Contracting and Team Charters

Overview

Contracting with teams, or at the start of meetings, is really important. It sets the foundations for how everyone will work together, support each other, make decisions, share information and communicate. Teams can then create charters from these contracting discussions. How do you go about contracting? Why is it so important? What benefits can it bring? We’ll cover it all here.

Let’s Make A Contract!

This is a simple exercise and there shouldn’t be any huge surprises. You should expect things like:

• Being respectful
• Listen to others
• Clear
• Open and honest
• Timely
• Focused
• Authentic

If remote:

• Cameras on
• Microphones off if you have background noise
• Speak up if you can’t hear

Either at the start of a meeting, or by running a session with your team, throw all ideas on a whiteboard/document and then think about if any can be grouped. Then agree the most important, don’t make it too complicated or long-winded. Make it something that can be easily used. In meetings, it sets the right tone for what’s to follow - be transparent, authentic, be present, essentially get your mind in the right place to get the most value from the time you have.

When running the team session, ask questions like:

• What expectations do team members have of each other?
• What is working well within the team?
• What is not working well?
• What should the team keep doing, start doing, and, as importantly, stop doing?

It’s important to remember this process is about the team deciding how they’d like to work, it’s not about dictating how they should work. We have a retro activity which can help your team talk about expectations you have for each role available on our Retros Page [link] called Role & Responsibilities.

Now Create Your Team Charter

After your contracting discussions, develop your Team Charter - which brings together what’s most important to the team. Think about where you want to display it - if you are co-located print and display it prominently in your work area. If you are a remote, or partially remote team think about where the document can be accessed easily.

Make the Charter a living document. The team should circle back round occasionally and make sure the contract is still relevant or whether it needs updating.

Without having this contract, there can be unnecessary misunderstanding across the team - likewise in meetings. Finding out how everyone wants to work, right from the outset can reduce and remove some of these misunderstandings. It can help quickly build trust and improved collaboration.

With this contract, they can hold each other to account. Coupled with a good feedback culture, that accountability will increase and lead to improved harmony and productivity.

Further Resources

• http://theteamcanvas.com/ can help structure conversations with your team to "organize team alignment meetings and bring members on the same page, resolve conflicts and build productive culture, fast."