Share Team Values And Agree Ground Rules

June 5, 2009

Many organizations these days publish statements of desired values. An example, from law firm DLA, appears in The DLA values.

The DLA values  People

Service
Quality
We bring the best out of our people by encouraging mutual respect, responsibility and teamwork.

We invest in the reputation and careers of all of our people.
We commit to delivering demonstrable value to our clients.

We take a broad, business-led view to all client issues.

We seek new and client and market issues.
We strive to achieve the highest quality in everything we do.

We meet our professional obligations and take responsibility for our decisions.

They provide a useful backcloth for appropriate behaviour. However, they are only a starting point. To be really effective in pursuing its strategic objectives a team needs to make explicit how these broad values can be translated into standards of behaviour about work and relationships. A vital task for leaders of professional service teams is to encourage a consensus among team members on the responsibilities that they owe to each other, to colleagues outside the team and to the clients. Agreement on the principles governing the operation of a team on a day-to-day basis is also an important part of this process. Once there is agreement then good team leaders remind their people, when necessary, about those values and standards of behaviour. They counsel team members who are neglectful. In effective teams, the members as well as the team leader remind colleagues of the standards that are being contravened or only partially observed.

A good starting point is for you to provide time with your people to discuss desirable and undesirable behaviour and formulate agreed ground rules for the future. Because professionals often prefer to work in their own ways, and are frequently reluctant team members, agreed standards of behaviour provide a collective conscience and usually help the team to perform more effectively.

Teams will decide which matters need to be covered by ground rules. They may include:

  • obligations to attend meetings;
  • punctuality when attending meetings;
  • honouring commitments;
  • communicating with colleagues when commitments cannot be met for good reasons;
  • learning from failures and mistakes rather than allocating blame;
  • accepting collective responsibility;
  • welcoming and giving new ideas constructive consideration;
  • support for others who take risks;
  • support for others in tough times;
  • respect for the views of others;
  • avoidance of interruptions when others are speaking;
  • timely response to client queries;
  • handling complaints with grace and a lack of defensiveness;
  • willingness to cooperate with colleagues;
  • providing constructive feedback to colleagues;
  • sharing knowledge and skills;
  • involving colleagues with clients;
  • courtesy to clients including their junior people;
  • courtesy to colleagues including junior people;
  • being approachable;
  • trust;
  • willingness to put things right quickly;
  • behaving with integrity;
  • avoidance of bullying, blaming, political scheming, dumping work, complaining and disrespect;
  • avoidance of power or position abuse.

It is very important for discussions to continue until there is a consensus on the issues that need to be covered by behavioural standards. Agenuine consensus, where all team members can say ‘I might not agree with every precise detail but I can happily live with the general thrust’, is much more likely to lead to a commitment from everyone to live by the standards than a majority vote. As a result the standards are more likely to be observed in practice.

It is helpful for standards of behaviour to be defined precisely. For instance, it is more useful to say, ‘All team meetings will start at the designated times and participants are expected to arrive five minutes beforehand’. It is less useful to say, ‘We should all be punctual as far as attendance at meetings is concerned’. Finally, it is generally helpful for the agreed standards to be available to all team members in writing.