Team Formation: How to Conduct A Team Norms Exercise

Every team has to go through the 4 stages of team formation — Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing. Any team can benefit from a Team Norms exercise at any stage of team formation. However, it is particularly helpful to conduct the exercise in the forming and/or storming phase.

Team Norms exercises are crucial because they help team members build rapport with each other and create a safe space and open environment to talk through both work and interpersonal issues.

There are many exercises out there and you can even create one from scratch yourself! But if you need a quick template, here is my go-to that I use as-is or tweak and adapt for teams of different dynamics.

How to Conduct a Team Norms Exercise (In-person or virtual)

Example Team Norms Whiteboard Exercise

Step 1

Decide on a faciliator, prepare a whiteboard space and blank stickies then get everyone who’s on the team in a room.

Step 2

Below is a list of categories to go through. Reveal one category by posing the category question/description and have each person write down their answers in silence on one sticky. When everyone is done with their sticky for the category, have them place it in the appropriate category on the board and have each person talk about their sticky to the rest of the team. Only move on to reveal the next category when each member of the team has presented their sticky.

1. Ice-breaker — Write your name at the top of the sticky. If you could be any animal, what would you be? Draw or find a picture of the animal.
2. Purpose — From your perspective, what is the purpose of this team? What are we doing here? What are we trying to accomplish? Make sure this is one simple short phrase or one-liner. You do not need to think too deeply.
3. Hats/Roles — Each person can wear many hats on a team. What are the hats you wear on this team? What role do you feel you play on this team? It can include your actual job title and/or the additional informal role(s) you play on this team.
4. Strengths & Growth — What strengths do you bring to this team and what growth would you like to gain from this team/project? Use two separate stickies for this combined category.
5. Hopes & Fears — What are your hopes for this team/project and what are your fears for this team/project? Use two separate stickies for this combined category.
6. Agreements — What are practical, logistical, interpersonal items that you’d like the team to agree to? These can be about the way you’d like the team to work or communicate with each other or even just how you behave with one another. Be honest and candid. Write as many stickies as you want for this category with one item per sticky.

The meat of this exercise is in the sixth category — Agreements. You’re working your way to build rapport with the team from categories 1–5 so that each person will feel comfortable talking through their needs and wants in category 6. It’s possible that one person’s items for agreement may conflict with another person’s items and that is totally okay. This is the time and space to talk through them, make compromises, and come to an agreement.

Note: Agreement stickies do not have to be placed directly under the person’s name in the same column. They can go anywhere across the row within the Agreements category.

At the end of your team exercise, have someone compile a final list of Agreement bullet points (that you’ve all agreed to) and post it in the team’s main communication channel (e.g. Slack, email, etc.) and pin it if possible.

Pro Tips

Have fun! You can make this as creative and entertaining as you’d like. If you have a group that’s open to being creative, have everyone only communicate in pictures, drawings, or icons for every category before Agreements. You can also come up with a different ice-breaker question, just make it personal, simple, and quick. Nothing kills open communication more than “only business talk.”

If you have the luxury, you can invite an outsider to facilitate this exercise on behalf of the team so that every team member can focus on participating instead of the team facilitator having to both facilitate and participate at the same time.

Be cognizant of time, limit the entire exercise to 30 mins or a maximum of 1 hour. This shouldn’t be a draining activity for the team. Everyone should come away feeling more at ease and better understood by each other.

And that’s it! Hopefully, the team members are respectful to each other and will try their best to honor each agreement that the team has agreed to. But if after trying the agreements for a few weeks some don’t work out, you can always revisit this exercise as a team and try again!