Establishing Team Norms

My key takeaway from the episode was the idea that team rituals can be designed using iterative design principles and that any team that wants to be high-performing needs to start with a leveling conversation about how they want to work together.

The conversation only needs to take an hour. It starts with each person sharing their values in how they want to work and talking about the behaviors they would expect to see if the team lived those values. Then the team establishes rituals that allow them to practice and hold themselves accountable for the behaviors they agree to do. As an example, if a team says they want to give feedback, they may decide to hold a weekly retrospective meeting to share their observations and feedback.

The magic comes from ensuring everyone has a voice in the process, explicitly documenting norms that can cause unexpected conflict, especially for new team members, and repeating rituals that reinforce the agreed upon behaviors.

Is there a team that you are part of that would benefit from level-setting?