Men's group ground rules: a simple template

A men's group needs exactly three ground rules: what's said here stays here, no fixing, and everyone gets a turn. Say them out loud at the first meeting, get a yes from every man, and repeat them whenever a new man joins. Everything else is optional. When I started my first group, I overthought this part for weeks. It turns out three sentences are all you need.

I've watched groups get this wrong in one of two directions. Either they assume the rules ("everybody knows it's confidential"), which means no man fully trusts them. Or they write a constitution: two pages of policies about attendance, phones, language, and lateness that make a kitchen table feel like a homeowners association. In fifteen years I've never seen the long version work better than three rules, spoken and agreed to.

That mark has a name in the research: psychological safety, the shared belief that this is a room where you can take an interpersonal risk and not get punished for it. The foundational study defined it exactly that way, as "a shared belief that the team is safe for interpersonal risk taking," and found it's what determines whether people will admit a hard thing or ask for help [1]. Ground rules are simply that safety written down. This page gives you the exact sentences I use; the full guide covers how to build a men's group, step by step.

The template: read this out loud

Here's the whole thing as one block. Read it at your first meeting, read it again whenever a new man joins, and you're done. I promise it takes under a minute, and it's the most important minute of the night.

Want it on paper? The same template is in the free First Meeting Kit as a printable page, alongside the full meeting plan.

Optional rules worth considering

These four earn their keep in a lot of groups I've run. Add them if your group needs them, not before. A rule you don't need yet is just clutter.

• Start and end on time. Worth saying out loud if your men run late. A meeting with edges is a meeting men can rely on.
• Phones away. Not banned, just face-down and silent. One man checking scores quietly tells the man speaking he isn't worth full attention.
• Speak for yourself. "I" statements instead of lectures about what "men should" do. Keeps the night personal instead of theoretical.
• What's shared here is yours to share, not mine to ask about. Some groups add this so a man controls when his Thursday disclosure comes up again, even inside the group.

What not to over-regulate

The goal of the rules is safety, not order. The research on what makes groups work points at the same few ingredients again and again: a sense of safety, the quality of the connections, and a feeling of shared ownership. A 2024 study of 162 men in community men's groups found exactly that pattern: groups run as a shared "us" improved members' mental health, working through psychological safety and the quality of the social network [4]. None of that comes from a rulebook. So skip:

• Attendance policies. A man who missed two meetings needs a "we missed you" text, not a warning letter.
• Fines, strikes, or formal memberships. This is a table of men, not a lodge with bylaws.
• Banned topics. Groups that outlaw politics or religion usually mean "we don't debate here," so say that instead: we're here to hear each other, not to win.
• Scripts for everything. Script the transitions, not the conversation. If the rules get longer than the meeting, the rules have become the meeting.

If a problem keeps coming up, the answer is almost always a conversation, not a new rule. And if a rule has to be invoked more than twice on the same man, that's a coffee between the two of you, not a tribunal. Keeping the rule count low is part of what's kept my groups alive for years, and so is everything in our guide to keeping a men's group going year after year.