Make fair agreements and stick to them  — Confucius

One of the most powerful and useful tools a team can have to assist in developing and maintaining effective working relationships is a set of working agreements – the ways you agree as a team to operate together.

The beginning of a new calendar or fiscal year is a great time to review and refresh (or possibly dust off!) team agreements, as part of examining team goals or aspirations for a new year.

Here are 10 ideas for keeping team agreements alive:

1. Open each meeting by reminding yourselves of your agreements – what they are and why they are important.
2. Toward the end of your meetings, periodically review how you honored your agreements.
3. Choose a particular agreement to practice honoring consciously.
4. Choose a particular agreement to discuss as a group to deepen its shared meaning.
5. Practice honoring these agreements in interactions between formal meetings.
6. When dealing with tough or contentious issues, invoke an agreement to support you (i.e. “I think this might be contentious, let’s really be mindful of “actively listen to each other”).
7. Provide group feedback on how the group is honoring the agreements – focus on one that is going really well and focus on one that is more challenging to honor.
8. If you believe a colleague is not honoring an important agreement, be curious in case you may be understanding the agreement differently.
9. If you notice a colleague is not honoring an agreement, model your agreements in bringing it to their attention; (i.e. if your colleague is struggling to be respectful, model respect in bringing it to their attention).
10. If you realize you have failed to honor an agreement, own your failure and try again.

For more information on team agreements, or other tools for team effectiveness, contact me for a no-obligation, confidential consultation!