It’s easy to assume that everyone knows how to work on a team, but most people have individual styles and preferences. What if one person thinks a 9:00 start time means 9:03 and someone else thinks it means 8:55? To avoid these common frustrations, create rules of conduct for your team’s collaboration. Rules help clarify how you will collectively make decisions, keep everyone informed, and run meetings. To start, find or create a boilerplate framework with basic rules for respect, trust, meetings, decision making, and more. Discuss the rules with your team and agree on which ones you’ll follow. Review the rules periodically to keep them relevant and quash undesirable behaviors that have emerged. In addition, conduct a cultural audit of your team by asking about the unwritten rules a new team member would need to know. Then create one combined set of rules that everyone will follow.
Adapted from "Help Your Team Agree on How They'll Collaborate," by Mary Shapiro
