The Sneaky Power of Social Agreements: Practical Self Management Intensive — Week 2

This has been a fascinating week of introspection, questioning, creating, and transition. As a cohort, our task was to create a social contract with our newly formed team as well as formulate our own personal mission statement, in the format of a Colleague Letter of Understanding (CLOU).
Personal Mission Statement
In brief, the purpose of a CLOU is to make transparent the commitments, roles and activities of all colleagues within a team, organization or system. This process transitions the responsibility and authority for defining work, addressing performance issues, making decisions, and moving work forward to those whom the commitment was made. As you might guess, this was a deeply intentional process for The Morning Star Company in an effort to operate from the core beliefs that:
People are happiest and most productive when they have personal control over their lives
People are “thinking, energetic, creative and caring human beings of integrity”
The best human organizations are those in which people aren’t managed by others, but in which participants coordinate among themselves, managing their own relationships and commitments to other
My personal mission statement can be found here.
Social Contract
At first glance, the idea of creating a social contract with your colleagues may feel a bit like articulating corporate core values. However, there are a few important distinctions. I’ll get to that in a moment. You can think of a social contract as the expectations and commitments we make to and with one another about how we intend to be in relationship.
I have been through many workshops to identify a team’s core value and this experience was highly energizing, but created an unfamiliar tension. It triggered something within me under the surface that wanted to wrestle. The first pass of brainstorming items for our contract felt comfortable; there was an ease in identifying the elements we all wanted to include. We collectively moved quickly through the narrowing process and bucketed items into seven key elements to be included in our agreement.
The internal wrestling match began to heat up toward the end of the week. After being highly uncomfortable for no clear reason, it dawned on me. I was looking at myself. “Whatever you want, ask for it. Whatever you are looking for can only be found inside you.”
I am grateful to be gaining clarity every day in the definition of what I want. In that, I begin to see my own reflection in my colleagues. I see the expectations I put on myself and unknowingly put my definition of these expectations on those around me. Because I was clear on the commitments I would bring to the table, I assumed others would show up in that same fashion. Right? No, Heather. That is not how this works.
There is beauty in the way self-management, wholeness, and purpose emerge. It is unique to each and every one of us. We all show up in the way we individually define our expectations and commitment. It takes time to create collective knowing of what it means to “Be Present” for instance — likely through tension when one of us feels that commitment is being neglected.
What I learned through this process is that creating a social contract or agreement is sneaky. Sneaky in the way it reveals deeply personal insights, but can only do so in a dynamic, socially co-creative kind of way. When I see you, I see me. Thank you to my teammates (Pete, Ari, Andrei) for showing me more of myself, co-creating this insightful experience and social contract, and for being you!
I also gained insight into the understanding that a social contract isn’t meant to be painted on the walls or printed in brochures like most corporate values. By the time we completed the assignment on Friday, we had enough team interactions under our belt to where I already felt the need to adjust our seven agreements. Instead of feeling frustrated about wanting to change a finished product, it felt incredibly liberating. When we come together, we don’t know what we don’t know. Being able to be in continuous conversation about how we intend to be in relationship, openly and honestly, is a beautiful thing!
With that, you can find our team’s social contract here.
Cheers to the journey!

