In one line: Agree out loud, at the start, on what the team values and how it will work together, because negotiating these after a conflict is far harder.
Core idea
Every team operates by rules. Most never write them down, so each member assumes their own. A short, deliberate exercise at the start of significant work makes the rules shared and explicit. It has two parts:
- Values: what the team cares most about, such as integrity, quality, customer focus, respect or learning.
- Ground rules: how the team will behave day to day.
How it works
Finding shared values
- Each person privately writes the three values they think matter most for this team.
- Share them in small groups.
- Converge on a short list of three to five that everyone can commit to.
Setting ground rules, covering three areas:
- Tasks: what the team is expected to deliver, and by when.
- Process: how decisions get made, how meetings run, how work is tracked.
- Norms: how members treat each other, such as being on time, disagreeing respectfully, responding to messages, and handling confidentiality.
Revisit both when the team changes or when friction suggests a rule is not working.
In practice
The exercise is quick enough to do in the first meeting of a program, a study group, or a proposal team, and it pays off the first time someone misses a deadline or dominates a discussion. Instead of a personal confrontation, the conversation becomes “we agreed on X; what happened?” Ground rules are also the cheapest form of Accountability, because expectations were set before they were broken.
Questions to ask yourself
- What unwritten rule on my team causes the most friction?
- Have we agreed how decisions get made, or just who attends meetings?
- When did we last check whether our ground rules still fit?
Connections
- Part of building: High-Performing Teams, Teaming.
- Small-scale version of: Culture and Climate.
- Makes possible: Accountability.
- Capabilities exercised: Trust and Loyalty, Negotiating and Compromise, Communicating and Advocacy.
Sources
- Course handout on team values and ground rules; no public source.