You’ll know this one. There’s friction.
So you make an agreement. Everyone nods.
Good plan.
A week later it’s as if it was never discussed.
It’s rarely unwillingness.
Team agreements fail because they’re too vague.
Or too noncommittal.
Or not really the team’s own.
So keep them short and specific, and make them everyone’s.
Four ground rules for an agreement that sticks
- Make the behaviour specific.
“We’ll be more open with each other” sounds good and says nothing. “We give feedback in the same week it comes up” is behaviour you can see.
- Word it together.
Rules imposed from above don’t last. Let the team make the agreement and sharpen it themselves.
- Check that you want to do this, and can.
Say out loud what it will take to keep it up.
- Make it visible and checkable.
Put it on the wall, talk about it, come back to it. Behaviour doesn’t change by itself.
If you’d rather work on your team culture with some support, we do that in the work itself, through team coaching. How we work with teams on unwritten rules and agreements they make themselves is explained under culture.