Develop team ground rules

- One of the best techniques to set yourself or your team up for effective collaboration is developing a set of ground rules. So here are four steps for developing ground rules that work, whether you're the team leader or a team member. Step one, explain why the ground rules are important in the first place. I usually say something like this, "Guys, I really appreciate everyone's participation on this team. We've all been on those dysfunctional teams and I do not want this to be one of those experiences. Our success will hinge on our ability to collaborate effectively, so it's worth it to take just a little bit of time to decide how we want to work together." Step two, give each person a pad of post-its and a marker. And then ask them to reflect on some of their best and worst team experiences and write down just one ground rule that they think will help the team collaborate effectively. Step three, after a few minutes, collect those post-its and review each one with the full team. Here are a few examples of what you might get. Someone might write start and end our meetings on time. Someone else might write we need to avoid that back and forth email volleyball. Or you might get no conference calls after two o'clock on Fridays. Remember, they shouldn't always feel restrictive. They should reflect the personality of the group. In fact, I had a team one time whose ground rule was any meetings longer than two hours, must have food. I promise you, everybody loved that ground rule. And finally, step four, take a vote on each ground rule and only adopt the ones that everybody supports. Remember, the key to this process is making sure it's bottom up. If a leader or a team member tries to shove those ground rules down the team's throat, it's not going to work. But when team members come together to develop their own ground rules, those are the ones that stick.