What is a Team Agreement?
A team agreement is a crucial tool for establishing fundamental rules within teams, irrespective of the field or industry. It serves as a means to foster productivity, mutual understanding, accountability, and harmonious collaboration among team members.
The primary goal of creating team agreements is to ensure a shared understanding of terms, procedures, perceptions, and values. Even though these aspects might seem “typical” for various teams, they can carry different meanings to different people. Clarity in people and processes is paramount, especially in significant endeavors.
In essence, a team agreement is a concise set of guidelines formulated by the team to articulate expectations and understanding. It aims to create a clear, shared understanding of acceptable behavior, communication, measurable variables, and important definitions within the team.
Understanding Teams
Teams continually evolve through five stages of development, as outlined in the Tuckman model, entails five stages of development: forming, storming, norming, performing, and adjourning.
When a new team is first created, team members try to find a way of working with each other. They clash, normalize, become effective, and, eventually, adjourn. Even as new members join and others move on, the perpetual cycle of work and collaboration persists. In the midst of these changes, it becomes crucial to explicitly define responsibilities, expectations, and working methods.
Friction occurs when teams first form and becomes even worse during the growth phase. Striking a balance between delivering results and maintaining momentum can prove challenging.
Even as a team matures, circumstances may call for expansion or necessitate shifts in team roles, introducing potential conflicts. Thus, a team agreement becomes indispensable to anchor the team’s stability across its various stages. The agreement serves as a valuable resource during this transitional period, fostering a shared understanding between seasoned and new team members: a foundation for effective collaboration.
Given the recognized dynamics within the team, regular reviews of the agreement are indispensable, ensuring its adaptation to the team’s evolving needs. Iterative updates continually enhance its effectiveness. I firmly believe that the team agreement should undergo revision whenever the team experiences a significant change, such as alterations in team composition, shifts in management, updates to roles within the same team, or modifications to the product.
Why are Team Agreements Important?
Team agreements ensure transparency and clarity within teams, allowing them to redirect energy from potential conflicts to their core work, fostering mutual understanding and contributing to community growth. This advantage extends universally to both in-person and remote teams.
Crucially, a team agreement thrives on openness to suggestions. It embodies the very essence of Agility, team’s self organization and mutual trust. Establishing a clear process for submitting proposals and offering advice, whether through voting or discussions during team meetings, enhances its dynamic nature.
Explicitly defining social norms within teams might feel unusual, but it is an essential step. Without establishing mutual expectations, assumptions can lead to misunderstandings and potentially foster conflicts. Team agreements remedy this by eliminating assumptions at their embryonic stage.
Working agreements contribute to a shared sense of responsibility, facilitating the identification and discussion of both positive and negative behavior. They empower leaders to hold the team accountable and enhance overall productivity.
All team members are different. Their styles, perceptions, work ethics, expectations, and visions of definitions may vary. In writing, team agreements make expectations clear, eliminating assumptions and providing team members with a platform to openly discuss their priorities on various topics. An open and honest conversation about these differences not only helps clarify individual perspectives but also opens a door to mutual rapport, understanding, and knowledge-sharing. It establishes a culture where the team can openly discuss anything and is committed to continuous improvement.
Even for straightforward teamwork, team agreements are never redundant. They may be as simple as the team needs and dynamics. For instance, if they contain three basic rules such as ‘let’s always be on time, not speak over each other, and be open to getting together weekly to hear everyone’s concerns,’ it might seem like overkill for, say, a garage teenage band. However, it really isn’t. Any team agreement is the foundation for building respectful and considerate relationships, fostering accountability, and adopting a practical approach to successfully building collaboration and achieving the team’s goals.
If you ask me, create team agreements with your spouse or life partner. What are you if not a team? And if you feel like you are not, maybe you need team agreements the most.
In a nutshell, Team agreements ensure
Clarity and Assumption Elimination: Offering a clear description of working definitions and expectations ensures that every individual understands expectations and the communication channels. Clearly defining work processes and workflows maintains team efficiency and high productivity.
Accountability for the Product and the Team Success: Clarified roles and responsibilities allow individual members to take ownership of their tasks, providing the drive to take charge and complete their responsibilities effectively. This also lets everyone feel that together, they are the ones leading the team and their work to success.
Feeling of Trust, Safety and Work Satisfaction: Providing an appropriate outlet for raising concerns and highlighting progress ensures people feel heard and understood, creating a safety net for open communication and rapport.
Team Agreements Will Only Work if They Are…
Accessible – Ensure your Team Agreement all team member can access it at any time.
Simple – Short, easy-to-follow rules are more effective. Use brief sentences and simple lists if necessary,
Collaborative – Ensure, without imposition, that not only every team member takes part in the creation of the document but also that each individual is in true agreement with every statement in it.
Revisable – Encourage continuous improvement of your agreements and implement revisions with an established schedule. Always revise the agreements when team composition or product demands change.
Followed – One of the most important agreements in your Team Agreements must be utter dedication to an undeniable commitment to following every single agreement and a way to call out any violations respectfully.
What May be Included in a Team Agreement
Every team is different, and any team’s agreement should be unique to that team and its needs. Below are some general ideas on what teams may need to agree upon, based on my experience, regarding areas that are usually in need of specific clarity due to their ambiguous nature or a high chance for assumptions.
Individuals, Roles, Availability
- Define roles and responsibilities within the team.
- Clarify availability and expectations regarding roles and responsibilities.
Methodology/Framework/Technology specific definitions
- Define methodologies and frameworks to be leveraged.
- Clarify preferences regarding tools and technologies used in the team.
Communication and communication channels
This not only speaks on just day-to-day communication but mostly about situations that arise unexpectedly. How and how should we inform of unexpected absence, how do we communicate urgently arisen impediments, how do we process concerns that we don’t want to share with the whole team for any reasons. How do we approach stakeholders, especially in higher ranks, how do we handle conflict resolution – all of these, as well as communication channels and expectations, may be outlined in Team agreements.
Workflows
- Define workflows, including working hours, meeting formats, and tools used.
- Set expectations for change requests, documentation, and peer reviews.
Collaboration
- Foster a culture of respect, equal participation, skill development, and transparent communication.
- Encourage continuous learning and positive feedback to contribute to team improvement.
Agreement enforcement and revision
A vwey important area of the agreement is how it will be enforced. If it’s not followed and team members are not held accountable for not adhering to it, the whole idea of the agreement is rendered useless. In this case, a manager might as well just set up rules and order everyone to follow them.
The enforcement must be respectful and considerate, ensuring that even if team members do not honor any of the agreements, they need to know that they will not be considered rule breakers. Instead, they will be heard regarding their reasoning, creating a safe and collaborative environment. A great way to make sure team members follow the agreements is to remind them about them during the particular project.
It’s also highly recommended to include, as part of the agreement, rules that facilitate continuous revision. This involves adding previously undiscussed but important items, modifying what’s not working, and revisiting the agreement when there are changes in team composition or project profile.
How To Successfully Create a Team Agreement
If you have determined that your team will benefit from Team Agreements, it’s good to have them created as the very first thing a new team does together before any work even starts to ensure some important details are covered.
Here are a few steps that can be taken by anyone who wants to take a lead in the process of creating the agreements document
- Invite every single team member to an Agreement writing workshop — even if a single team member is absent, the purpose of agreements is defeated. Don’t make this mistake; make sure that everyone is present.
- Agree on the Agreements medium — The very first thing is to decide where the agreements will be hosted so everyone on the team can access them at any time during work hours.
- Be prepared — Many times, Team agreements are something new to some team members. Not every team leverages them, and some team members may be just new to any team. So, it’s always recommended that the Team agreement facilitator has some basic template ready and that they go over the very idea of having Team agreement and how it works. And then go over the template.
- Identify areas of interest and vote to decide on what to include — There are always agreements that are most important, that have to be set up and, if not discussed, won’t let you proceed successfully with all team members feeling that those were their choices and not something imposed on them. Keep the initial agreement lean—simple and short. You can always add more items if needed in further iterations.
- Complete the Agreement — Ensure that the final agreement reflects the consensus of the whole team. As a final step, go around everyone and ensure that every single person is in complete agreement with everything that was documented exactly the way it was documented. Otherwise, it’s not really an agreement if we are not sure we all agree.
- Set up a cadence for agreement revision — If the team decides (hopefully they do) to continuously revise the agreement, establish the revision meeting schedule at reasonable intervals. Every quarter or every couple months may be enough.
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For the team to embrace the evolving Team agreement, it must be transparent and accessible. The agreement reduces frustration, facilitates open communication, and prevents conflicts. Crafted by the team for the team, it’s easily implementable and serves as a reference during conflicts. It’s a valuable tool for creating a secure space for growth without compromising efficiency.
FREE Team Agreements Template and Guide
You are welcome to check out the Team Agreements Template and Guide I have created:
It’s absolutely FREE. We are using payless gateway to make sure secure file delivery.
What you will be able to achieve with it:
- Establish fundamental rules within teams, fostering productivity, mutual understanding, accountability, and harmonious collaboration.
- Ensure a shared understanding of terms, procedures, perceptions, and values within the team.
- Navigate the five stages of team development (forming, storming, norming, performing, adjourning) with stability and clarity.
- Facilitate effective collaboration during team growth, role changes, or transitions
- Provide a foundation for continuous improvement through regular reviews and adaptations to evolving team needs.
This 13-page blueprint provides a structured framework for small business operations. By defining clear agreements, we aim to foster a cohesive and productive work environment
- Overview of the importance of Team Agreements in small business operations.
- Understanding Team Agreements
- Why Team Agreements are Important
- What May be Included in a Team Agreement
- How To Successfully Create a Team Agreement
- Does Our Team Need a Team Agreement?
- Questions to Ask to Assess the Need for Team Agreements
- Steps to Create and Revise the Agreement
- Sample Team Agreement
This is a digital download product. This product does not exist in a physical form; the images are for reference only and do not represent an actual product. This product, in its entirety or with modifications, may not be reproduced or distributed in any form, under penalty of law.
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