“Our value is the sum of our values”

—Joe Batten

How a team works together on a day to day basis will often be directly connected to how successful a team is in terms of achieving goals and delivering against a plan.

During team planning workshops, one of the most important exercises I facilitate is to enable employees within a team to discuss, set and reach a consensus on the standards that will govern how the team works and behaves.   Or in other words how does the team operationalise the Organisation’s values.

The starting question is always –

What do you need from the other members of this team to bring out the best in you?

The sub questions can include all or some of these to help reach an agreed list of behaviours that the team will use to hold each other accountable to and that can be aligned to the Organisational values if they exist.

The purpose of this exercise is to help teams create an agreed list of behaviours, standards, guiding principles that everyone had buy in to and that everyone can see would benefit the team.

• What do we need to do more of as a team to ensure we all enjoy coming to work?
• What behaviours do you want to see being lived on a day-to-day basis that would align to the team’s purpose, the team’s legacy and drive you towards success?
• Consider your organisation’s values – what behaviours do you want from the team that would support and demonstrate that value in a real way as you work together?

The key to making this list of behaviours come to life is to share stories of when it is in play and to give feedback to each other when it is not.  

Below is just one example of how you can then embed this into the way your team holds each other accountable.

For example:  At the end of a team meeting – ask attendees to bring any examples of how they’ve seen the Team Standards play out within the team since the last meeting or in the last two weeks/month?    Then ask the team to rate how they believe the team collectively has demonstrated the agreed behaviours (5 being we do it most of the time to 0 we don’t do it ever).    Then as a group you can discuss what is preventing some of the behaviours that were rated lower from being lived.  It also gives you and the team a clear view on what behaviours you are doing most of the time and should continue doing.