How to Define Team Norms
Techniques for Virtual Workshops — Part 3
In Part 1 of this series, I shared how we use digital tools to run effective virtual workshops in a distributed team environment.
In Part 2, I shared a playbook for a virtual workshop to build personal connections.
In this post, I’ll share how we used the digital tools and techniques to define team norms.
What are Team Norms?
HBR defines team norms as a set of agreements about how members will work with each other and how the group will work overall. These agreed-upon behaviors allow the team to increase its collective performance through healthy debate and clarity of purpose and roles. These norms are extremely critical to define for any team so they have a shared operational compass.
Here are the steps we followed to define them for one of our newly formed distributed teams in a virtual workshop.
The Steps
1 — Reflect individually on working in distributed teams.
What we did: I asked each person to write on sticky notes all of the practices that have enabled effective distributed work and those that have hindered it. Next I asked the team to identify the essential principles they felt critical when working on a distributed team.
2 — Group and vote on principles.
What we did: The team moved their stickies up to the main stage and began to organize them into themes. I had the group vote on the practices and principles that resonated with them the most. We then organized the top voted ones and had an open discussion about each one. Organize and discuss the top voted stickies. I asked different members of the team what each means to them? It’s also important to clarify any inconsistencies in understanding.
3 — Wrap up and next steps.
What we did: One of our team members volunteered to take the lead on drafting a polished version of the team’s norms. She drafted a working document and shared with the broader team for feedback and validation. The team plans to review it on a regular cadence, as norms will naturally evolve.
The Outcomes
After a one-hour guided session, we were able to create an agreed upon set of norms that the team can always refer back to and tweak if the team’s way of working evolves. The document covers everything from calendaring practices to hours of operation to meeting rituals. Here is an example of norms around Slack usage:
* Try to be signed in to Slack when you’re working* If tagged or messaged, make best efforts to respond within a reasonable timeframe* Update your status to help communicate where you’re at (i.e. heads-down, meetings all day)* It’s ok to prioritize a task you’re focused on before responding to a slack message; prioritize focused time as appropriate* Tag people you are hoping to get a response from; sometimes threads can get lost
What’s NEXT?
We continue to explore new ideas and try new tactics to help bring people closer together while still being miles apart. Our new meeting format is another example that’s worth trying as well.
Working on a distributed team can be a fundamentally radical shift from working on a team that is co-located in an office. These tactics are helping us reduce, if not completely remove, the geographic boundaries of working in a distributed team while still getting the benefits of a strong culture tapping into a wide range of diverse talent around the globe.
