Your Team User Manual
My wife, Mina, and I recently had an argument about what time we start getting our two-year old daughter, Ari, ready for bed. The tension had been slowly brewing, but it was finally coming to a head. Our nighttime routine typically started around 6:30-7pm, but we had never explicitly made a rule about it. One night, I decided to let Ari stay up later than usual (without telling Mina). As 7:30pm approached, an irritated Mina finally said, “why do I need to be the bad guy and step in and say it’s time for bed?”
“She doesn’t have daycare tomorrow, so I’m letting her play a little later. There’s no rush to get her ready for bed”, I exclaimed.
Feeling annoyed, I got up and started getting Ari ready for bed rather than pushing my perspective and potentially starting an argument. Either way, there was clearly a disconnect.
After cooling down and apologizing, we talked through our perspectives, quickly realizing we had different and uncommunicated bedtime expectations. To avoid similar scenarios playing out in the future, I proposed that we try out one of my favorite ways of working tools, the working agreement.
Working agreements are co-created guidelines that define how teams want to work together.
Our first parenting working agreement looked like this:
We start the bedtime process between 6:30-7pm each night. If one of us wants to allow Ari to stay up later, then they should communicate that desire and get approval from the other parent rather than assuming it’s ok.
Our working agreement made it so we had a clear rule to operate by. We would only have to manage the exceptions, saving us time and stress in the future.
Working agreements help teams avoid unnecessary conflict and unmet expectations by making what we think is obvious, crystal clear. Working Agreements are like user manuals for teams, and they should be living documents that are revisited regularly to ensure they’re still useful.
Translating this story, think of every team you've been a part of. When you joined a team, was a working agreement (or user manual) handed to you making it clear how the team worked together, or did you have to stumble your way through, feeling out the team culture? In my experience, it’s usually the latter, and it’s a slow, uncomfortable, and unproductive process. How much more efficient and effective would employee onboarding be if you were handed a user manual when you joined a team that outlined how that team works together? No more awkward guessing, questions, and passing down unwritten rules. You’d have a working agreement that clearly outlined your:
Operating Rhythm: When the team meets and the purpose of those meetings.
Technology Ecosystem: The tech tools used to collaborate, communicate, store documents, visualize workflow, brainstorm, ask questions, etc.
Ways of Working: How the team makes decisions, takes time off work, gathers, includes, onboards, etc.
If you want to make onboarding more effective and efficient, and you want to make the ambiguous crystal clear for your team or organization, try experimenting with working agreements.
If you’d like a free working agreement resource to help you get started, send a note to rory@thewayswework.com
Happy teaming!
