Working Agreement Workshop
Kate
MikeGoal
Team agreements create clarity and mutual expectations in a social system. They can also boost productivity and create freedom of mind. By making implicit social expectations explicit, team members concentrate on real, wholehearted interactions, dive into creativity, and let go of social fears. In this way, working agreements help teams co-create their most ideal and productive environment and may also prevent misunderstandings that lead to conflict.
Why Working Agreements MatterMaking social standards explicit for teams may feel unfamiliar. Some team members may feel awkward when asked to write down what seems to be obvious, professional behavioral expectations, but doing so is important. When team members don’t clarify mutual expectations, they tend to make assumptions about what the other person wants or intended. Paul Watzlawick wrote an appropriate story about this, which he called "The Pursuit of Unhappiness”. In it, a man would like to borrow a hammer from his neighbor to hammer in a nail. But our protagonist, unfortunately, manages to spin so many fantasies in his head that his mind makes him dislike asking at all, and he just runs over to the neighbor to yell at the clueless man, saying, "Keep your hammer!"
Our expectations often have more to do with ourselves than with our counterparts. Unconscious guesswork is often just plain wrong about others' needs and wishes. Then the other person doesn't understand the expectations. This lack of dialogue is a patent recipe for disappointment. Those disappointments add up and consume the social capital of a team. Instead of using the collective intelligence for the benefit of the product, the team grows apart, becoming a bunch of individuals rather than a team or, in the worst case, the social system collapses because of it.
Team agreements provide a pragmatic remedy here: if needs are known, they are more easily met. In this way, they make aspects of teamwork explicit that often are mishandled implicitly.
Instructions
- After check-in, introduce the concept of working agreements to the team
It may help to share a personal story from your professional or personal life in which working agreements helped. End the introduction by pointing out a few benefits of working agreements, as stated before.
Before diving into the exercise, point out that there is no right or wrong with any wish or expectation an individual may have.
2. Start to craft the working agreements with the teamTwo great questions to help you get started:
- How do we want to be with each other here?
- What atmosphere do you want to create together in the coming weeks and months?
In the liftoff phase of a team, let the team members brainstorm about these questions. This works well in person and digitally. Ask the participants to write each wish on a (virtual) sticky with a five-minute timebox.
3. Come to an agreement as a team
Share the wishes either by bingo facilitation or let the participants directly group together any duplicates and place similar points next to each other to reflect the weight of similar wishes. Looking at them together, discuss specifics and ask those present:What else needs to be said? It’s important to stay silent for a few moments at this point. Some of the most crucial and controversial aspects will only be said if the group creates space for them to arise.
4. Help enrich the working agreement
Ask the participants whether they all agree on the items in the working agreement or if anything has to be changed? You could choose different facilitation options here such as thumbs voting, fist of five, a round of voices, etc. It is crucial at this stage that everyone is on board before you go to the next stage.In this step, help the team enrich their working agreements with aspects they might not have thought about. The following questions can be helpful:
- When and how do you expect each other to be available (this is especially important in remote work)?
- What is our expected response time?
- How do you prefer to communicate? Are there different preferences?
- How do you want to be with each other in conflict?
- Often follow up with a clarification of Scrum-relevant aspects such as:
- Who is now a team member and who is not?
- Which sprint length do you choose?
- When do you want to do our daily scrums?
Before closing the workshop, have the participants formally commit to the team agreement. In persona workshops, this could include signing the flipchart or whiteboard on which the team agreement was created. Virtually, have participants add emojiis or photos to the virtual whiteboard.
6. Close out the workshopIn this step, clarify what the team needs from facilitators to live those working agreements. Ask the participants the following question: “What do you need from me as a scrum master to create the atmosphere described at the beginning?”
End the workshop with a conscious check-out process. The chosen format depends on time left, the mood of the participants, and energy in the room. Check outs are crucial, as they help participants and facilitators leave the workshop with a sense of completeness and they are such good indicators of the success of these meetings. This could be:
- A question such as “What are your best wishes for our team in the future?”
- A one-word mood barometer: How are you in one word? One hashtag?
- Or a quick reflection about the process.
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