Next, we looking at our social contract; this defines ground-rules for working together as a team.
Activity: Creating a working agreement
What you'll need: Post-it notes, Sharpies, a spare wall or whiteboard
Remember: Set a time box before we start
What you'll need: Post-it notes, Sharpies, a spare wall or whiteboard
Remember: Set a time box before we start
So let's get started:
- Set up the whiteboard with the banner WORKING AGREEMENT and the subtext WE WORK BEST TOGETHER WHEN... as per the following figure:
- Distribute post-its and sharpies to each team member. Explain to the team that they are going to use silent brainstorming to complete the phrase WE WORK BEST TOGETHER WHEN... Each idea for finishing that sentence should be written on a post-it note, one idea per post-it only, and as many post-its/ideas as they like. They can use the example topics for inspiration if they need to.
- Agree on a time box with the team for silent brainstorming and writing post-it notes, somewhere between 5 to 15 minutes. Then set the timer and start the activity.
- Once we have finished coming up with ideas, or the time-box is complete (whichever comes first), we take it in turns to go up to the whiteboard and place our post-it notes on it. We should do this one post-it at a time, reading them out loud to the rest of the team as we go.
- Once each team member has placed their post-its on the board, we should gather around the board as a group. The aim of this stage is to group similar ideas or remove any duplicates.
- The final step is to review the revised working agreement and decide if we can all abide by it. Are there any changes? Anything we should add?
After several rounds, our team should be in agreement, and we should have something that looks like the following:
