At the beginning of a semester, the convening of a committee, the start of an important meeting, and anytime when discussions and interactions may be complicated and challenging, taking the time to establish community agreements or group norms helps everyone to individually and collectively stay engaged, navigate differences, and be productive.

Taking time to collaboratively generate a list of agreements together with participants or students increases everyones’ intrinsic sense of buy-in and responsibility to the learning community. When time is short, it is still effective to suggest some basic ground rules and seek the input and agreement of all participants.

Whether you co-create these agreements together or suggest the agreements you think will work best for the context, it is always important to seek understanding, input, and agreement from participants to uphold the agreements.

We suggest these basic agreements as norms that work for most groups:

Listen actively and without interrupting
Assume we are all here to learn
Frame feedback / reactions / dialogue from a space of generosity
Ask for clarification
Use “I” statements (critique ideas, not people)

This list of ground rules from the Eberly Center at Carnegie Mellon University provides an easy reference resource for creating ground rules with students.

Note that some common ground rules may actually run counter to social justice commitments. See the article Respect Differences? Challenging the Common Guidelines in Social Justice EducationLinks to an external site. (Sensoy and DiAngelo, 2014).

Michigan's page on Guidelines For Classroom InteractionsLinks to an external site has additional examples and suggestions for inclusive use of community agreements.

Explicitly clarify your values and expectations. Many of the norms and agreements that groups will set for themselves are implicitly built on a common commitment to respect others and, depending on the context, a desire to reach a common goal (e.g., students in a classroom will typically agree they are there to learn; colleagues may agree that they attend department meetings to ensure the smooth execution of department functions). Being explicit about these values and goals can help a group stay focused.