Five Things to Consider When Setting Up a Team
Highly interdependent – teams plan work, solve problems, make decisions and review progress in service of a specific project. Team members need one another to get work done.
I’ll never forget the day I was invited to help a team recalibrate. They had been through a series of organizational changes and sensing stress on the team, the leader wanted to get everyone aligned and heading in the same direction.
After taking the team through our Mindset Reveal workshop to show them how to spark and sustain collaborative problem-solving, we had everyone collaborate on creating a Team Charter.
We moved through dialogue around purpose, roles, responsibilities and the results of the team– all the important things that needed revisiting and clarifying given the changes they had been through.
As we wrapped up, I invited everyone share key learnings from the workshop.
As we went around the room something happened I wasn’t prepared for.
There were tears.
And we couldn’t find the tissue boxes fast enough.
The most telling comment from a woman who finally felt valued:
“I’ve worked in this organization for 25 years, and never did I have a manager or work on a team, where they thought it was important enough for me to know the real purpose behind my role and what we do to support the organization.”
New hires and veterans alike shared similar comments.
To them, being invited to collaboratively create a Team Charter was revolutionary. Some admitted they wondered why we were bothering as the workshop started. But afterwards, they knew the power in having a Team Charter.
Teamwork: It Doesn’t Come Easily
A quick scan of current stats on teamwork shows:
- Only 14% of managers claim they are confident their employees understand the company’s strategy, goals and direction
- 97% of workers and employers believe that the lack of team alignment influences the success of a task or project
- Less than 49% of workers enjoy teamwork
- Managers are responsible for 70% of deviations in team engagement
But when asked, 55% – 67% of people believe teamwork can be effective when teams have a common goal, clear roles, mutual respect, and team members who are patient and fair.
Oh, and a strong leader, willing to do the work to help this happen is important too.
Google’s Project Aristotle research into team effectiveness provides greater insight into what’s behind these statistics.
They defined a team as:
Highly interdependent – they plan work, solve problems, make decisions and review progress in service of a specific project. Team members need one another to get work done.
They found that what mattered the least to team effectiveness was who was on the team. What mattered the most was how the team worked together, citing the following in order of importance:
- Psychological safety: team members feel safe to take risks and be vulnerable in front of each other
- Dependability: team members get things done on time and meet stated expectations
- Structure and clarity: team members have clear roles, plans and goals
- Meaning: work is personally important to team members
- Impact: team members think their work matters and creates change
Outside of Google’s research, it’s worth noting two other important factors about team effectiveness were team size and diversity. Limiting a team to 4 – 9 members is better for decision-making, overcoming communication hurdles, and increasing productivity. While teams with greater age, gender and ethnicity diversity are typically 35% more creative – which is helpful to team effectiveness around problem-solving and innovation.
Five Things to Consider When Setting Up a Team
Think of the last time you formed a work team or joined one.
How much effort was put into helping you understand your team’s purpose, how you will work together and how you have impact?
Teams that don’t have clarity on why they exist, what they’re doing and how they’ll work together suffer through varying states of confusion and anxiety that have a negative impact on effectiveness, engagement and motivation.
There’s no need for this grief if you invest in creating a Team Charter.
A Team Charter is a powerful tool for setting expectations and creating alignment on your team. It comes in handy when you’re setting up a new team, recalibrating an existing team or onboarding new team members.
Below I’ve listed five essentials for building a strong Team Charter that help you clarify purpose, set expectations and create alignment from day one.
1Purpose and function of the team, members and roles
This includes purpose, time commitments, scope of work, members and their roles.
2Stakeholders and Sponsors
This serves to identify who you’ll need to collaborate with and who cares about what you achieve.
3Results you want
This is about deliverables, results, success indicators and quality of your work.
4Resources
Here you take time to define what will support your work from internal tools like communications platforms and software you’ll use, to meeting rooms and budget.
5How you'll work together
Think procedures, commitments, and communications plans that serve to bring consistency to how you approach your work and clarity to how you’re progressing.
Engaging your team in creating the Team Charter with you goes a long way to bringing clarity to purpose, setting expectations and creating the alignment that enables trust building and shared understanding.
Once completed, your Team Charter becomes a touchstone; a foundation to build on and a roadmap to team effectiveness.
And, as we saw in the story I told in the opening of this blog, it goes a long way to helping your team understand and appreciate their value. It’s a small investment in time with lots of upside for you, your team and the people you serve.
Is your team feeling stretched unclear, or a bit out of sync?
Let us facilitate a team charter session that creates clarity, alignment and momentum.
Book a 30-minute discovery call with Janice to get started.
Resources:
https://rework.withgoogle.com/intl/en/guides/understanding-team-effectiveness
https://www.hrmagazine.co.uk/content/news/half-hate-teamwork
https://teamstage.io/teamwork-statistics/
Thurber, S & Miller B. (2024). Good team, bad team: Lead your people to go after big challenges, not each other. MacMillan.
