The Complete Guide to Robert's Rules of Order Made Easy: Everything You Need to Know Explained Simply

The Complete Guide to Robert’s Rules of Order Made Easy

Everything You Need to Know Explained Simply

By Rita Cook

The Complete Guide to Robert’s Rules of Order Made Easy: Everything You Need to Know Explained Simply

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ISBN-13: 978-1-60138-259-7

ISBN-10: 1-60138-259-6

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Cook, Rita, 1964-

The complete guide to Robert’s rules of order made easy : everything

you need to know explained simply / by Rita Cook.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN-13: 978-1-60138-259-7 (alk. paper)

ISBN-10: 1-60138-259-6 (alk. paper)

1. Robert, Henry M. (Henry Martyn), 1837-1923. Robert’s rules of

order. 2. Parliamentary practice. I. Title.

JF515.R66C66 2008

060.4’2--dc22

2008030283

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Table of Contents

Dedication

Introduction

Chapter 1: The History of Robert’s Rules of Order

Chapter 2: Robert’s Rules for Your Organization

Chapter 3: Election of Officers

Chapter 4: Basic Meeting Format

Chapter 5: Doing Business: Understanding Motions & Voting Procedures

Chapter 6: Write this Down: Understanding Necessary Paperwork and Reports

Chapter 7: Fight, Fight, Fight... Understanding and Dealing with Conflict Through Organized Debate

Chapter 8: Robert’s Rules for Everyday Life

Chapter 9: Cross the Ts: Understanding Occasional Usage Rules and Procedures

Chapter 10: Understanding Concluding Procedures and How to End Meetings on Time

Chapter 11: Robert’s Rules in a Wired World

Chapter 12: How to Hold Meetings from Remote Locations

Chapter 13: Etiquette & Netiquette: The Golden Rules

Chapter 14: When There is not a Rule

Appendix I: Notices & Minutes

Appendix II: Sample Bylaws Structure

Appendix III: Sample Committee Report

Appendix IV: Sample Resolution

Appendix V: Sample Ordinance

Appendix VI: Conventions

Appendix VII: Using Robert’s Rules as a Roadmap

Appendix VIII: Motions

Glossary

Author Biography

More Great Titles from Atlantic Publishing

Dedication

This book is dedicated to my husband, Russell William Dandridge.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Robert’s Rules of Order: you have most likely heard the term used if you have ever taken part in a formal meeting. Most people are too embarrassed to say, What are Robert’s Rules of Order? so this book will explain it to you in easy-to-understand language, and you will never have to ask.

The first chapter will cover this more in detail, but Robert was a person, General Henry Martyn Robert, and these rules are named after him. He got involved in what is known as parliamentary procedure when he began presiding at meetings and did not know all of the rules involved.

My embarrassment was supreme, it is noted that he said. I plunged in, trusting to Providence that the Assembly would behave itself.

People who especially have a need to know Robert’s Rules of Order include chairmen of boards, politicians, and higher-ups in corporations. With these rules in place, professionals have the ability to run meetings with ease. The most important thing to remember when leading a meeting is to stay in control of it. How do you do that? Robert’s Rules of Order.

Other key position holders in meetings who use Robert’s Rules of Order are secretaries and treasurers. These positions are present in government meetings such as city councils.

Robert’s Rules of Order have been edited over the years, and the manual is now in its Tenth Edition. Even so, the rules are still difficult to understand without some help.

Indeed, there are many books that have been written on Robert’s Rules of Order, but many are just too long and tedious to get through. For the person who needs the information fast, just the facts essentially, this book, The Complete Guide to Robert’s Rules of Order Made Easy: Everything You Need to Know Explained Simply will be your best tool. After all, if you are in a position to run a meeting that requires Robert’s Rules of Order, you likely cannot remember every in-depth passage that is written explaining the rules.

Also in this book is information you will need for running an electronic meeting. Indeed, in today’s world, executives live all over the world and increasingly travel; it is not always possible to get everyone in the same room at the same time. Robert’s Rules of Order can still be used no matter how many different parts of the world your coworkers and colleagues are located in during the meeting.

Every meeting, no matter what the company or organization, will get the best results by using Robert’s Rules of Order. These rules require structure and a business-like approach to situations. It is all about majority making the decision but the minority of people still being heard.

Handy definitions of many words you will encounter in this book and when discussing Robert’s Rules of Order with others can be found at the end of this book.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

The History of Robert’s Rules of Order

The Rise of Democracy as a Form of Government

The people define democracy, as opposed to other forms of government, as government. However, a true democracy would require that all members of the group vote on all actions of the group (or society). Therefore, logistics make a true democracy nearly impossible except in small groups. To this end, the form of democracy most familiar in the modern world is what is called a representative democracy. This type of democracy employs elections to create a group of representatives who will then make the decisions on behalf of the whole body. This type of governance is not new, though, and has been around since before recorded history. You might be surprised to learn that the ancient Israelites of the Bible used a religious-based representative democracy. Representatives of the 12 tribes made decisions, dating back to as early as the wanderings in the desert with Moses.

In the Americas, the native tribes that now make up the Northeastern states also used a democratic form of government to organize their various tribes into one nation. Today, many of the laws and practices that we use come from a defined and written code of conduct that was used in the Republic of Rome where participation in the public forum was considered the mark of manhood.

In England, democratic forms of government were common among the tribes who lived in and were native to that island. After the Anglo-Saxon invasion in the 5th century, the monarchy was established and became the ruling form of government, with the reagent’s power being derived from a witenagemot, also defined as an Anglo-Saxon advisory council to the king. The witenagemot was created with 100 nobles, prelates, and other important people who took part in the administration on an ongoing basis. With the Norman conquest of England, the government of the land was formalized and the Great Council was formed to unite the various factions and barons under one central government. During this time, the land was administered using a feudal system in which a king was understood to own all the land, and local barons, on swearing fealty to that king, were given a piece of the kingdom to administer.

Local farmers grew crops and sustained themselves through this means. They were permitted to work the land in return for swearing fealty to the barons (and also the king). This gave the nobility a percentage of the workers’ harvest, and in return for these oaths of fealty, the nobility provided protection and administration for the land and kingdom. To organize and authorize protection actions, such as declaring war or removing a fellow baron who was not doing his job, the barons came together to have discussions with each other. These Great Councils morphed into a parliament when King Henry III called the Great Council together to discuss not only his business, but also any concerns about the management of the lands.

Originally, there existed only the House of Lords, which was made up of landed nobility (persons associated with the royal household who actually owned the land) and which was empowered to make decisions for the government of those lands as a whole. Later, the House of Commons, composed of representatives elected by the common people, was added to give the non-nobility a voice in the decision making process.

Parliamentary Procedure

In short, parliamentary procedure makes up the rules that are used to conduct meetings of any kind. Anyone can use these procedures, but not everyone necessarily needs to. It depends on the meeting, the group, and the situation. The group using the procedures might be called a deliberative assembly, and an organized system of making decisions needs to be in place. Parliamentary procedure is a respectful way for everyone to be heard and for meetings to run as smoothly as possible.

For the most part, this type of procedure is used by all governing bodies who operate constitutionally, government or otherwise. Common sense is key in figuring out how to make these practices work, but it is duly noted that these procedures protect everyone involved in the meeting. Parliamentary procedure should be an asset, not a stumbling block, and Robert himself said, The assembly meets to transact business, not to have members exploit their knowledge of parliamentary law.

The development of Rules of Order, which would become the foundation of parliamentary procedure, came about because of a drawn-out internal fight within the English Parliament during the 16th and 17th centuries. Before this time, customs and traditions had been the primary governance in how business was conducted within the body. In varying attempts to handle the conversation, resulting disagreements gave rise to a body of writing on the procedures to be used in the House of Commons. These rules, called common parliamentary law, came to North America with the original colonists. Conversely, because the parliamentary law was being written even as the colonists immigrated to the New World, their knowledge and understanding of these regulations was incomplete.

Even with incomplete, or rather unfinished, knowledge of parliamentary law, though, the colonists still knew the importance of understanding how a deliberative assembly, such as a parliament or an organization, conducted business. These colonists’ lives and livelihoods were based on the individual charters granted to them by their home countries. Companies in their home countries that operated on a for-profit basis owned many of these charters. Once in the New World, the colonists set about creating their own rules and governance. As each colony varied in its charter and customs, so did the resulting rules regarding the procedure of conducting an assembly.

When the colonies rebelled against the English government, it was for the most part concerning the way in which they were being allowed (or rather not allowed) to participate in the representative democracy to which they were required to swear fealty and provide taxes. The revolutionary cry No taxation without representation refers to the need of the colonies to be represented in the British Parliament on an equal scale with their fellow countrymen back home. When this failed to create change, their solution was a revolution and the establishment of a new state.

After the Revolutionary War, the Continental Congress worked to develop a constitution and system of government that would provide representation to all the persons while also allowing for efficient management of the country. In the development of the Senate, the Continental Congress drew heavily on the example of the British two-house system of parliament.

Early Precursors to Robert’s Rules

When Thomas Jefferson presided in the Senate as the vice president, he gained an understanding of how diverse the traditions of government were among the various statesmen. As the presiding officer in the Senate, Jefferson was called on to make rulings on matters of procedure and process that had not yet been clearly defined. Beginning with a few notes, Jefferson went on to create a book of rules to govern the Senate proceedings for his term and later presiding officers. In the years that followed, Jefferson’s publication of the Manual of Parliamentary Practice became the standard for the operations of governmental bodies, although it was still a bit unwieldy for volunteer and civic organizations.

As the new country grew, so did a new culture and new society. People formed business groups, welfare organizations, and political bodies. The need for standard rules to govern the growing number of these societies and groups became apparent. In response to this need, Luther S. Cushing developed a manual that was well received but that left much of the day-to-day functioning for individual assemblies open. Cushing believed that each assembly should develop its own rules of order to govern its activities, and his book was accordingly geared only to regularly accepted customs and practices. It was thought that this would give individual assemblies autonomy and independence. Unfortunately, the task of developing cohesive rules of order proved beyond the capabilities or inclinations of most assemblies.

Who is Robert?

Enter Robert. Henry Martyn Robert was an engineer and eventually a general, and he developed these rules in 1870. Robert gained his first interest in parliamentary procedure when he was unexpectedly called on to lead a church meeting yet had no idea how to do it properly. Recently transferred to New Bedford, Massachusetts, Robert found himself in an awfully embarrassing situation in his attempt to lead the assembly. Without any knowledge of what he was doing, he vowed to learn about parliamentary procedure before he would ever again find himself in such a position. After some research, he found a few books that had some basic rules for legislative assemblies. Carrying these with him on a card, he was at least a little better prepared the next time.

When he and his wife were later transferred to San Francisco, California, they became active members of the community and participated in different organizations locally and from around the country. Once again, Henry Robert found that his rules were not sufficient to the task laid before them. He found that the rules he had learned were not only insufficient, they were also not universally accepted, which caused no end of tension and friction among the societies he was involved in on a regular basis. After further research and growing concern for the societies in which he was involved, he created a pamphlet of rules for these organizations. These pamphlets were well received by the organizations that he was a member of, but he was never able to truly finish the task.

After another transfer, Robert found himself moved again to the study of parliamentary procedures. Having studied Cushing’s manual by this time, Robert became convinced that Cushing’s approach needed revising. Instead of a few broad rules that allowed societies to establish their individual codes of conduct, what was needed was a basic manual that, once learned, would enable a person to move from one society to another with relative ease and understanding. Being deeply convicted of this need, he set about writing a book of rules that would address this problem. This book, which became wildly popular, is what we have come to know as Robert’s Rules.

Basic Principles of Robert’s Rules

The point of Robert’s Rules is to provide support for the rights of many different groups, thereby making sure the majority vote rules but that everyone is heard. Robert’s Rules protect the rights of the majority to prevent a tyranny and also prevent corrupt rule by one person. Anarchy, the opposite of tyranny but the corrupt rule of the masses, is also protected against in Robert’s Rules, with protection of the rights of the dissenting minority. The goal is to ensure that the minority has a chance to say its case and, failing to convert the majority, the opportunity to acquiesce gracefully. Robert’s Rules also protect the rights of individual members, giving them the right to voice their support or dissension equally. Finally, Robert’s Rules protect those who are absent from the assembly and ultimately protects the rights of the deliberative society as a whole.

The basics of these rules are fairly easy to understand, with there being ten main points that make up the bigger picture.

The privileges of the entire group are more important than the privileges