Working Agreements in action
These software developers discuss their working agreements on Zoom and use Trello to capture input.
A remote campaign team brainstorms and votes for which working agreements they will commit to and captures input in Confluence.
A fundraising team’s completed Working Agreements Play.
What you'll need
Remote
Video conferencing with screen sharing
Digital collaboration tool (see templates)
In-person
Meeting space
Whiteboard or large sheet of paper
Digital collaboration tool (see templates)
Markers
Sticky notes
Optional templates
Atlassian Templates
Instructions for running this Play
1. Prep 5 MIN
For remote teams, start by creating a collaboration document such as a Trello board or Confluence page. You can use a template provided if you’d like or create one of your own.
For in-person teams, find a whiteboard or large paper and set out sticky notes and markers in a meeting room.
On the shared document, whiteboard or paper, create three columns or spaces and label the first “Brainstorm,” the second “Working Agreements” and the third “Parking Lot”.
2. Set the stage 5 MIN
Open the meeting by explaining to the team that as a group you’re creating a set of behavioral agreements to guide how to work together. Ask the team to:
- Keep an open, curious mind
- Practice active listening and encourage everyone to contribute
- Avoid interrupting or dominating the conversation
TIP: CREATE YOUR USER MANUAL
A great way to help new team members, contractors, project teams, stakeholders and network teams onboard onto your team quickly is to complete a User Manual that explains how you like to work.
TIP: TIMEZONE WRANGLING
Have a distributed team working across multiple time zones? It can help to map out collaboration windows to create a shared understanding on the hours that best suit synchronous activities
3. Reflect 5 MIN
Introduce a moment of quiet reflection by asking attendees the following questions:
- What is important to us as a team? What behaviors can we agree to as a team?
- Think of teams that work together well. What do those teams do that we could adopt?
- What can we do on this team to avoid past mistakes from other teams?
Ask everyone to jot down their responses privately.
4. Draft agreements 10 MIN
Next, ask attendees to come up with one agreement that will lead to successfully working together as a team, using their reflections as a guide. Have everyone add their ideas to the digital document or whiteboard in the Brainstorm section.
If you have a small team (4 people or fewer) have each person write down two agreements.
TIP: PEOPLE, NOT PROCESS
This Play is about working together as people so if ideas around documenting technical processes come up, put those in the Parking Lot.
5. Combine ideas 10 MIN
Go through the agreements together with the team and combine any similar agreements into one agreement.
It’s important to keep the agreements high level and focused on values, not specifics. For example: “Be at the 8 am meeting by 8 am,” can be turned into “Be on time to meetings.” Add suggestions that are too specific or unrelated to working agreements to the Parking Lot space.
TIP: REACH COMPROMISE, NOT CONSENSUS
Having trouble agreeing on the best way to achieve results as a team? It’s very common for team members to have different preferences; one team member may prefer to use Slack, while another prefers a live Zoom call. Utilize voting to get to a comfortable compromise to try as a team, with the promise that this is not a set and forget! You will learn and improve as a team over time.
6. Vote to commit 30 MIN
Read each agreement out loud and then vote as a team to commit to the agreement.
If you get any “no” votes, ask the team member what would turn their vote into a “yes.” Discuss what you can do together as a team and perhaps adjust the agreement.
The goal of the exercise is to get a thumbs up from all team members on all agreements.
EXAMPLE: IDEAS
Here are some of the responses you might expect in the “Brainstorm” category. Notice some are too specific or process-oriented to be working agreements.
7. Escalation management 10 MIN
Review the Escalation process section together. As a team, discuss what actions you will take and commit to a decision. Ensure the whole team is in agreement.
8. Continuous improvement 10 MIN
One of the most important things to cover as a team is planning ahead for learning and adapting together. Discuss the rituals and communication standards.
Discussion thought-starters:
- Sharing feedback
- Lessons learned
- Celebrate success
- Personal milestones
Follow-up
Revisit regularly
Revisit your team’s working agreements periodically, especially when the team or work changes, or an agreement can no longer be upheld.
Go through and vote to keep or change existing agreements. Then have team members brainstorm, propose, and vote on adding any additional agreements.
If an agreement can’t be upheld, discuss what might be getting in the way.
Variations
Starter questions
Come prepared with additional questions to get the team thinking. Examples include:
- What are our working hours?
- What’s our preferred way to get in touch with each other?
- How soon should we respond?
- What are some guidelines for successful meetings?
- Think about the best team you’ve ever been on. What was that team like?
- Think of the team that struggled. What happened on that team?
- What team behaviors do we want to be known for?
EXAMPLE: IMPEDIMENTS BOARD
Here’s how a team documented their challenges in an impediments board.
Lead with challenges
Prior to the Working Agreements session, collect issues the team is currently facing, either from an impediments board (see example), a Retrospective, or just known challenges. Bring these and share them at the session to help inform the working agreements.
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