonight.”
When a juror mocks him, the foreman answers: “What, just because I’m trying to keep this thing organized?” Then he offers his place to anyone who wants it: “You want to do it? Here. You sit here. You take the responsibility.”
In Massachusetts towns that govern themselves by town meeting, the meeting is run by an elected moderator. State law says: “The moderator shall preside and regulate the proceedings, decide all questions of order, and make public declaration of all votes.”
“No person shall address a town meeting without leave of the moderator.” A person who keeps disturbing the meeting and refuses to leave can be removed by a constable or anyone the moderator orders, and held “in some convenient place until the meeting is adjourned.”
Who’s running this meeting? — Who is in charge here? It is often asked when nobody is.
Who’s driving? — Who is leading the meeting, or who is sharing the screen?
Let’s keep this moving. — We should go on to the next point now.
Let’s get back on track. — We have left the agenda, and we should return to it.
Can I jump in? — May I say something, or help steer the discussion?
I’ll keep time. — I will watch the clock and tell the group when time is running out.
Sam Kaner and his colleagues at Community At Work in San Francisco wrote Facilitator’s Guide to Participatory Decision-Making. It describes a person who runs a meeting without taking a side on its content. “The facilitator’s job is to support everyone to do their best thinking and practice. To do this, the facilitator encourages full participation, promotes mutual understanding and cultivates shared responsibility.”
The International Association of Facilitators “was founded in 1994 to provide a home for a growing profession.” One of its core competencies for facilitators is “Guide the group toward useful outcomes.”
Robert’s Rules of Order lists the duties of the person who presides over a meeting. They include opening the meeting, announcing the order of business, recognizing members who wish to speak, stating each motion and putting it to a vote, announcing the result of every vote, keeping order and closing the meeting.
Many American clubs, parent-teacher associations and homeowners’ associations run their meetings by these rules. A training text sums up the job in three lines: “Keep order.” “Be fair and impartial.” “Protect the rights of all the members.”
From January 3 to January 7, 2023, the House of Representatives had no Speaker. Members voted fourteen times without electing one. It was the first time since 1923 that the election took more than one ballot.
Without a Speaker, no member could be sworn in, and the House could not adopt rules or do other business. An Associated Press report said: “Parliamentary procedure has been jettisoned in favor of controlled chaos.” During the fourteenth ballot, Representative Mike Rogers, arguing with Representative Matt Gaetz, “had to be physically restrained” by Representative Richard Hudson. Kevin McCarthy won on the fifteenth ballot.
The original gavel of the US Senate was “a two-and-one-half-inch, hour-glass-shaped piece of ivory.” “During a heated late-night debate in 1954,” Vice President Richard Nixon “shattered the instrument.” “Unable to find a replacement through commercial sources, the Senate turned to the embassy of India.” India presented a copy of the original.
In the House of Representatives, control of the chamber changes hands with the gavel. On the first day of the 112th Congress in January 2011, “the gavel is passed from Nancy Pelosi to John Boehner.”
When Alan Mulally ran Ford, he met his top 15 executives every Thursday at 7 a.m. for a Business Plan Review. They presented their numbers on charts colored red, yellow or green. The rules were “no smart phones, no encyclopedic briefing books, no aides, no jokes about colleagues, no side conversations,” and “facts, not opinions.”
Mulally enforced the rules himself. When someone started a side conversation, he said, “we just stop and we just look at them.” Later, Mark Fields, Ford’s chief operating officer, took over the meeting. Mulally said Fields ran it “exactly the way I ran it.”