Kick Off 2023 With Strong Team Agreements
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As team lead, manager, or head of your organization, you want to ensure that your teams are cohesive, collaborative, high performing, and strong enough to weather any stormy seas of conflict, crisis, and disruptive behaviors.
This is the stuff of team agreements.
What I sometimes hear from folks is, "Sure, yeah, of course our teams have agreements. Everybody's on the same page." What turns out to be true is that their team agreements are unspoken, unwritten and un-negotiated—meaning, not designed in any thoughtful or clear manner that will set the team up for success.
They are informal agreements that have become the rules of behavior over time and morphed into the organizational culture. They become "the way things are done around here."
For better or worse, they are binding on team members. They may not be spelled out in the policies and procedures manual (or even ethical or legal...), but it doesn't take long for new team members to figure out what is rewarded and what is punished. The so-called agreements continue as the norm, and nobody questions if they're good for the team, the workforce, or the organization.
It’s only a short leap to predict the potential conflict within a team whose “the way things are done” rules may not be serving the group and, worse, damaging its performance capability. When something unpredictable happens—difficult conversations, challenges to the norm or disruptive, abrasive behavior—no one knows what to do and chaos ensues and people get hurt.
In my experience working with teams and leaders, most teams benefit greatly from having explicit team agreements, in order to ensure:
A framework to manage conflict before it become unproductive or harmful.
Everyone on the team (the workforce) is headed for the same playing field and rules of the game—and which represent the values of the organization.
Individuals are safe, psychologically and physically, and have codified recourse if confronted with interpersonal harassment, discrimination, or unfair treatment of any kind.
Clear expectations and boundaries for team members and leaders alike that allow everyone to be confident of their value to the team and the organization.
How to create team agreements that lead to high-performing and engaged teams
A good place to fix, update, or refocus your agreements is to start small—such as one agreement within a team—to gain quick wins and build upon them. Here's how to approach it:
1) While the guidance of leadership is important, the team creates its agreement itself, for itself to ensure buy-in. They convene to:
Think through the agreement elements together.
Listen actively for what is really being said and asked for by each person.
Ensure that each member believes in the process and is willing to incorporate it into their team norm.
Make solid, clear decisions on what the elements of the agreement will be, and the accountability to keep them.
Realize the agreement is dynamic, and build in capacity to revisit frequently.
2) Outline the context and parameters of what the team needs right now—the specific outcome the agreement will be designed for. For example:
Navigating a short-term project the team is working on
Giving feedback and critique
Establishing safety around communications
Addressing concerns around diversity or workplace politics
3) Address these core questions (adapted to and appropriate for their particular situation), capturing the answers in a way that everyone can understand them at the moment and in the future. Follow up with questions to surface any underlying feelings and concerns (here is where a professional facilitator can be valuable):
For this team to be successful and effective, what do you need to count on from each other?
In order for this team to excel, what do you want for the team?
(Building on the previous two) What agreements can we come to that will make success possible?
4) Formulate a list of agreements, discuss, pare down, get agreement on the results. They might look like these:
We show up on time for meetings.
Mistakes are human. We look for the learning.
We encourage risk-taking.
We treat everyone with respect, regardless of their position or seniority.
We value diversity, invite multiple points of view, look for the contrary or unpopular position in order to maximize our creativity as a team.
We can disagree all we want as a team inside the conference room. When we interact outside the room we present one aligned position.
How is your organization working with your teams and their agreements? Share your answers in the comments.
When we join a company, partnership or team, our expectation is that everyone involved will exhibit professional behavior toward us and each other. Instead, it’s highly possible that we may become one of the more than 60 million adults in the United States who are affected in some way by bullying behavior at work.
What kind of behaviors are we talking about? Our definition is any interpersonal behavior that causes emotional distress in others sufficient enough to impede their productivity or disrupt organizational functioning. It isn’t just a personality conflict — it’s a chronic pattern of disrespectful behavior.