The Team Canvas: Building Trust via Transparency
A Team Canvas is a visual technique that helps team members align on what is most important to them. There are four areas of focus, where each one is represented by a quadrant on the Team Canvas: Goals (upper left); Roles & Skills (upper right); Values (lower left); and Rules & Activities (lower right).
Note that this blog post is based on the “Team Canvas Basic,” which is shown above. There is an additional Team Canvas, which includes additional fields.
When to Use
There are many situations when using a Team Canvas can be helpful, such as:
1. When starting up a new team
2. When a new person joins an existing team
3. When there is a need to revisit team ways of working
The Team Canvas can also be used to revisit a Team Working Agreement, if one already exists, or as an alternative way to create one.
How to Facilitate
Below are some guidelines, to augment the content that is available on the Team Canvas website.
Introduce the Concept
- Provide a preview of the steps (described below).
- Encourage conversation as people write and post their answers to the various questions (corresponding to sections of the canvas).
- Use a timer to help make sure there is time to complete all of the sessions.
If some conversations take a while or touch upon bigger issues, consider putting those topics in a Parking Lot for later conversation.
Goals (upper left quadrant)
Ask the team members to call out some goals, both team-based and personal.
Questions:
- What do we as a group want to achieve?
- What is our key goal that is feasible, measurable and time-bound?
- What are our personal goals that we want to share with each other?
Examples:
- Become the leading car sharing company in our region by 2020.
- Create a $100M company in the area of Internet of Things by fall 2019.
Roles & Skills (upper right quadrant)
Ask people to write their names, as well as their roles and skills.
Questions:
- What is my role on the team?
- What skills do I have where I know enough to teach others?
- What skills do I have where I know enough to contribute/help?
Examples:
- Mark: Developer
- Skills: (Teach others) JavaScript Development; (Can assist with) Test Automation.
Purpose/Vision (center)
Ask the team to go beyond the goals they started with and ask them why they do what they do — delve into the main motivation and purpose behind doing the work.
Questions:
- Why are we doing what we are doing?
- What is something about what we’re doing that makes it particularly interesting or motivational to work on?
Examples:
- Create positive impact on people’s lives through social innovation
- Make people’s life easier and stress-free through innovation in the field of Internet of Things.
Values (lower left quadrant)
Ask the team to identify their core values — the most important principles — that they want to align with as a group.
Questions:
- What do we stand for?
- What are our guiding principles?
- What are our common values that we want to model?
Examples:
- Trust
- Creativity
- Quality
- Transparency
- Mutual understanding
- Equality
- Respect
Tying it All Together with Norms/Activities (lower right quadrant)
Ask the team to agree on a set of norms or activities. Think of this as an outcome of the previous sections: a concrete set of follow-on steps they want to implement.
Questions:
- What are the team norms we want to introduce after doing this session?
- How do we communicate and keep everyone up to date?
- How do we make decisions?
- How do we execute on and evaluate what we do?
Examples:
- Keeping team conversations confidential (unless agreed otherwise)
- Daily communication over Teams
- Virtual social meet-ups every second week
