The team norms workshop
A tool to improve your team’s collaboration tactics.
Over time, every team develops ways to interact and communicate with each other. Doing this successfully, even with people outside of the immediate team, is critical for the team to be successful. If team members cannot effectively interact, the team will likely fail. That’s where team norms come in!
Team norms are a set of guidelines to shape team member interactions.
Team norms can emerge naturally or be developed during a team meeting, and more norms can be added as the team evolves.
For example, if a team develops and launches a digital product, a team norm could be to gather for a celebration. This happened to us naturally; without writing it on paper, it became a norm we adopted. On the contrary, if team members frequently fail to meet due dates or are overcommitting, the team can pause and formally create a norm to plan and set goals each week.
You can run a team norms workshop anytime.
Even if you’re moving fast, it’s good practice to pause every now and then to reflect on what went well, what needs to be improved, and what needs to be updated.
We had an offsite coming up, and there were several new members on the team. We didn’t have great onboarding, so we wanted to formalize how our team operates. We thought a team workshop would be perfect for this. In our case, we blocked 1.5 hours during the team offsite, but you can do this any day as long as you block time with no distractions. In terms of cadence, a workshop like this can be done as often as you like; just ensure your team understands the goal and that everyone is equally involved in the process.
Running a team norms workshop.
Made it this far? Great! Now, let’s go through how to run a team norms workshop.
As mentioned above, you need a set amount of time where the team can fully concentrate on the activity, so ensure you can make this happen before going any further. On the workshop itself, we recommend starting with a quick intro on what norms are. This should be simple and clear, but if anyone has any doubts, it is time to clear them out.
The team will work individually and as a group during the workshop on three activities. The first activity involves writing down all the existing norms that are currently in place and voting for the favorite ones. In our case, it was interesting and motivating to see what people voted for, and it helped us validate the norms that were working for the team.
The second activity involves writing new norms that they’d like to see adopted. These can come from anywhere but should fall under one of these categories: decision-making, conflict resolution, values, and communication. For example, it could be something complex like using fist of 5 voting or something small like using Confluence instead of Google Docs as the source of truth for all projects.
The third activity is the hardest one. This involves spending time writing which norms they would like to remove or change. For example, we have a norm of running a team retro once a month, and someone suggested a change to allocate more time for discussion instead of just listing feedback.
Like most of our workshops, we like to end with voting. We asked everyone to vote for 3 things they’d like to add or change. We then discussed as a group which had the most votes, why we think it was important, and how to implement it potentially. At this point, the workshop is mostly done; the last thing to do is to pick someone to (1) write down existing norms into a “How we work” team charter that is visible to everyone and (2) follow up on the top 3 norms.
Recipe
Prepare for the workshop
- Block 1.5 hours on everyone’s calendar and ensure people are fully committed.
- Duplicate our Miro template (or create your own) and give edit access to everyone on your team. If you don’t have Miro, don’t panic, you can use any tool that supports a post-it-like experience, like a whiteboard if everyone works onsite.
- Create a short deck or talk that explains what norms are to use as an intro for the workshop.
Running the workshop
The key for this workshop to be successful is ensuring that time is appropriately managed. Start by designating a timekeeper (this can be you) and ensure they have access to a timer of some sort. If you use Miro, their timer feature is exceptional for this.
Intro: 5 min — Give an intro to norms and the workshop
Section 1: “What are the team norms currently in place?”
- 5 min — Each member individually writes existing team norms.
- 5 min — Individually move these post-its into one of the four categories: Decision making, conflict resolution, communication and tools, and values.
- 5 min — Individually heart (or like) the post-its that resonate with you. This is a pulse check on what norms the team appreciates most.
- 10 min — Group discussion. Is anything surprising? Which ones received the highest likes? Why?
Section 2: “New norms to improve the team”
- 5 min — Individually write new norms that could benefit the team
- 5 min — Move these individually to one of the four categories as well.
Section 3: “Change or delete norms”
- 10 min — Individually write modifications of existing or new norms.
- 5 min — Voting time! Each person gets three votes to choose which norms they want to add or changes they want to implement. Keep in mind the voting just applies to the ideas added in sections 2 and 3.
- 20 min — Group discussion. What are the main things that people want to remove or change? Were there any surprises? What are people most excited about?
Conclusion: 10 min — Ask for volunteers or designate someone on the team to lead the top three voted items. This number is not set in stone; if there are more norms, the team feels strongly about, make sure someone is responsible for making them a reality.
Ingredients
- A whiteboarding tool like Miro that ideally has built-in voting.
- The team norms workshop template.
- A timer. Ideally, this is a built-in feature in your tool, like Miro.
Thanks for reading our recipe. Our goal is to share our experiences working together using a short-read format with instructions that you can try on your own — just like a cookbook. We hope you found it useful!
