Welcome to the Collaboration Superpowers podcast. My name is Lisette and I interview people and companies that do great things remotely. Welcome to another episode, all of them. Today we are going to talk about team agreements. But first, I`d like to announce that I`ve teamed up with another Learning 3.0 facilitator. And we will offer distance learning in London on July 25. So, if you`re curious about what it is, keep an eye out for the Superpower Collaboration newsletter. To turn groups of employees into large teams, an important first step is to form a social contract – an explicit agreement that sets out the basic rules for team members` behavior. A contract can cover a domain, .
B such as how members work together, make decisions, communicate, share information and support each other. Social contracts clearly outline the norms on how members will and should interact with each other. I hope this conversation will help you and your team empathize with each other, reduce stress, review and adapt the way you work, and be more successful, whether you use Scrum or not. Meetup`s product manager, Giff Constable, published the team agreements of one of his previous teams as a spreadsheet. So team agreements. In many of the interviews I conduct with remote teams, I hear that creating a basic set of guidelines helps avoid misunderstandings. Through my workshops, I learn that very few companies have entered into team agreements. So I wanted to share a little bit about the process and experience of the Happy Melly team, which is completely distant, hoping that they highlight how to create a team agreement and what the process might look like for you.
Phil Montaro of the Anywhere office introduced me to a policy he had created for team agreements, and he called it the ICC workflow. I have certainly talked about it in the past. And it means dividing your work into three categories: information, communication, and collaboration. Specifically, you`d ask the team what kind of information you need for the projects you`re working on, what kind of communication you use to get your work done, and how you know what everyone else is doing. Time zone protocols are described in the team agreement and clarify how people communicate when they are not in the same time zone and therefore may not have overlapping availability periods for synchronous communications such as video calls. Google Calendar allows users to set work hours and set predefined appointment blocks. For a company with time zone overlaps, this allows employees to check a person`s calendar and, first, whether their working hours are valid and, second, whether they can get a predetermined time on their calendar for a quick question or meeting. We then took about 15 minutes to brainstorm. And people could just pull sticky notes and put whatever they wanted in any category.
It was simply a carte blanche for everyone. So very calm, everyone works for themselves. During this meeting, you will guide the group through a series of questions that explore everyone`s preferences and expectations. Then work together to create your team agreement. So let your team know when you convene this meeting that the focus is on creating this agreement. This allows them to think, reflect and prepare in advance. And since the purpose of the meeting is to create a teamwork agreement, decide which tool you want to use to record in real time what is being discussed in the team – the virtual version of a whiteboard. Ideally, it`s a tool that everyone can see and contribute to in real time, and can also see other updates in real time. (If you want great tool recommendations, click here.) Go question by question, answer by answer until each answer has been converted into a declarative statement. At the end of the process, all team members should review a list of agreements on how best to communicate and collaborate with each other. Now it`s time to ask if everyone feels comfortable committing to it.
Instead of a general call for engagement, you should proceed person by person until each person has had a chance to get along or talk about a small optimization. Many other things have also been raised. For example, meeting minutes and ways to improve our feedback process and how everyone is struggling with OKRs and what we could do to make that process a little easier. And we found out that we didn`t have each other`s phone numbers, which was interesting. One day, all of Chad`s communication fell into place and he realized that he couldn`t let anyone on the team know because he had no way to communicate with us. He didn`t know our phone numbers. It`s not something that`s ever appeared before, but it just pointed out that it would be a good thing to have it. So I would say that even though the happy melly team was already a happy team and worked as a well-oiled remote machine team, we still found ways to align and improve when we reviewed our assumptions together. And it really showed me that whether you`re starting a new project with a new team or you`ve been working together for a long time, creating a team agreement and putting those assumptions together can really help form the glue that holds your team together. So it`s been about four months since we created these team agreements. And in the meantime, we`ve hired a few new people to form a team. Of course, we tried to set a date that anyone can do, but it turns out that with nine people and a pretty large choice in the time zone, it just wasn`t possible.
So we chose the ones who were there, we recorded the meeting and the people who couldn`t do it then had the opportunity to watch the meeting and give their opinion on the latest version of the team agreement. Ideally, team agreements codify how the team works as accurately as possible. For example, when the team shares status updates via email, not only is it written down – and the details and frequency of updates are clearly documented – but a template for the email is also included in the agreement to make it easier for everyone to use the process. Once that connection is established, it`s time to get to work. The simplest framework for generating discussions and reaching communication agreements is to cover a list of issues related to communication and collaboration. Here are some questions that work in a variety of contexts: Informing the team how often someone reviews time-specific items, such as approving costs or responding to blocking issues, can help employees plan accordingly. You may want to consider adding a one-line service level agreement (SLA) to your email signature for responses, by . B: “I check my emails twice a day, at 10 .m and 6 p..m.E.; and scan emails with the [important] prefix every few hours during that time. AttentionAcilions really cannot be prescribed.
All members must form and share the contract collectively, as a lack of buy-in prevents the agreement from working. It is also important that leaders model the desired behavior in the agreement, otherwise the team will quickly find that the agreement is not being implemented fairly and/or considered important. Collaboration tools should help you bring your team together and improve the way you work. But working remotely isn`t just about having the right collaboration tools. Good virtual team managers should promote team building, effective communication and group cohesion. So how can we get every team member on the same page? Four chat prompts that can help start a team agreement are: This is especially difficult for virtual teams when communication is often done via email or collaboration tools. Make sure truly sensitive conversations are made over the phone or in person. Be measured and reported. Otherwise, it is a hope and not an agreement. This meeting agenda template helps remote teams create a “work team agreement.” It is a living document that sets expectations and makes agreements on how a remote team will work together. Together, you define basic guidelines for collaboration to eliminate costly misunderstandings. The discussion of a remote team agreement has now gained momentum, as all families work together from home.
This is a new category of remote work that requires a little more empathy than in 2017. Instead of starting the ICC workflow from scratch, I decided it would be easier to go through the Google document point by point of what we decided last time and take a look at everything we wrote and decide on its relevance. And I admit that it was a bit complicated to just go through the list. So I wonder if there`s a way to make this more fun. .
