Your team needs an agreement.
Why do some teams deliver amazing work and others drop the ball?
When I wanted to hire a team, a coach encouraged me to extract my ‘secret sauce’.
“If you want people to do what you do, you have to document it”, she said. “A new person needs to know why you do everything you do.”
So, I documented everything and sent it to every new starter.
And you know what I discovered?
Out of the 54 page document there was plenty that didn’t stick in people's heads.
But there was one catchphrase that did.
A paragraph on ‘yes, and’ - a philosophy I’d learned in theatresports when I was at school.
The context was, if you don’t know the answer in a classroom or in front of an important client, that’s cool. But always validate the person before responding so they know you’re on their team. Then, you can figure out what your response is.
I know it resonated because team members would replay the language back to me. They’d say things like,”‘it was a real yes, and moment”, or “I yes-anded until I figured out my next move”.
It made me realise: tell someone what to believe and they’ll use it when they need it.
Tell someone what to do and they’ll do what they already do when a stressful moment arrives.
In every workplace, you need to act a certain way to be successful.
In sales teams, you need self accountability. In governance, transparency. In marketing, creativity. In customer service, speed. In data, specificity.
Within each team is a way of working that makes sure the work gets done.
And this is a set of agreements. An ethos transferred from one person to another, where it makes clear what to believe in order to achieve a certain result.
A team agreement outlines how you expect each other to behave.
It outlines how people collaborate, report and what they expect from each other.
A team agreement provides clarity, transparency and certainty. Everyone, including the boss, knows how to act so everyone gets what they need.
A great team agreement makes clear why working, or thinking a certain way gets a particular result.
And I should care about this, why?
Every employee engagement survey on the planet says people want more ownership of their working day. Problem is, people don’t feel in control at work. They feel they’re reacting every day.
This is due to a lack of agreements within teams about what conditions need to be met to work on something, or say yes to a request.
A team agreement is a tangible way of getting everyone to agree on a sensible way of working, unique to your team, that gets the work done.
By limiting your focus to how work can be great, you’re removing unnecessary things like making sure someone's ego is looked after, or reporting for the sake of reporting.
Replacing it is centering the work. And from there, you can create a way of working that works for everyone. It’s efficient and really energising.
Why team agreements work.
Research has revealed that teams who have a clear, productive way of working together perform better. The idea is that they have a very specific way of working in their team that gives them ownership, despite external factors.
In an analysis of 180 high & low performing teams, Google discovered ways of working had greater influence than one star performer. And when we look at the best teams in the world, we see they all have a way of organising themselves to achieve a result.
For example, in Aotearoa New Zealand, rugby team the All Blacks have a set of leadership principles. Grammy award winning Beyonce’s production company, Parkwood, always start projects with intents made explicit (including contractors and part timers) so everyone knows the bigger ‘why’.
What these high performing groups share is that these aren’t nice sounding words with empty actions. They are specific actions, agreed upon by a wider group.
What does a team agreement look like?
A team agreement can be as formal as a powerpoint slide or as informal as a verbal agreement you refer to in meetings.
What it needs to communicate is expectations on how to behave to get the work done.
Here is an example.
At Happiness Concierge, we have a list of verbal agreements we use when we work together.
As we work together, and figure out what sticks, we update the list.
It’s written down in our Happiness Concierge Handbook, but usually we rely on these verbal catchalls to remind us how we work.
Here are some examples:
The system we use is called push reporting. This means we ‘present’ our work in progress to each other. To do this, we batch our reporting. This means, as long as it’s ready for a review, you can work any way you like.
Critique the work, not the person and certainly not the effort. We centre the work when we give feedback. We’re aiming for feedback that is specific.
Fail privately: do what you need to do behind the scenes to be confident in public. It will be messy and awkward. You have permission to figure stuff out behind the scenes with our full support so it never goes half baked out to the public.
As you can imagine, these agreements influence how we communicate, how we collaborate and how we work.
And if and when things don’t work out, like, we’re tired, or can’t be bothered, the agreement dictates that we’ve all agreed to this standard. There isn’t any room for tantrums or ego because we’ve created a workflow that centres the work.
A team agreement isn’t a list of fuzzy words.
Instead it’s a real-life understanding to describe how you expect yourself and others to behave. Here are some examples from clients of mine:
‘Internally, we deliver no less than a 6/10 for proofing. Externally no less than 8/10.’
‘Our role is being a knowledge broker. This means our core job is helping our stakeholders source data to make informed decisions.’
‘We all have moments where we feel we have no idea what we’re doing. That means we work to make sure everyone’s voice is heard, even the people who seem really confident on the outside.’
As you can see, these are all very unique and specific to the work culture.
How do I create an agreement for my team?
You can either create the agreement as a team or you can prepare a short list of desired behaviours and share them with your team for their input.
I wrote a short list and then, as I hired people, discovered what catchphrases stuck.
To get started, you might find it useful to think about the four factors that influence how a group behaves. These are systems, behaviours, communication styles and relationship dynamics.
Systems (e.g. cadence of meetings, reporting systems, status updates)
Behaviours (e.g. giving feedback, speaking up when things go wrong)
Communications (e.g. how direct we are with each other, centering the work)
Relationships (e.g. what stakeholders influence your success at work).
You will already be using some form of system and have a set of behaviours, communication styles and have relationships that influence your work.
What we’re wanting to do is create a culture by design in your team by asking yourself:
If I had my dream scenario, how would I use these levers in my team?
To start, I suggest documenting what you already do instinctively in each category.
Then circle the ones that give you great results and cross a line through the ones that have no tangible, purposeful outcome and are more of a legacy habit.
What do you notice?
Some people prefer thinking about this.
Another way of thinking about what you might like to put into your team agreement is outlining what could go wrong, and then retro-fitting your agreement to that.
If everything went wrong, what would need to be in place to mitigate that?
It’s the idea that when we plan for the worst, it makes it so much more likely that we’ll be prepared to achieve the best.
This lands for more analytical thinkers who are working with high stakes or are having some trouble getting their team all on the same page.
The grumbles come when we are indirect.
When you use an open statement, such as ‘we value each other’, people interpret things their own way. Everyone shows they value people in different ways, right?
So, the missing link is to outline specifically what behaviour that means in your team.
Here are some ideas:
‘We value each other, which means we don’t talk about the person, we talk to the person. Instead, we work harder at being braver with our feedback. It’s natural to want to have a vent but we find it’s not productive and it erodes trust in our team.’
‘We value each other's time. This means we prepare for meetings. We have an agenda, and we use it. This keeps us all to our key points.’
‘We value each other’s opinion, but sometimes we don’t have time to fit everyone's opinion in. This means at WIP’s just two people will present their work. Everyone will have a turn to shine.’
As you can see, three different interpretations of the same value.
A team agreement makes it real with tangible examples.
Centre the work.
When you centre the work, and outline the common goal you’re all there to achieve, people are empowered to take action in service of that.
For sure, there’ll be grumbles from your team, or fear about what’s ahead. But you can work with that. What you can’t work with is fear without a clear direction.
What great team agreements share is uniqueness.
Because we interpret words differently, we need to get specific.
And when we get specific on how to behave at work, we can design the results we want.
Leaders feel confident, the team is energised and the work is centred.
The really fun bit is coming up with the catchphrases.
Getting the conversation started with your team.
Leaders who have done my workshop on creating team agreements say they prefer to table the idea with their team first.
To help you do that, this Guide is a handy starter to share with your team.
Ready to create your team agreement?
I teach a workshop on creating a team agreement for leaders. This can be delivered with your leaders as a concept and invitation to create their own conditions, or I can come into teams and facilitate the conversation from start to finish.