Setting Team Norms Is Not A Waste of Time, But A Tool That Drives Efficiency

Objective: Guide leaders to set team norms to drive their team to move faster, together.

You just got assigned your team and you are ready to dive in and get started. Forget all the hokey team building stuff, you know how you want to take action to be most efficient with your time. But wait, what about setting team norms?! If you just eye-rolled at my “naivety,” this blog post is for you.

Sure, we’ve all been part of a team where setting norms turned out to be a giant waste of time. Most likely it was because someone said, “This is dumb. We all know how to act professional, right?,” and the team responded by not taking the activity seriously. Sure, we all want to assume we’ll get along, but often it is much easier said than done. In a team, everyone comes in with expectations that collectively affect team dynamics. By providing an opportunity for team members to share their expectations in a safe and structured way, you will 1. protect your team from inefficiency due to unaligned expectations and 2. create norms your members actually value and adhere to because they played a part in setting them. Here’s how:

How To Set Team Norms:

Step 1. Recall Negative Experiences

Ask each team member to think of the worst team he or she was ever a part of. Any team counts — work, volunteer, sports, or any situation where people work together to produce results. Guide your team to identify specific characteristics that made working with that team a “negative experience” by asking them to consider how the team made decisions, shared ideas, shared responsibilities, and/or dealt with conflicts. Allocate two minutes for each member to write down characteristics of a bad team experience, using 1 post-it note per characteristic. Two minutes will feel rushed, but you want your team members to just write the characteristics that first come to mind.

Step 2. Find themes.

When the two minutes are up, display all the post-its for everyone to view. As a team, spend three minutes grouping the characteristics into categories. If possible, label the groups so you end up with a nice visual of common themes.

Step 3. Recall Positive Experiences

Repeat steps 1–2, but for characteristics of positive team-work experiences. You’ll end up with two visual boards, side by side.

Step 4. Decide and Commit

As a team, use the visual boards to create a set of norms describing your team’s ideal team experience. If your team needs guidance determining what norms to chose, direct them to identify which categories have the most post-its. The categories with the most post-its show what your team cares about the most. As a team, decide which norms you can all commit to. Write them down. This should take about 5 minutes.

Step 5. Keep It Relevant. Keep it alive.

Setting team goals isn’t a one-and-done thing, but rather a living document. Consider posting it during meetings for reference. It can be a great help to realign your team if someone starts to get a little too comfortable and it can also be a great way to bring new members up to speed.

Final Tip: The Sooner The Better

Imagine your high school teacher shows up to the first day of school in sweats and with no lesson plans for the first two weeks. By the third week, even if she has great lesson plans made, it will be difficult for her class to take her seriously because she already set a pretty unprofessional tone. Similarly with team norms, if proper expectations are not set at the beginning, it will be harder to pull a team back to where they should be once unwelcome behaviors creep in. The sooner the better, but it’s never too late to start or refocus.

I hope reading this post helped you see the value in taking time to set team norms. Spending twenty minutes to align expectations early on allows a team to bypass disappointment from unmet expectations and maximize efficiency. So come on team leader, set your team up for success.

“You only get what you expect when you are clear about your expectations.”

Thank you for reading this post! Please share it if you liked it. Also, if you are interested in learning how to hold your team accountable to the norms set, please let me know in the comments below.